The Human Nature of Music

Abstract

Music is at the centre of what it means to be human – it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways. We argue that music comes from the way in which knowing bodies (Merleau-Ponty) prospectively explore the environment using habitual ‘patterns of action,’ which we have identified as our innate ‘communicative musicality.’ To support our argument, we present short case studies of infant interactions using micro analyses of video and audio recordings to show the timings and shapes of intersubjective vocalizations and body movements of adult and child while they improvise shared narratives of meaning. Following a survey of the history of discoveries of infant abilities, we propose that the gestural narrative structures of voice and body seen as infants communicate with loving caregivers are the building blocks of what become particular cultural instances of the art of music, and of dance, theatre and other temporal arts. Children enter into a musical culture where their innate communicative musicality can be encouraged and strengthened through sensitive, respectful, playful, culturally informed teaching in companionship. The central importance of our abilities for music as part of what sustains our well-being is supported by evidence that communicative musicality strengthens emotions of social resilience to aid recovery from mental stress and illness. Drawing on the experience of the first author as a counsellor, we argue that the strength of one person’s communicative musicality can support the vitality of another’s through the application of skilful techniques that encourage an intimate, supportive, therapeutic, spirited companionship. Turning to brain science, we focus on hemispheric differences and the affective neuroscience of Jaak Panksepp. We emphasize that the psychobiological purpose of our innate musicality grows from the integrated rhythms of energy in the brain for prospective, sensation-seeking affective guidance of vitality of movement. We conclude with a Coda that recalls the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, which built on the work of Heraclitus and Spinoza. This view places the shared experience of sensations of living – our communicative musicality – as inspiration for rules of logic formulated in symbols of language.

Hip-hop as a Reflection of United States Political Life

“…The current United States president is blamed of racism towards Muslims, black-sckinned and Hispanics. More details about Trump as a racist were written by American journalists and columnists D. Leonhardt and I. Prasad Philbrick in The New York Times (Leonhardt, 2018).…”

Preconceptual Spectral and Temporal Cues as a Source of Meaning in Speech and Music

“…It seems, moreover, that newborns are very sensitive also to facial expressions, vocalizations, and hand movements, which they can largely imitate to some extent. Such a kind of communicative musicality , as it has been coined [11,66], shows children’s awareness of human communicative signals. It is a faculty which is comprehensive, multimodal, and coherent at birth and in the first months after birth [67].…”

“…This is obvious in vocalizing and gesturing together in time, where the ability to act musically underlies and supports human companionship. It seems likely, moreover, that the elements of communicative musicality are necessary for joint human expressiveness to arise and that they underlie all human communication [11,66].…”

Dancers’ Somatic of Musicality

“…This response is expressed as a movement, primarily in tune with the beat or rhythm of the music (Large, 2000; Leman, 2008; Toiviainen et al, 2010). Such somatic response to music has been observed worldwide and in a variety of circumstances, including within the mother and infant relationship, as a factor impacting group cohesion, in tribal dances, and as a personal trait (see, for example, Farnell, 1999; Brown et al, 2005; Luck et al, 2009; Phillips-Silver, 2009; Witek et al, 2014; Honing et al, 2015).…”