The aim of this study was to investigate performer nonverbal behaviour in popular music performance in order to understand the use and functions of gestures, postures, and facial expression. To this end, the study begins by reviewing relevant psychological and sociological research including Ekman and Friesen and Argyle's categorisations of nonverbal behaviour. Drawing on these specific categories, functions of nonverbal behaviours in popular music performance are proposed. These include: to maintain performer self-control; to provide musical, narrative, emotional and personal information; to regulate and manipulate relationships between performer, co-performer and audience. The investigative work focuses on a case study of The Corrs and is carried out by observing two commercially available film recordings of the band in live performance. The songs demonstrate that within this band, three of the four members take turns singing solos. In the first performance, What can I do? is sung by Andrea (principle vocal), and in the second performance, No frontiers is sung by Sharon and Caroline. Focusing on the soloists, all their nonverbal behaviours are classified in terms of types (e.g., emblem, illustrator, regulator, adaptor, affect display) and frequency of behaviour. The results demonstrate that Ekman and Friesen and Argyle's categorisations provide a complete description of the nonverbal behaviours found in the performances. Moreover, the analysis reveals differences between individuals and the two songs. With these findings, the paper concludes that nonverbal behaviours in this type of performance are crucial to the development, production and perception of the musical performance. Though preliminary, the study indicates a need for much more detailed research of this topic if performers, educators and researchers are to understand and exploit the nonverbal aspects of a musical communication fully.
ArgyleM. (1979). New developments in the analysis of social skills. In WolfgangA. (ed.), Nonverbal behaviour (pp. 139–58). New York: Academic Press.
3.
AshleyR. (2003). Spatial elements of meaning in musicians' body movements: Pragmatic and semantic dimensions. Paper presented at the International Conference on Music and Gesture. Norwich: University of East Anglia, August.
4.
BehrensG. A.GreenS. B. (1993). The ability to identity emotional content of solo improvisations performed vocally and on three different instruments. Psychology of Music, 21, 20–33.
5.
BenjaminW. (1970). Das Kunstwerk Im Zeitalter Seiner Technischen. In Werke band 2. Tokyo: Shobun-Sha.
6.
BerlandJ. (1993). Sound, image and social space: Music video and media reconstruction. In FrithS.GoodwinA.GrossbergL. (eds), Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader (pp. 25–44). London: Routledge.
7.
BirdwhistellR. L. (1970). Kinesics and Context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
8.
BooneR. T. (2001). Children's expression of emotional meaning in music through expressive body movement. Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour, 25(1, 21–41.
9.
BurgoonJ. K.SaineT. (1978). The unspoken dialogue. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
10.
BushL. K.BarrC. L.McHugoG. J.LanzettaJ. T. (1989). The effects of facial control and facial mimicry on subjective reactions to comedy routines. Motivation and emotion, 13, 31–51.
11.
Byng-HallJ. (1995). Rewriting Family Scripts. New York: Guildford Press.
12.
DavidsonJ. W. (1993). Visual perception of performance manner in the movements of solo musicians. Psychology of Music, 21, 103–13.
13.
DavidsonJ. W. (1997). The social in musical performance. In HargreavesD. J.NorthA. C. (eds), The Social Psychology of Music (pp. 209–28). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
DavidsonJ. W. (2001). The role of the body in the production and perception of solo vocal performance: A case study of Annie Lennox. Musicæ Scientiæ, 5(2), 235–56.
15.
DavidsonJ. W. (in press). A “moving musician”: Exploring the stage performance of Robbie Williams. In GrittenA.KingE. C. (eds), Music and Gesture. Aldershott: Ashgate.
16.
De NoraT. (2000). Music in everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
17.
DittmannA. T.LllewellynL. G. (1969). Body movement and speech rhythm in social conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 11, 98–106.
18.
EfronD. (1941). Gesture and environment. New York: King's Crown Press.
19.
EkmanP.FriesenW. V. (1981). The repertoire of nonverbal behaviour. In KendonA. (ed.), Nonverbal Communication, Interaction and Gesture (pp. 57–106). Nertherlands: Mouton.
20.
FiskeJ. (1989). Reading the Popular. London: Routledge.
21.
FrithS. (1981). Sound effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock'nRoll. New York: Pantheon.
22.
FrithS. (1987). Why do songs have words? In WhiteA. L. (ed.), Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event (pp. 77–106). London: Routledge.
23.
