Have you ever wondered why you solemnly bow your head upon hearing Paul McCartney’s somber yet hopeful vocal turn on “Let It Be?” Or why you can’t help but move your body to the opening guitar lick of “Satisfaction?”
If you’ve ever pondered the science behind the effect of music upon the human brain, Daniel J. Levitin’s book The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature might have the answers you’re looking for.
The book accomplishes more than a simple explanation of our reactions to certain songs. Through neuroscience in combination with evolutionary biology, Levitin attempts to provide a scientific explanation as to why we sing around the campfire, why music plays such a big role in religious services, and even why we whistle while we work. He cites these and countless other musical activities as being essential to the way human beings evolved.
The study of how the brain responds to music is a relatively new interdisciplinary science that’s received significant press in the last few years. Levitin got the ball rolling in 2006 with This Is Your Brain on Music, and celebrated British neurologist Oliver Sacks addressed the subject a year later with his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Levitin admits in his chapter on joy that the concept of music therapy—based on the connection between singing and the release of endorphins in the brain—has not yet been conclusively proven, but he makes an argument in favour of it anyway.
Levitin is not only an accomplished author and a professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University, he’s also a former sound engineer for Santana, Chris Isaak, and Jonathan Richman, the former president of San Francisco’s 415 Records, and the kind of music junkie who posts his entire iTunes library on his website.
At his lecture at the U of T Faculty of Music on Tuesday afternoon, Levitin gave a packed house of psychologists and music lovers a brief introduction to the six categories into which he divides the whole of music history.
The six types of songs don’t fall along any musical genre lines; instead they are grouped thematically to sum up the reaction elicited in our brains. They are as follows:
Friendship—Sharing a song leads to the creation of trust, which is essential to social bonding, synchronized labour, and battle.
Joy—“Music tries to take [the listener] on an emotional ride and encapsulate the many human emotions. When people listen to music they like, it activates the ‘reward centres’ in the brain that modulate dopamine (the brain’s feel-good hormone).”
Knowledge—Levitin argues that our ancestors used music to preserve important information and teach children basic lessons like the alphabet and number systems.
Comfort—“In every society we know of, mothers instinctively sing to their children.” Levitin stressed the importance of lullabies and our tendency to take solace in sad songs like the blues.
Religion—Music is used in religious ceremonies to create a sense of ritual that remains firmly entrenched in our memory.
Love—“What binds together [different] forms of love is a deep sense of caring. We respond to that, it’s a uniquely human quality. It’s one of the things that characterizes us as a species, and it’s [a topic that is] written about so often in music.”
As he describes the countless effects of music upon the brain, Levitin’s thesis determines that music is not only a form of entertainment, but a central force in all our lives. He makes reference to over 350 songs, and snippets of lyrics are printed to provide a clear illustration of this core belief. Levitin’s theory drives the urge to qualify one’s favourite songs under one of his six stated types. Starting with the two previously mentioned examples, it quickly becomes clear that qualifying each track is no easy task because the greatest pieces of music elicit multiple emotions.
The driving instrumentation on “Satisfaction” could easily qualify it as a song of joy, but Mick Jagger’s lyrics make it more like a song of comfort, specifically self-comfort, as Jagger laments society’s state of meaninglessness and his own personal “losing streak.”
It would be easy to call “Let It Be” a friendship or love song, but the combination of church organs and “Mother Mary” references make it practically a religious hymn.
Levitin references Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line” three times, deeming it a friendship song, love song, and knowledge song. At his lecture, he clarified this distinction, saying, “It’s a knowledge song. I think he’s writing this song to himself to remind himself not to cross that line of infidelity.” If nothing else, Levitin’s categories spark an interesting debate.
It’s possible that our evolution as a species will continue to develop in tandem with music, but if our songs are indeed a measure of humanity’s evolution, should Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat” be considered a sign of a coming apocalypse? It’s a scary thought.
Daniel J. Levitin’s book The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature is published by Penguin Books and is available now. His book tour will see him return to Toronto twice this fall: for an interview at Indigo Books, 55 Bloor St. W., on Oct. 2, and the Royal Conservatory of Music on Nov. 4.
