LISTENING TO CAPOEIRA:

PHEMONEMONOLIGY,
EMBODIMENT, AND THE MATERIALITY
OF MUSIC

PRESENTED BY: Annika Rose E. Pereyra

 Greg Downey is an anthropologist who
teaches and conducts research at
GREG DOWNEY Macquarie University in Australia.

He has advanced and greatly contributed

to a specific area in anthropology known
as neuroanthropology, an integration of
cultural research and brain science in
investigating how humans create various
experiences through dynamics of the
nervous system.

As a teacher, he has contributed to

Macquarie University’s strength in
researching and teaching human diversity,
evolution, psychological variation and
human rights.
The essay by Greg Downey (2002) explores the notion of
touch within a lived, embodied, and performative experience
through music, dance, sports, or a combination of three.

Downey’s essay, an interpretative auditing/audition through

the concept of phenomenology exemplifies touch as a way of
understanding complex three-dimensional processes or
performances.
The author’s narrative, on the other hand, involves an
expression and explanation of internal processes that he
experienced as he was observing and researching a cultural
form, perhaps a sport or a dance known in the Brazilian world
as capoeira. Being in touch with large performative world of
culture, as well as being in touch with oneself - though
admittedly in close approximation or partial and incomplete
as in any works of field investigation or ethnography -
summarizes the main thesis of this chapter in particular and
of this book in general.
That is, touch, a form of sensing, does not just happen on the
skin or the traditional notion of perception through the surface
of a sensitive body, but also as an immediate and contingent
response deep beneath the surface of the skin, or even inside
the mind, or through other senses that are activated in
moments of witnessing, feeling, seeing, reading, watching,
tasting, walking around, manipulating, performing, reacting to
art.
ACTIVITY
DESCRIBE A PERFORMANCE. IT MIGHT
BE A FILM, THEATRE, LIVE EVENT,
PERFORMANCE ART, OR A
NARRATIVE. HOW DID YOU IMAGINE
OR FEEL THE PERFORMANCE? WHAT
MADE YOU FEEL IT OR IMAGINE IT
VIVIDLY?
THANK YOU!!