FrithS. (1993). Youth/Music/Television. In FrithS.GoodwinA.GrossbergL. (eds), Sound and Vision: The Music Video reader (pp. 67–84). London: Routledge.
24.
FrithS. (1996). Performing Rites. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
25.
GabrielssonA.JuslinP. N. (1996). Emotional expression in music performance: Between the performer's intention and the listener's experience. Psychology of Music, 24, 68–91.
26.
GabrielssonA.LindströmE. (1995). Emotional expression in synthesizer and sentograph performance. Psychomusicology, 14, 94–116.
27.
GastonE. T. (1968). Music in Therapy. New York: MacMillan.
28.
HattenR. (2003). A theory of musical gesture and its application. Keynote address at First international Conference on Music and Gesture, University of East Anglia, U.K, 28–31 August.
29.
HseeC.K.HatfieldE.CarlsonJ.G.ChemtobC. (1990). The effects of power on susceptibility to emotional contagion. Cognition and Emotion, 4, 327–40.
30.
HseeC.K.HatfieldE.ChemtobC. (1991). Assesments of the emotional states of others: Conscious judgements versus emotional contagion. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 11, 119–28.
31.
JuslinP. N. (2001). Communicating emotion in music performance: A review and theoretical framework. In JuslinP. N.SlobodaJ. A. (eds), Music and emotion: Theory and research (pp. 309–40). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
32.
JuslinP. N. (1997). Emotional communication in music performance: A functionalist perspective and some data. Music Perception, 14, 383–418.
33.
JuslinP. N. (2000). Cue utilization in communication of emotion in music performance: Relating performance to perception. Journal of experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1797–813.
34.
JuslinP. N.MadisonG. (1999). The role of timing patterns in recognition of emotional expression from musical performance. Music Perception, 17, 197–221.
35.
KotlyarG. M.MorozovV. P. (1976). Acoustic correlates of the emotional content of vocalized speech. Soviet Physics & Acoustics, 22, 370–6.
36.
KurosawaK. (2002). Comparison of the uses of and participation in music in both northern Europe and Japanese. Unpublished Master of Arts dissertation. University of Sheffield.
37.
LanzettaJ. T.OrrS. P. (1981). Stimulus properties of facial expressions and their influence on the classical conditioning of fear. Motivation and Emotion, 5, 225–34.
38.
LanzettaJ. T.OrrS. P. (1986). Excitatory strength of expressive faces: Effects of happy and fear expression and context on the extinction of a conditional fear response. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholog y, 50, 190–94.
39.
MallochS. N. (1999/2000). Mothers and infants and communicative musicality. Musicæ Scientiæ, Special Issue, 29–57.
MerriamA. P. (1964). The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
42.
MiddletonR. (1981). “Reading” Popular Music. Open University Course: U203 Popular Culture, Unit 16. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
43.
MiddletonR. (1990). Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
44.
OgushiK.HattoriM. (1996a). Emotional communication in performance of vocal music. In PennycookB.Costa-GiomiE. (eds), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (pp. 269–74). Montreal: MacGill University.
45.
PattersonM. L. (1983). Nonverbal Behaviour: A functional Perspective. New York: Springer Verlag.
46.
SheflenA. E. (1965). Quasi-Courtship behaviour of psychotherapy. Psychiatry, 28, 245–56.
47.
SlobodaJ. A. (1996). The acquisition of musical expressivity. In EricssonK. A. (ed.), The road to excellence (pp. 107–26). Mahwah, N J: Erlbaum.
48.
SlobodaJ. A. (1998). Musical performance and emotion: Issues and developments. In YiS. W. (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (pp. 21–5). Seoul: Seoul National University.
49.
SundbergJ.IwarssonJ.HagegårdH. (1995). A singer's expression of emotions in sung performance. In FujimuraO.HiranoM. (eds), Vocal Fold Physiology: Voice Quality Control (pp. 2217–29). San Diego, CA: Singular Press.
50.
TaggP. (1982). Analysing popular music: Theory, method and practice. Popular Music, 2, 37–67.
51.
WatanabeJ. (2000). Indentity no Ongaku. Kyoto: Sekaishisosha.
52.
WatzlawickP.BeavinJ. H. (1967). Some formal aspects of communication. American Behavioral Scientist, 10, 4–8.
WilliamonA.DavidsonJ. W. (2000). Coordinating duo piano performance. In WoodsC.LuckG. B.BrochardR.O'NeillS. A.SlobodaJ. A. (eds), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Music and Cognition, CD-ROM. Keele, UK: Department of Psychology.
