Is Music Human or Animal?
 

I was watching NOVA "What Darwin Never Knew" this week.. It was truly wonderful, such a simple and eloquent explanation of evolution. I very much enjoyed all 2 hours with no arguments. It was thorough and concise, splendid and even charismatic! You all should catch it..

Anyways, a comment was made regarding human evolution that music was "unique to our species" which I thought was preposterous! It was the only mistake I saw in this otherwise delightful documentary. So many animals have music that this was an obvious mistake..

The real question, evolutionarily speaking, is why are humans so musical?

Perhaps it is because we are so social? Birds are highly musical animals, they use songs and melodies to communicate simple, instinctive messages that convey primal emotions of fear, joy, doubt, frustration etc etc..

We too use musical speach to animate our conversations and communicate with other people. The question could be then asked, "Did humans learn to speak from birds?" Some scientists argue that our vocal chords were developed to sing before we could speak, and that the origin of human speech is musical. Primates howl and 'talk' vocally with melodies, rhythms and musical patterns. Speech is entirely based upon mimic. Did we take speech from birds? We use speech to convey complex messages and thoughts, but are our musical roots to convey simpler, instinctive feelings like the birds and animals? Adding all these what-ifs, could we be musical as a species because it conveys instinctive feelings and not necessarily thoughts/ideas/opinions?

What then is the evolutionary function of feelings?

evolution is deeper than theology sometimes...

 

promo video




Program Description

Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin brought forth his revolutionary idea of natural selection. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? To what degree do different animals rely on the same genetic toolkit? And how did we evolve?
"What Darwin Never Knew" offers answers to riddles that Darwin couldn't explain. Breakthroughs in a brand-new science—nicknamed "evo devo"—are linking the enigmas of evolution to another of nature's great mysteries, the development of the embryo. NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic, and from the explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today. Scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. The results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin's insights while revealing clues to life's breathtaking diversity in ways the great naturalist could scarcely have imagined.

I would offer my predictably philosophical arrogance and suggest that conscious beings (humans but let's not be so anthropic) are burdened by a great deal of ineffable meaning. As such, what may seem as simple and dumb 'feelings' as instantiated in language are actually far too complex for language to adequately express. Music, then, is a kind of lever to access at least a greater portion of this ineffable subjectivity.

I would hesitate that this is so comparable with birds and animals, though, as I don't know what their world is like.

genius! that is exactly what I was thinking about with this thread..

music allows humans to communicate and express deep feelings that are too complex to express in thoughts/language..

for example, in the Eastern tradition, prayer is strictly sung as it allows the mind to be free to feel the transcendental experience of worship, through the heart rather than through the logic of the thinking mind..

further, we can all agree that listening to music, from Bach to Sonic Youth are vehicles feelings which we have no language to express..

My idea is that humans have a transcendental soul which is beyond the physical world, and we use music as the language of this soul, which is beyond the comprehension of the logic of the thinking mind or the percpetion of the physical senses, it is a spiritual or metaphysical experience altogether..

You're speaking from a human's persepective and not from a bird's perspective. A bird might think oppositely. In fact I suspect a bird would most likely think you and pd are talking shit, afterall, isn't that what most humans already think?

oppositely of what?

Of what you think.

It's an animal. Actually, a collection of them. On this board, at least.

You hardly have any more ground than we do to suspect what a bird thinks than anyone else.

I beg to differ. I've been called "birdbrained" in the past. So clearly I have more of a mentality likened to a birds' than most people.

this was to be my post.

curses.

now I shall be forced to make a different one.

:mad:

imbeciles! the insects are calling.

music is the multiverse.

Good music often makes me want to do things reminiscent of scenes werewolf of london or altered states, so I'd say it's animal.

But it's also more than that. Music is human, animal, elemental. It's everything.

I dunno, I think it might be a bit of a stretch to think of birdsongs in the same sense as music created by humans. Sure, birdsongs have melody but often neither a whole lot of rhythm nor structure, and they often sound pretty alike (I mean the same kind of bird, not among other species of bird).

I know a lot of bands put out songs/albums that sound very much the same, but still...

you are thinking of music to mathematically, or quantitatively, not not quality-wise. Surely you can appreciate to delight and melody of a bird song..

Evolutionary scientists say that the evolution of the human vocal chords from the more primitive structures of other primates came about through singing. They theorize that we were singing before we ever spoke a word and that our speech evolved from song. Speech is communication of thoughts, ideas whether simple or complex, and language is designed to convey complex ideas and opinions.. however, music seems to convey something so simple it is deeply complex. The feelings of the human experience of music often have no language in words to describe, they are simply felt, and this is what attracts humans almost universally to music. Further, our language of words is full of music, rhythm and melody in our speech patterns, which we use to convey unspoken messages of mood, tense and feeling the emphasize our words.

Another question to this thread then, is that are these feelings behind our music human or animal? Are they part of the soul (ie, human), or part of the mechanics of the evolution of the brain (ie, animal)? For that matter, is there even such a distinction to begin with, or is the music of animals equally soulful? If anything, the point made about bird songs lacking math like sheet music, is their improvisational music more soulful then the calculations of a composer who writes with out even touching in instrument sometimes?

music is vegetable. grows like a plant. smokes like a plant too.

What a massive prick you are.

