> It seems to me that rhythm is the trace of the social in music and that once it's gone, music is no longer about something that everybody can join in and do. It has lost its vernacular if you will. This is not to say that the select few cannot enjoy the rarefied pleasures of non-rhythmic music; it's just to say that they are few and select.
But doesn't song have as much claim as dance to be a historical social base of music? It's still at least as much the vernacular of popular music as dance.
Rhythm and danceability are not the same thing; there are a lot of undanceable rhythms. And I think it's wrong to always put dance on the side of the popular against the esoteric. Dance cultures can be pretty exclusive, and can generate some pretty extreme musics, e.g.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk6IDwtaIko&feature=related
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocgbLkayfTE
In any case, it's a mistake to set up too firm a divide between the popular or vernacular and the rarified. There is a rather large spectrum between a 150-date Michael Jackson tour and a couple of gentlemen discussing an unrealisable but conceptually fascinating score over sherries in the staff club. A lot of the best music of the 20th century has come from the dialectic between popular and esoteric and initially had small but passionate audiences, and certainly not necessarily elite in the sense you imply. The evolution of bebop is a case in point - a deliberate turning of musicians' backs on what had become tame, predictable mass white swing audiences to chase a new sound. Their audience was inevitably a lot smaller but more into it and committed for a long ride. The bands were smaller too so a niche was sustainable. It's the whole back-and-forth process between the popular and the avant garde that makes the history of music so interesting.
Mike