Author: Navid Gohari
Obstacles to Musicality
An Inquiry into Mental, Physical, and Structural Interferences in the Process of Becoming Musical
Introduction
In many professional rehearsals and performances, despite a high level of technical skill, there is a noticeable absence of a certain quality in musical expression—an absence that cannot be simply attributed to a flaw in execution. This lack is not due to insufficient effort or knowledge, but rather the result of obstacles that suppress or divert musicality before it emerges, operating on various levels of mind, body, and practice structures. Musicality is often marginalized not because of a lack of effort or skill, but due to the reproduction of invisible barriers embedded in the processes of education and performance.
This text continues the path initiated in The Phenomenology of Musicality, offering a critical perspective on the current condition of musicians, singers, and professional performers in relation to music. It seeks to open a new dialogue about the perceptual, embodied, and structural conditions necessary for musicality—that is, for the process of becoming musical.
The present article is an attempt to analyze the layers of resistance that disrupt the emergence of musicality in professional contexts. These resistances are partially rooted in the analytical and interventionist tendencies of the performer’s mind, partially in the failure of music to become embodied, and partially in the goal-oriented structures of music education, rehearsal, evaluation, and performance. Rather than focusing on “what should be done,” I will explore “what prevents it from happening,” and examine the resistances that arise within the analytical mind, bodily tensions and freeze responses, and unconscious patterns embedded in training, teaching, and performing.
Part I: The Structure of Mental Resistance Against Musicality
Through my experience working closely with professional musicians, I have found that one of the earliest and most difficult obstacles to musicality arises from the overactivity of the analytical mind. A mind trained solely to understand structure, rhythm, harmony, and musical history not only fails to recognize embodied musicality but defines and interprets the very concept of musicality through those same frameworks. Such a mind is constantly caught in unnecessary control, excessive prediction, and overanalysis. While this cognitive activity may be useful for interpretation and pedagogy, it becomes a serious obstacle to reaching musicality, as something that has become musical.
1.1. Chronic Overanalysis and the Disconnection from Perception
Many musicians and singers—especially those trained within formal educational systems—remain chronically in a state of “analysis.” This condition creates a cognitive distancing from sound, the body, and listening. Music is no longer perceived as a sensorial and embodied process; instead, it is reduced to a controllable, predictable, and calculable object.
Let me give an example: if you ask a skilled instrumentalist or an experienced singer what should be done for musicality, they will present you with a detailed manifesto of the piece’s historical period, articulation, form analysis, melodic progression, harmonic rules, and so on. They try to grant musical identity to their “expression” by relying on these frameworks.
However, at that very moment, if you ask: How do you perceive this musical expression?
You will likely encounter one of two things: either the very concept of “perception” is questioned—meaning the performer lacks any conscious recognition of their own perceptual states as a human being—or they will defensively revert to the same manifestos, presenting them again as their perceptual relationship with the piece.
In such a state, genuine engagement with the music/sound gives way to evaluation, and the musical becomes merely the execution of a predetermined blueprint. Musicality becomes a victim of the need for “analysis,” and in more naïve cases, accurate knowledge of the piece is falsely equated with musicality itself.
1.2. Fear of Mistakes and the Defensive Mechanism of Control
A major part of mental resistance stems from an ingrained fear of making mistakes and of being imperfect. The analytical mind, in an attempt to protect itself from error, turns to patterns of control, prediction, and restraint. While these defense mechanisms may appear professional on the surface, they covertly restrict the flow of energy in the musical experience.
Under these conditions, the body enters a state of constant alertness; the tone (sonority) loses its natural quality; and the musician or singer no longer lives with the sound, but rather exerts all effort to reproduce it correctly.
1.3. Disconnection from the Present Moment and Lived Time
Another manifestation of mental resistance is the loss of a true relationship with time. The analytical mind tends to impose the past (rehearsals, theory, mistakes and corrections, analytical maps, etc.) and the future (audience judgment, anticipation of upcoming notes, performance success, etc.) onto the present moment. The result is a kind of temporal disorientation that disconnects listening, movement, and sound from the lived now. This temporal rupture strikes at the heart of musicality—at the place where music must form a real and lived relationship with the self as a living, experiencing human being.
Part II: Bodily Resistances
Although mental resistances play a central role in the blockage of musicality, these resistances always manifest through the body. The analytical mind, via the nervous system, sends signals to the body that result in excessive patterns, tension, and disconnection from bodily sensations. In other words, the absence of musicality cannot be traced solely to the mind—it must also be examined in the state of the body, breathing, and the fluid flow of energy throughout the organism.
One of the clearest signs of bodily resistance to musicality is the freezing of motor and vocal axes. A performer whose body has been trained merely for technical control often lacks a living, relational embodiment of music and fluid breathing. As a result, their performance lacks natural flow, dynamic flexibility, and the capacity to coexist with sound, rhythm, and energetic movement.
