Abstract

Human beings are «musical animals» not so much and not just because they sing, dance and play instruments, but because they communicate musically. Let’s take the mother-infant couple. They don’t communicate meanings but music of looks, smiles, gestures, sounds, mimetic behaviors. So the lovers, the friends, the associates, that is the people who are comfortable together. In everyday life, positive social relationships go «in time». The festive intervals, whether small or large, are the dramatization of this daily musicality, as a representation, a mutual saying «we are a We», not an I, an you, a We. This feeling of «we-ness», when strong, on the one hand overshadows the individual self, on the other it produces the estrangement of the Other, that is, of those who do not go «in time», often decrees their exclusion. Mimetic behavior can rebalance the exclusion mechanism. The great encounters between unknown humanity, before they fell into the dimensions of conquest, took place in mimetic parties, which could be called jazz.