Do you remember the last time you listened to a song and it sent a chill through your body? Neither do I, but recently, a group of researchers has analyzed this phenomenon and the findings may be of interest to many of you out there as there is a lot more to the origins and significance of music than you may believe.
Let’s start by explaining that oft-experienced “chill.”
According to investigators in the matter, “[M]usic that gives us those little “chills” also activates the brain’s reward and emotion centers — the same areas that light up when stimulated by food, sex, or abusive drugs.”
In response to this discovery, researchers are amazed, considering the fact that music is by no means a necessary component of our lives, as food is, and it also doesn’t alter, or should I say destroy, the brain, as drugs do.
But beware, although music may stimulate the brain as if it were a drug, don’t expect to be off the hook the next time you fail a urine test by telling them you were listening to Simon and Garfunkel — this ride only goes one way!
Although music may not be essential to our livelihood, the fact that it can induce such pleasure-filled states shows that it is certainly beneficial, and thus important, to our mental and physical well being.
Now, it is a proven fact that certain emotions affect our bodies the same way each time we experience them. For example, sadness slows the pulse and causes a rise in blood pressure; fear increases the heart rate; happiness induces faster breathing patterns, etc.
Carol Krumhansl of Cornell University has invested much of her time — and other people’s money — into researching the manners in which music physically affects our bodies. She tells us, “Music with a quick tempo in a major key brought about all the physical changes associated with happiness in listeners. In contrast, a slow tempo and minor key led to sadness.”
Of course, nobody is saying that all fast music will invoke happiness and all slow music will do the reverse, but the point here is that certain emotions tend to accompany certain music, a parallel that speaks volumes to the notion that music is a much larger part of our lives than solely a form of entertainment.
So if we all accept the fact that music has some impact on us, either physically or mentally, what about the period before music? How long has music been around, and what was it that led us to conceive and embrace music in the first place?
As for how long we have had music, the Associated Press reports that, “[T]he practice of humans making music predates many human activities, including agriculture and even language!”
So, music has been around a long time — big deal, right? Well, it should be a big deal considering the fact that there is significant evidence that humans are not actually the creators of music!
At this time I point your attention to one species of whales, the humpbacks, who, like humans, rely on music heavily in their everyday lives and have been doing so for quite some time.
Evidence shows that humpback whales and humans exhibit many similarities in their musical forms. For example, humpbacks have been observed to use similar rhythms and break their songs into verses and a repeated chorus — a chorus that even rhymes!
In addition to that, according to Patricia Gray, the head of the biomusic program at the National Academy of the Sciences, “Whale songs in general are no shorter than human ballads and no longer than symphony movements. Even though they can sing over a range of seven octaves, the whales typically sing in key, spreading adjacent notes no farther apart than a scale.”
Gray and several of her colleagues from around the world add, “The fact that whale and human music have so much in common even though our evolutionary paths have not intersected for 60 million years suggests that music may predate humans. Rather than being the inventors of music, we are actually the latecomers to the scene.”
Well, they may have beat us there, but I think we all know who does it better! You don’t see any whales up there on the “Billboard Top 20” do you? Thanks for the kick-start fellas; we’ll take it from here.
Wait a minute here! Correct me if I’m wrong, but do whales not spend their entire lives in the “shower,” if you will? This not only explains the creation of music, but also serves as the reason why we, as humans, strangely feel the need to sing while bathing.
Another one of life’s little mysteries solved — all in a week’s column!
Michael Pameditis is a computer science senior. Reach him at mike.pameditis@asu.edu.
