How music rewires and impacts the human body | Michael Spitzer: Full Interview
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Quick Read
Summary
Takeaways
- ❖Music is at least a million years older than Homo sapiens, with origins in animal vocalizations and early hominin behaviors.
- ❖The earliest evidence of human musical instruments includes 40,000-year-old bone flutes from South German caves.
- ❖Bipedalism (walking) 4.4 million years ago stamped human music with a fundamental rhythm and fostered links between brain, muscle, and sound.
- ❖Music functions as a powerful keeper of memory and history, from ancestral songs in hunter-gatherer societies to Beethoven's symphonies.
- ❖Early musical performances likely occurred in resonant caves for rituals or around hearths for communal ceremonies, often integrating song, dance, and storytelling.
- ❖Societal evolution from nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers and city-dwellers dramatically changed music's form, function, and instrumentation.
- ❖Western staff notation, invented by Guido a thousand years ago, became a tool of church control and globalization, enabling the spread of Western musical forms.
- ❖Music is fractal in nature, exhibiting self-similarity at different scales, mirroring the structure of the universe and natural sounds.
- ❖Humans are less 'naturally' musical than birds and whales, having evolved music from scratch by synthesizing elements like insect rhythms and bird melodies.
- ❖All human music shares commonalities like hierarchical structure and rhythms reflecting bipedal motion, which would be apparent even to aliens.
- ❖Music migrates and becomes 'enculturated' across societies, as seen with Spanish counterpoint in Aztec culture or Beethoven's symphonies in Japan.
- ❖Western music has historically undervalued natural sounds and overemphasized composers as divine figures, contrasting with Eastern traditions that blend music with nature.
- ❖Music profoundly affects the brain, linking sound to motion via mirror neurons and triggering 'chills' (sublime fear) by simulating danger without actual threat.
- ❖Musical training rewires the brain, often making musicians 'left-brained' for music processing and developing highly transferable skills like discipline and focus.
- ❖Music offers significant mental health benefits by fostering social connection, reducing stress, boosting dopamine, and providing an outlet for emotional expression.
- ❖The future of music will likely involve increased instrumentalization for therapeutic purposes and deeper integration with technology, leading to new forms of creation and consumption.
Insights
1Prehistory of Music and Inferential Reconstruction
Reconstructing music's prehistory is challenging due to the biodegradation of materials like wood, skin, and strings. Evidence relies on durable lithic instruments (rock gongs) and bone flutes (40,000 years old). Researchers infer musicality by mapping from known human capacities, such as the symmetrical design of 1.5-million-year-old bifacial axes, suggesting an aesthetic appreciation and capacity for symmetrical rhythm (meter) that could extend to sound.
Bone flutes from South German caves (40,000 years old) made from Griffin vulture bones; 1.5-million-year-old symmetrical bifacial axes made by Homo erectus.
2Bipedalism's Foundational Role in Human Music
The act of standing and walking, originating 4.4 million years ago with hominins like 'Adi,' fundamentally stamped human music with rhythm. This bipedalism forged early links between the brain, muscular exertion, and sound, allowing hominins to perceive footsteps as patterns and develop a sense of time. This 'walking' metaphor continues to influence how humans perceive music as an unfolding 'journey,' echoing ancestral migrations out of Africa.
The rhythm of walking has stamped human music since the first hominins stood on two feet 4.4 million years ago, creating a fascination with the metaphor that 'music moves'.
3Music as a Globalizing Force and Tool of Control
The invention of staff notation by an Italian monk named Guido a thousand years ago revolutionized Western music, allowing the church to standardize chants across vast distances and control musical expression. This notation system was then exported globally, notably by Cortez to Mexico in 1519, where Aztec musicians were taught Spanish counterpoint within a decade, demonstrating music's role as a sharp end of the stick for globalization and cultural domination.
Guido's invention of staff notation (1020 AD) enabled church control over music across Christendom. Cortez brought Spanish polyphony manuscripts to Mexico in 1519, leading to Aztec musicians singing Spanish counterpoint in Mexico Cathedral by 1530.
4The Paradox of Human Musicality Compared to Animals
Despite human music's complexity, humans are not inherently as 'musical' as birds or whales. Apes, our evolutionary ancestors, lack vocal learning and rhythm. Humans, however, are 'great synthesizers,' combining elements like insect rhythms and bird melodies, reflecting the cosmos' fractal structure, and infusing it with human emotions and the awareness of finite life. This synthesis makes human music unique, though it often carries a 'nostalgia for bird songs' due to their naturalness.
Birds have vocal learning (creatively learn new songs), and insects and some birds have a sense of rhythm, which apes lack. Humans evolved music 'from the ground up' by synthesizing these elements.
5Music's Rewiring Effect on the Brain and Transferable Skills
Musical training profoundly rewires the brain. Most individuals are right-brained for music, but trained musicians often become left-brained, processing music through the same temporal lobe that handles language, reflecting music's complexity. This discipline fosters numerous transferable skills, including practice, time management, teamwork (in orchestras), attention, and focus, making it a powerful developmental tool.
Musical training can make a right-brained person left-brained for music, processing it in the same temporal lobe as language. Skills like discipline, practice, teamwork, attention, and focus are developed.
Key Concepts
Music as Congealed Muscle Memory
Tradition in music, like learning a skill, is often 'congealed muscle memory' or haptic learning rather than purely cognitive. This applies to both physical actions (like napping a rock) and musical patterns, where the body remembers and transmits knowledge across generations.
Fractal Nature of Music
Music exhibits self-similarity at rising orders of magnitude (notes in a bar, bars in a phrase, phrases in a section, etc.), much like natural phenomena such as coastlines or clouds. This fractal quality links music directly to the structure of natural noise and the cosmos, making it inherently 'natural'.
Music as Mental Time Travel
Listening to music engages different layers of the human brain, from the ancient brain stem (reflexes to shocks) to the reptilian basal ganglia (pleasure/displeasure), mammalian amygdala (emotions), and the modern neocortex (pattern processing). This layered engagement means that experiencing music is akin to 'traveling back through layer upon layer of your brain,' connecting us to our evolutionary past.
Lessons
- Integrate musical training into educational curricula to leverage its brain-rewiring benefits, enhancing discipline, focus, and teamwork skills.
- Utilize music as a tool for mental health and social connection, recognizing its ability to reduce stress, increase dopamine, and express emotions beyond language. Consider curated musical experiences for specific emotional needs.
- Challenge Western-centric views of music by exploring diverse global traditions, particularly those that emphasize improvisation, oral transmission, and the integration of music with natural sounds.
Quotes
"Music is at least a million years older than Sapiens. And most books about music do the usual thing of which composer wrote what piece at what time. And I wanted to get away from that and see the bigger picture."
"The capacity to create symmetry in an axe bespeaks two things: an ability to create a beautiful form, a symmetry, and an enjoyment of form for aesthetic reasons."
"Music isn't an object. It's an activity. It's a thing you do like dancing or jogging."
"The irony is that humans aren't very musical at all compared to how naturally musical birds and whales are."
"Music is far too precise for words to capture what's going on."
Q&A
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