World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature [Paperback]

Charles Darwin meets the Beatles in this attempt to blend neuroscience and evolutionary biology to explain why music is such a powerful force. In this rewarding though often repetitious study by bestselling author Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music), a rock musician turned neuroscientist, argues that music is a core element of human identity, paving the way for language, cooperative work projects and the recording of our lives and history. Through his studies, Levitin has identified six kinds of songs that help us achieve these goals: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love. He cites lyrics ranging from the songs of Johnny Cash to work songs, which, he says, promote feelings of togetherness. According to Levitin, evolution may have selected individuals who were able to use nonviolent means like dance and music to settle disputes. Songs also serve as memory-aids, as records of our lives and legends. Some may find Levitin's evolutionary explanations reductionist, but he lightens the science with personal anecdotes and chats with Sting and others, offering an intriguing explanation for the power of music in our lives as individuals and as a society. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'Without music we would be little more than animals. Mr Levitin explains it beautifully' -- Sir George Martin 'This is a fascinating, entertaining book, and some of its most inventive themes may stay stuck in your head forever, something like a well-loved song' -- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Daniel Levitin's new book showcases his daring theory of "six songs," illuminating how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms- for knowledge, friendship, ceremony, joy, comfort, and love. Blending cutting-edge scientific findings with his own sometimes hilarious experiences as a musician and music-industry professional, Levitin's sweeping study also incorporates wisdom gleaned from interviews with icons ranging from Sting and Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell,Willie Nelson, and David Byrne.

Daniel J. Levitin runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill. He was also a record producer and is published extensively in scientific journals and music industry magazines.

Both poetry and lyrics and all the visual arts draw their power from their ability to express abstractions of reality. When the poet Herbert Read wrote,

Art, at the dawn of human culture, was a key to survival, a sharpening of the faculties essential to the struggle for existence. Art, in my opinion, has remained a key to survival.

I believe he was referring to this abstraction process that is intrinsic in the creation and appreciation of all artistic objects, and that is a feature of the musical brain. Drawings, paintings, sculpture, poems, and song allow the creator to represent an object in its absence, to experiment with different interpretations of it, and thus--at least in fantasy--to exert power over it. Songs and poems derive their ultimate power in this way.

Songs give us a multilayered, multidimensional context, in the form of harmony, melody, and timbre. We can experience them in many different modes of enjoyment--as background music, as aesthetic objets d'art independent of their meaning, as music to sing with friends or sing along with in the shower or car; they can alter our moods and minds. Each of the elements of melody, rhythm, timbre, meter, contour, and words can be appreciated alone or in combination. "I Got You (I Feel Good)" may not have changed the course of human history, but it has been enjoyed by millions of people over many millions of hours. To the extent that we are the sum total of all our life's experiences, it has become a part of our thoughts, and (as neuroscientists know) that means a part of the very wiring of our brains.

But that is not the same as guiding human destiny. The World in Six Songs is the story of just how music has changed the course of human civilization, in fact, the story of how it made societies and civilizations possible. Other art forms--poetry, sculpture, literature, film, and painting--can also fit into these functional categories, but this is the story of music and its primacy in shaping human nature. Through a process of co-evolution of brains and music, through the structures throughout our cortex and neocortex, from our brain stem to the prefrontal cortex, from the limbic system to the cerebellum, music uniquely insinuates itself into our heads. It does this in six distinctive ways, each of them with its own evolutionary basis.

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I attended the annual meeting of Kindermusik teachers this summer. Parents, children, and teachers came from more than sixty countries to participate in workshops and listen to lectures. The highlight of the conference for me was the music before the keynote speech. Fifty young children, between the ages of four and twelve, sang this song, based on a traditional German folk song, accompanied with syncopated clapping and synchronized movement:

All things shall perish from under the sky
Music alone shall live
Music alone shall live
Music alone shall live
Never to die.

Pairs of children from different countries took turns at the microphone, singing lines from the song in their native languages: Cantonese, Japanese, Romanian, !Xotha, Portuguese, Arabic, with each stanza ending in the English refrain in three-part harmony:
"Music alone shall live, never to die."

And the music that will never die has been with humans since we first became humans. It has shaped the world through six kinds of songs: friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love.

From THE WORLD IN SIX SONGS by Daniel J. Levitin. Excerpted by arrangement with Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc. Copyright (c) 2008 by Daniel J. Levitin.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.