Humans and Music

Why do we listen to music?

Think about it.  Music is a phenomenon which has no parallel in the natural world.  Yet it has a profound effect on the human brain.  Consider this story:  musical training affects learning ability in kids.  Children who learn music get better at other mental tasks.  It apparently provides a unique form of neurological stimulation.

It can control our emotions.  Listen to a pop hit from when you were a teenager and you feel, physically, a pang of nostalgia.  Listen to swelling patriotic music and you feel a rush of emotion.  Moviemakers understand this.  Even the most banal speech can be made into an uplifting, climactic moment on film with the right background music.  (And why haven't politicians tried musical accompaniment to their campaign stump speeches?)  Many religions use music in rituals, and some of Western civilization's greatest musical works were written for that purpose. You don't even have to be able to hear to enjoy music -- profoundly deaf people can nevertheless sense the vibrations of music through solid objects.


But where does it come from?  Why do our brains respond to something which is entirely artificial?  Musical perception seems to be distinct from language -- we have no "native" musical language, for instance.  And our spoken languages, even tonal ones like Chinese, make use of only a small part of our ability to perceive tones and musical patterns.  It's as if our brains are equipped to handle an extremely complex method of communication which we don't actually use.

Was there a time when language was more musical?  Before language, did humans sing like whales or mice?  Or did music help cement early tribal bonds, so that musical societies thrived while non-musical ones died out?  Music doesn't fossilize, so we can't know if ancient humans used this ability or not.

Or is music an "emergent property" of the brain -- something which arises from the interaction of other features?  In this case it might be our pattern-sensing ability, our language ability, and our perception of time. 

On a science-fictional note, this might mean that alien intelligences might have absolutely no interest in music at all.  It could be a unique feature of the human brain, completely incomprehensible to non-humans.  Which means no all-alien cantina bands or extraterrestrial opera divas.  Which is kind of a shame, really, since one very fruitful result of the growth of a truly global civilization is the way musicians have adopted and combined different styles.