Where does culture come from?

Culture has many origins. Sometimes it comes from collective movements that build over years. Sometimes it comes from a particular music festival, at a particular time and place. Sometimes it comes from the creative genius of a single individual.

And sometimes it comes, or is at least shaped by, a neurological tradition.

Or so Harold Heath reflected yesterday in a very interesting reflection on the relationship between neurodiversity and dance music.

Heath itemizes the defining qualities of neurodiversity and then notes how many of them seem to fit his life in the world of dance music.

So a socially awkward person, who craves novelty and creativity, who self-medicates their anxiety and depression which arises from undiagnosed neurodivergence, suddenly finds somewhere overflowing with novelty and creativity, where they feel truly, authentically welcome, where the effects of their unknown dopamine paucity are alleviated by dancing to music they love, and where getting utterly spangled is positively encouraged. I’m beginning to see why I ended up in dance music, and perhaps why many other neurodivergent people do too.

The master here is Ben Malbon. (See his wonderful book Clubbing, available on Amazon here.) I wonder what he thinks about this.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jason Hirschhorn’s @MusicREDEF for finding this essay.