Whither Groovology? Rethinking the Concept of Groove in Popular Music Studies

Abstract

Scholarship on groove is a fairly recent area of enquiry within music studies that is as wide-ranging as it is interdisciplinary, with contributions from music theory, ethnomusicology, psychology, and aesthetics. Generally speaking, groove refers to aspects of musicking that are conducive to physical movement, particularly as it relates to how we synchronise our bodies through dancing, finger-snapping, nodding along, and so on. How groove is defined in the literature, however, can vary widely. Is groove characterized by properties of sound and rhythm, or is it an aesthetic concept that is experiential and subjective? Likewise, is groove a cross-cultural analytic that applies broadly to all musics, or is it an emic concept particular to African American musical styles? In this paper, I tease apart these questions in order to argue for an ethnographic approach to understanding groove as a form of situated, somatic knowledge. I use the example of “how to dance” instructional videos on social media to show how groove manifests through bodily practice. By doing so, I proffer that scholarship should focus less on what groove is, but rather on how musicians and listeners “get into groove” through intuitive, somatic ways of knowing sound.