To return to musicality, the body must be understood not as a site of control, but as a conduit for the passage of energy. Only then can the body transform from a mere “producer of sound” to a vessel for “expressing sound.”
Part III: The Role of Educational Structures in Reinforcing Resistance
Despite their valuable achievements in transmitting technical skills and theoretical knowledge, traditional music education systems are often structured in ways that reinforce, rather than dismantle, mental and bodily resistances to musicality. These resistances gradually become embedded in the subconscious layers of performers.
Educational institutions and music teachers often occupy an exalted position of “truth” in the minds of novice students. Perhaps this is why what these institutions and individuals present as “correct” is deeply registered in the mental layers of the learner. Yet history has shown us that today’s “rights” can become tomorrow’s “wrongs” in an instant. Still, most educational systems fail to acknowledge such possibilities on the path of creativity, discovery, and musical experimentation.
Over two decades of working with instrumentalists, vocalists, and theater actors, I have found that one of the most deeply rooted resistances to embodied musicality stems from clinging to these learned “rights.” Many performers cannot envision possibilities beyond what they have been taught, and therefore deny themselves the chance to experience or open up to musical becoming.
3.1. The Priority of Technique over Perception
Technique, while an essential tool for musical expression, is often treated as an end in itself within many educational systems. From the early years of training, students learn to prioritize accuracy of execution over auditory, sensory, or inner quality. Gradually, the ear becomes a judge of standards, not a tool for musical perception.
As a result:
- Speed, precision, and error-free playing take the place of lived musical expression;
- Practice becomes oriented toward “problem-solving” rather than “living in music.”;
- The performer is constantly striving to conquer technical concepts, not to engage in dialogue with the self.
3.2. Absence of Embodied Experience in Curricula
Most music education programs lack any dedicated focus on the body, sensory perception, or psychophysical dimensions of musical performance. Thus, the performer’s relationship with their body is reduced to functional and mechanical terms (such as chest expansion or finger agility), not viewed through an ontological understanding of the body as a source of meaning and expression.
Behind such perspectives, the body becomes an execution machine. Even when some seemingly progressive institutions include physical training, bodily health, posture, or neuromuscular efficiency in their curricula, these are usually aimed solely at preserving and enhancing the performance machine, not cultivating embodied awareness.
3.3. Competitive Environment and Performance Anxiety
Professional education programs—conservatories, music schools, competitions—typically operate within frameworks of assessment and competition. These settings intensify tendencies toward control, performance anxiety, and disconnection from the natural flow of music.
Students are taught that their sound must be “correct,” not “alive.”
Over time, these models cause chronic mental splits and bodily freezing in the process of musical expression.
3.4. The Culture of Professionalism
Professional environments may also be categorized under “educational systems.” Membership in symphony orchestras, professional choirs, and established music ensembles institutionalizes collective culture and professional behavior. These norms are taught to newcomers, enforced over time, and eventually become the collective culture of a profession.
In such contexts, musicality—as a deep relationship between technical elements of music, energy, the body, and lived experience—is often sacrificed for the sake of time management, efficiency of human resources, and standardized professional conduct.
This professionalized culture reveals its most striking consequences in the crisis of presence: performers who are precise but absent, articulate but emotionally numb, technically correct but emotionally disconnected. They operate within a relational musical context but remain resistant to truly encountering the Other. They perform from technical memory, not from lived feeling.
This crisis does not stem from a lack of skill, but from the loss of embodied musical awareness—that is, the loss of musicality itself.
Part IV: From Resistance to the Flow of Musicality
By critically examining the prevailing structures of music education and analyzing the biological and mental obstacles to the development of musicality, I now wish to emphasize the need for a fundamental redesign of musical training methods. This redesign is not merely a matter of adding a few body-based exercises, meaningless mental meditations, or physical workouts to improve technical efficiency; rather, it is a conceptual shift toward a new understanding of embodied music perception—a way of redefining the body as a channel through which perceptual, meaningful, and sensory energies manifest in relation to music.
Music is not merely the result of technique; it is born from perceptual presence within the acoustics of sound. From this perspective, engaging with music should be restructured not as a movement from technique to expression, but as a journey from embodied perception to presence.
Musicality is not a matter of style or aesthetics; it is an inner and perceptual process that emerges through embodied encounter with sound. This quality arises in the heart of the living moment—in a field of energy and presence—and through a creative relationship with sonic elements and structures.
The first step toward a practical understanding of musicality is the recognition of mental, physical, and structural resistances. Before seeking to “perform better,” we must understand what prevents a coherent set of notes and formal structures from becoming musical. On this path, we must develop practices that not only activate the body and voice but also cultivate perception, presence, and musical intuition at their core.
