Scientific music writing
Tue 26 Feb 2008
I've just read the handful of music-related articles in the latest New Scientist, and I am in the middle of reading "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks. The New Scientist articles were trite and hollow, and Musicophilia is a nothing more than a tangle of anecdotes and footnotes. It seems that these scientific writers think that simply by using a lot of medical terms for parts of the brain they are somehow explaining anything about music.
My friend was telling me on Sunday about a CV he saw where the candidate had talked about his PhD in Music. Apparently his conclusion was the bland statement 'there is something innate about humans that makes them like music'. A somewhat feeble conclusion, but no less helpful than anything else that any other purported expert is yammering about.
Perhaps I am too hard on these people but frankly I'm frustrated that nobody is getting anywhere with any of this thinking.
Matt Ridley has done the best job so far . He talks about how singing or chanting unifies a crowd -- clearly a very powerful force in warfare, religion, politics, sports and any other competitive or social situation you could name. Game theory tells us that co-operation is a powerful thing so it would make sense that a 'glue' like music would emerge in a species. But is music always a social experience? It's hard to be sure in this young age of recorded music. In the past, music always required participation - you could watch somebody sing or play, or you could go to church and sing with the parish; you could sing on your own but that was always a smaller experience than joining a crowd.
In writing this short post I appear to have reached a conclusion. Music is a 'tribal glue'. Music binds individuals to make them part of a larger whole. I will happily leave it to neurologists (neurographists??) to figure out the details of the implementation - that's the boring part.
My friend was telling me on Sunday about a CV he saw where the candidate had talked about his PhD in Music. Apparently his conclusion was the bland statement 'there is something innate about humans that makes them like music'. A somewhat feeble conclusion, but no less helpful than anything else that any other purported expert is yammering about.
Perhaps I am too hard on these people but frankly I'm frustrated that nobody is getting anywhere with any of this thinking.
Matt Ridley has done the best job so far . He talks about how singing or chanting unifies a crowd -- clearly a very powerful force in warfare, religion, politics, sports and any other competitive or social situation you could name. Game theory tells us that co-operation is a powerful thing so it would make sense that a 'glue' like music would emerge in a species. But is music always a social experience? It's hard to be sure in this young age of recorded music. In the past, music always required participation - you could watch somebody sing or play, or you could go to church and sing with the parish; you could sing on your own but that was always a smaller experience than joining a crowd.
In writing this short post I appear to have reached a conclusion. Music is a 'tribal glue'. Music binds individuals to make them part of a larger whole. I will happily leave it to neurologists (neurographists??) to figure out the details of the implementation - that's the boring part.
SHARE
SUBSCRIBE
0 comments
