Aesthetic responses of North Americans and South Americans to Tango music

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the aesthetic responses of North and South Americans to Argentinian tango instrumental music, as measured with the Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI). North and South Americans (N = 16) listened to three tango music excerpts and recorded their real-time responses on the music’s aesthetic via the CRDI dial. Then, participants had one minute to record their recalled memory response of the excerpt they had just heard via a Likert scale and recorded response.
Once collected, North and South American data were sorted and analyzed by participant CRDI responses (Excerpt 1, a traditional dance style tango; Excerpt 2, a concert tango; and Excerpt 3, a North American cinematic tango), magnitude of responses over Segment time, a 5-point Likert-scale rating, and coded participant free responses. Quantitative results indicated that 76.47% - 82.35% of North and South American participants responded generally positively to all three musical excerpts in the real-time readings from the CRDI and rated all three musical excerpts positively (Excerpt 2, intermediate acculturation, was the highest rated with an average of 4.44, followed by Excerpt 1, least acculturated, with an average of 4.11, and finally Excerpt 3, most acculturated, with a 3.88 average). Qualitative data suggested that North American responses were generally lengthier, included comments combining the “Mention of Self,” “Technical Elements,” and/or “Emotional Elements,” and were much more informally written (included drawings). In addition, South American responses were generally more memory or experience-based.