Music is heard from speakers, headphones, cars, cafes, neighboring windows - it's everywhere. But why? And is it capable of influencing something other than mood?
People have a lot in common wherever they live. As night approaches, we feel sleepy, and as danger approaches, as we again had to make sure, we sweep cereals and pasta from the shelves. This is not difficult to explain. Both that and that once helped to survive: predators roam in the dark, so it's better to finish things before dark, and in hard times it would be good to stock up on food - and it became a part of our nature. Music is another matter.
Music is much more common than supermarkets: in 2018, an international team of scientists did not find a single society where it was not. Everyone is singing lullabies and dancing to something: both in megacities and in the savannah. We have been doing this since time immemorial: the flutes from bones and tusks discovered at excavations are 30-40 thousand years old, then our Neanderthal relatives still walked the Earth. But music, most likely, appeared even earlier, because in order to sing something or beat off a rhythm, special devices are not needed.
It remains a mystery why our ancestors did this, except for pleasure: it seems that music does not help to survive and leave offspring. True, the screeching fans at the concert of a popular group make you doubt this. Charles Darwin even believed that music arose like mating songs in animals. But this hypothesis does not explain why the human repertoire is so diverse: for a long time, children have been lulled with music, the sick are treated, warriors are being drilled, through it they are trying to connect with higher powers.
There are other explanations as well. Perhaps the music, or rather the sense of rhythm, helped on the hunt: a mob with spears creeping through the thickets would rather hear the beast if they walk. Or the fact is that music brought people together, so it was easier for them to survive. Or musical ability came along with language. Maybe music in general should be viewed only as a side of culture, without getting into biology. Or, on the contrary, the division into nature and culture is artificial and prevents you from seeing the whole picture.
Be that as it may, it is clear that music plays a huge role in our lives. While some scientists are trying to understand how and why it appeared, others understand how melodies, rhythms and verses affect us. Who knows, all of a sudden these studies will find answers to the main questions.
Therapy
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After World War II, thousands of soldiers returned from the front so crippled, both physically and mentally, that they could not live a normal life. To help them, in 1945, the US War Department developed a therapy program using music. Veterans had to do physical exercises to music, play instruments together and singly, sing; they were given lectures, shown accompanying films, and included recordings of concerts. Healers in primitive tribes did not come to this.
Music therapy is even more diverse today. On the one hand, this is good. But at the same time, it makes it difficult to figure out which methods work and in what cases, not to mention the fact that it is simply difficult to measure.
For example, when members of the nonprofit Cochrane undertook to test whether music therapy is effective for depression, they found only nine more or less relevant studies with about 400 participants. The reviewers concluded that, in the short term, music, in addition to conventional remedies, is better at managing symptoms of depression and anxiety than conventional remedies alone. But, alas, this did not affect the quality of life of patients.
Torture
Music is used for the opposite purpose - to torture people. This was much talked about when the details of the "war on terror" started by the United States under President George W. Bush were revealed. In American military prisons, inmates were played for hours at full volume songs that people usually listen to with pleasure. But that was not enough. The prisoners were forced to sing and dance to the point of exhaustion, train to the soundtrack, or simply beat them while some famous song was played from the speakers.
Torture with music has attracted attention relatively recently, but, as musicologist Morag Grant writes, it was used in Nazi Germany, in Greece and Chile, when there were dictatorships, and in other places as well. Although there seems to be a lot of material to study, research is difficult. Scientists will not try for the sake of experiment - they have to rely on what former prisoners tell. Even so, it is difficult to figure out what role music plays, and what other tortures, which the warders often use simultaneously.
It is clear from the stories of the prisoners that music can indeed be torture. This is not surprising, but strangely something else: music helped some prisoners endure atrocities, although they turned it on in order to break them. Then the idea of bringing torture victims back to normal with music doesn't seem absurd - and sometimes it works. According to Morag Grant, music is not just a way of self-expression - it allows communication: both the therapist and the executioner try to reach out to the person.
Suggestion
If music can affect the state of mind, then, probably, our actions depend on it. Scientists have tried to find out whether this is so or not by observing shoppers in stores. In 1980, Ronald Milliman traveled to a small town in the southwestern United States and conducted a famous experiment in a chain supermarket. At his request, one day they turned on fast music, the other - slow music, and there were days when there was no music at all.
The experiment lasted nine weeks and showed that with slow music, shoppers walk slower and spend more: the store's daily revenue on fast days was almost 40% lower. Milliman warned against hasty conclusions: the experiment only showed that human behavior, in principle, can be influenced with the help of music, and the numbers can change depending on the circumstances.
Subsequent studies by Milliman and others have partly confirmed his correctness. People prefer to buy where familiar and pleasant music is playing, and in general with music it is better than without it. They stay longer in those stores where they play slow and familiar compositions, and the sound is muffled. Because of loud, fast music, which is not too much to your liking, time stretches longer. True, although these effects were noticeable, the difference was not large.
These are just a few directions in which the study of music and its impact on humans is moving. Anthropology understands how it is built into our life, neurosciences - what happens in the brain when listening. Perhaps someday we will understand from separate answers why we have songs, symphonies, improvisations and what they do with us. In the meantime, music keeps many more secrets.
Maria Svinoboeva, Marat Kuzaev