In all honesty, I fully agree with Keeping It Simple saying we're looking at this from a human's point of view. We can't really know how animals see things.

Birds whistle, my dog makes funny noises. I would say, animal. That's my vote.

What do you mean by part of the soul? I think it must be solely the brain that allows us these feelings.

bird calls are considered musical by us, they whistles they do are communicative and song, humans have the abiltity to create songs and symphonys etc. bird whistles are the same as dogs barking, guinea pigs squeaking, cows mooing; is this music, i think not. humans have developed an inate understanding of melodic structures and can use these to create a feeling for a listen, yes this is communication but it is not communication in the fight or flight sense that animals communicating generally is.

An ape probably did Kind of Blue, like, ages ago. We just haven't dug it up yet.

i havent read the rest of the thread so i hope that this has not been said. but you are actually wrong there. the thing that makes the bird's song a song is that there is, other than melody in their singing, often a very clear musical and rythmic structure, and most importantly there is a lot of repetition, which further emphasises the "song" aspect of it.

I have an Eastern perspective, where the life and essense of existence is not in the mind or knowledge, but in the heart or feelings which I have termed in this way "soul" but use whatever term you like..

The mind is the reaction of the soul. Logic is the result of feelings. In other words, the mental comprehension of the feeling of joy or fear, is not the source of the feelings themselves. The chemical reaction in the brain which we perceive as our feelings, is not the feelings themselves in this Eastern perspective, but rather is the material reaction to the feelings. The heart feels, and translates this experience into the mind through chemicals and math of the brain, but the experience is deeper. Music then, is not simply the chemcal reactions of the brain to the stimulus of vibrating air at a certain mathematical pattern or wavelengths, but rather the intrinsic feeling to these vibrations and the reactions there of..

that's a fair explanation. If only I could find belief in such nonentities.

surprised nobody mentioned this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Elephant_Orchestra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UMJ8qfw-4E

There is a multitude of points in the original post that could be debated, but most or all of them could be eliminated by the elemental question of the definition of "music," which is essentially highly subjective. Without being verbose or pedantic, over time humans have expanded/altered the traditional definition of "music" to include organizations of sounds and melodies that are, though heretofore discounted, considered dissonant or cacophonous, both meditated and 'spontaneously' occurring. Therefore, there is no concrete definition of music, rendering the original question somewhat obsolete.

I'm not sure if this is a consequence of the above rambling or a tangent, but SuchFriendsAreDangerous separates "music" and "language," and I'm not sure that's a correct presentation. In an oversimplified way of speaking (or typing), regardless of origin, complexity, or even vehicle, all music communicates something, therefore becoming a language in itself.

In an extremely rambling and simultaneously circuitous way of speaking, I suppose my point is that with the subjectivity of these terms, SuchFriendsAreDangerous's question is totally moot.

The End.

while that is a delightful and thought provoking response, it is rather circular wouldn't you agree? Of course music is subjective, that is the very question proposed. ALso, I did not in fact separate music and language, rather I am saying that music is a form of primal language, communicating messages which are at the same time too simple and too complex for the language of words. Words and language are the communication of thoughts, music is the communication of feelings.

and the real question if music is part of the evolutionary function of communication of feelings, what is the evolutionary function of these feelings in the first place?

Of course it's circular, which is why it renders most of the questions proposed moot.

Though I would disagree with your division of the expression of thoughts and feelings. One of your earlier posts did in fact intertwine, if not equate, thoughts and feelings. I would argue that one cannot distinguish between thoughts and feelings anyhow; either can be the product of the other, and given our limits of comprehension of the (for want of a better term) "thought process" of not only other creatures we deem less sentient, but even other humans, there is no way one could definitively make the distinction between thoughts and feelings, much less understand the nature of either. Similarly, why would music necessarily be a "primal" form of communication? Would that not conflict with the notion that music is a means of communicating thoughts or emotions too complex for mere words? Which is not to say that I disagree with the idea of music being primal, but upon examination, all attempts to define and juxtapose these terms and definitions negate one another.

I would expound upon the function of feelings in evolution, but there's a werewolf movie on TV now. YES!

by primal I implied a feeling which is felt with no accompanying thought, judgment or value. For example, what is the quantitative explanation of "happy"? How do you describe the feeling of being happy? Or the feelings which accompany thoughts or ideas? Music is a good example, what words or thoughts describe some of the feelings that you get when listening to it? That is what I meant by primal, to instinctive to describe with words or concepts, which must simply be experienced. Enjoy the werewolf flick, I am rather fond of the Howling series myself, I especially like the cheese.

Since I am now too muddled to cohesively respond to your comment, I will merely say that your definition of "primal" is reasonable, and yes, I agree, is definitely relatable to many elements of the concept of music. I am merely saying that if you deconstruct the traditional definitions of the terms we've been speaking of, one cannot essentially differentiate between "primal" and, shall we say, "logically sentient."

I think there are better words, but I forgot them. And this werewolf movie sucks, to use colloquial terminology. I'm going to watch "Up" instead. Balloons are pretty.

I remember going to see guitarist John Williams, and he played a piece that was based on the song of a particular kind of bird where he grew up in Australia.

in all sincerity, who cares?

People like SuchFriendsAreDangerous, who seriously need to cut back on the ganja.