Mick Hartley

Here’s an interesting conversation between musician David Byrne and neuroscientist (and former session musician) Daniel Levitin:

DB: Right now I’m pretty much won over by the other point of view, that music and art and other kinds of “non-useful” skills that we have, that don’t seem practical, at least on the surface, do have a use. Music, for example, is good for you and it’s healthy. You’ll live longer if you listen to it and you enjoy it.

DL: Yeah. Well, the Pinker argument is that in spite of the fact that we find music pleasurable, and it can prolong life and we devote a lot of our energy to it, it wasn’t an evolutionary adaptation. Language was the adaptation, and music is sort of piggybacking on it.

He draws some analogies. For example, from what we know, birds didn’t actually evolve feathers in order to fly; they evolved them to keep warm in the climates and environments they were in. Once they had this feathery stuff, they then later co-opted it for flight.

DB: Yeah.

DL: There’s no evidence that the purpose of feathers was for flight. I mean purpose metaphorically, because, of course, evolution doesn’t have a purpose.

Pinker’s argument is that humans didn’t evolve music for a purpose. Once we had language, we exploited the language that was there, as birds exploited feathers. I don’t know if, at the end of the day, the argument really matters, but I think that Pinker is wrong because, for example, in very, very primitive structures that all reptiles have, that all vertebrates have, including humans, there are projections from the ear to the cerebellum and to the limbic system. And these projections convey music almost selectively as opposed to language. Which suggests that music might be evolutionarily older than language.

Also, I mean, we’re talking about how music and art seem to be able to convey things that language can’t. Well, why would that be?

DB: Mm-hmm.

DL: So when you ask a question like that, you’re coming up against the evolutionary-origin question. I’ve been thinking about this, actually, and it doesn’t surprise me that we use art and music to communicate so many things that language won’t. What surprises me is that we’re able to get as far as we can with language.

Describing something using language, I think, moves it further away from the actual experience. We resort to dance, visual art, music, and lovemaking as a way to express things that are not expressible in language. I think that those are the primary forms of communication, and language is secondary.

I was listening the other day to Yazoo’s “Only You” (via DG), here sung by a solo Alison Moyet. It’s a great song, very emotional, but of course the words, as with so many pop songs, are really quite banal. Well, apart from that repeated title, Only You, which contains all the resonance you need to give emotion to the song. On the linked clip, Moyet is, I believe, singing to a German audience, and you think, well, they’re probably better off not understanding, supplying their own idealised lyrics of heart-rending lost love or whatever. [It’s not a great version of the song, to be honest. This is better, with Vince Clarke, and a younger Alison Moyet looking distinctly ill at ease, but then you have to put up with Keith Chegwin at the start.]

Often – usually – the unintelligibilty of song lyrics is a positive advantage. I’ve listened to salsa and Cuban music for years without understanding the words, and, given that they’re normally along the lines of, “Hey, look at Conchita, she’s really hot when she dances the guaganco”, I think that, far from missing out, I’m probably better off. It’s very rare to find lyrics that actually enhance a song – Dylan being a case in point.

I’m also struck by the memorability of music. It amazes me that I can hear a snatch of music, and if I’ve heard it before I’ll know straight away. Even if I can’t name the song; that’s the verbal part of memory, which seems somehow shallower and less reliable. The music itself is lodged permanently deep inside.

Of course the feeling that music is somehow deeper than language is no proof that it’s earlier or more fundamental in evolutionary terms, but I’m certainly sympathetic to that point of view.