Each person has experienced the emotional power of music, which sometimes literally takes us by the soul. We can come to a state of euphoria from driving music in some rock club, and listening to a romantic ballad, experience the deep longing of unrequited love …
Music expresses our emotions much more powerfully than words can express.
“I understand why rhythm can be so attractive, and I also understand when it comes to anticipation, surprise, fulfillment of the expected. All of these things explain why music can be interesting. But why it acts on us at a deep level remains a mystery to me,”he wrote.
Anthropology puzzle
Even the father of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, was puzzled by man's ability to perceive music and called this ability "the most mysterious of those that [humanity] is gifted with."
Some academic thinkers - such as the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker - have even questioned whether music has any particular value at all.
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For Pinker, we only like music because it stimulates our other, more important abilities - the ability to recognize patterns, for example. By itself, according to Pinker, it is of no value and acts only as an irritant to hearing.
If this were the case, would people around the world spend so much of their life time playing and listening to music?
If you consider yourself a music freak, match your obsession with the Babinga attitude towards music. This Central African nation is known for its song and dance accompanying any activity - from collecting honey to hunting elephants.
The anthropologist Gilbert Rouget, who lived among the Babing representatives in 1946, discovered that not participating in the ritual of joint music-making was considered the worst crime among them.
“Perhaps you cannot express more clearly that song and food are equally necessary for a person for life,” the scientist noted. "For this reason, many people (myself included) find it hard to believe that music is just a background soundtrack to the history of human evolution."
Fortunately, there are alternative theories regarding the purpose of music. One particularly popular hypothesis is that music arose in response to sexual competition among humans - like the flamboyant tail of peacocks.
Indeed, developed musical abilities make a person more sexually attractive.
However, there is little evidence for this theory: a recent study of 10 thousand twins did not show that musicians are somehow particularly lucky in bed matters (Mick Jagger and many other rockers, however, can argue with this).
It is also suggested that music was an early form of human communication. Indeed, some musical motives carry the emotional codes of our ancestors.
For example, an ascending staccato turns us on emotionally, while long descending sequences are calming. Apparently, certain sound constructions contain universal meanings that are equally read by adults of different ages and cultures, young children and even animals.
So we can say with a high degree of confidence that music arose on the foundation of associations with the cries of birds and animals as a means by which ancient people, who did not yet have a language, could express their feelings and emotions. It is even possible that music became the proto-language that paved the way for speech.
In addition, at some point in history, music may have helped bring people together into communities. Group dancing and singing in chorus have made people more altruistic and more inclined to identify with the community in which they exist.
According to the latest research in neuroscience, moving in sync with another person, you - thanks to the signals sent to you by your brain - cease to be aware of yourself as something separate.
It is as if you are looking at another in the mirror and recognize yourself in it. Well, as we all know perfectly well from our own bodily reactions, in order for people to start moving in a single impulse, there is no better means than music.
However, for internal transformations to take place, active physical inclusion in the music is not at all necessary (although it can enhance the effect).
Emotional contact with the world
If a melody causes pleasant vibrations in the body, just listening to it is enough for our ego to decrease. Sounds reassuring, especially for those whose musical lives, like mine, are tied to couches and iPods.
A group with more solidarity and less internal strife has a higher chance of survival and prosperity. This was most widely illustrated by the example of the Babinga tribe with their compulsory daily music-making.
The anthropologist Rouge wrote about babing: "When included in the process, to some extent, the erasure of his own personality occurs, so that each of the participants begins to feel like one whole with the group of singers."
The role of music as glue for society can be traced through the example of the songs sung by slaves at work, as well as the choral songs of soldiers and the songs of sailors. It seems that music really brings people together, makes them closer to each other.
Music, apparently, is at the very foundation of our relationship with the world, and there is a deep meaning in the fact that, by plucking our heart strings, it helps us establish emotional contact with other people and with everything in general.
Each culture can build on this rudimentary instinct in its own way, creating its own lexicon of musical chords and motives that will become associated with certain feelings and emotions.
Whatever the genesis and original purpose of music, modern people can no longer associate it with important events in their own lives.
Our present existence on Earth - from conception, gestation, birth to funeral, with everything that can happen in between - is accompanied by a certain musical line. And it is not surprising, therefore, that the sounds of your favorite tunes are able to give us such a heady cocktail of emotions and memories.