A Cross-modal Heuristic for Periodic Pattern Analysis of Samba Music and Dance

Samba delimits a privileged cultural territory, which is populated by a diverse set of dance and musical expressions. Although several authors have stressed the fact that music and dance are intrinsically coupled in samba culture, there is a lack of proper methods that allow the description of this relationship in terms of musical patterns and body movement. In this study, we develop a method to unravel this relationship, using a computational heuristics that provides an analysis framework to find periodic patterns connected with metre in dance and music. The method is applied to a limited universe of samba dances and music, which is used to illustrate the usefulness of the approach. In particular, we show that an interesting coupling can be observed between dance and music at the metrical level. The results allow us to make the description of shared structures, such as synchronized patterns and spatial gestures, under the common framework of metre. Evidence for the enactment hypothesis is revealed by the contrast between binary tendencies in dance patterns and polymetric ambiguity in music. It is likely that the musical ambiguity of samba forms is a basis for the active engagement of dancers in re-enactment processes, thus providing a framework for embodied meaning-formation.