Mannion, Music As Language 13 August 2010

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language
The Human Spirit Speaks Through Song

Exploring the application of the theory of linguistic relativity to music Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion, SUNY Potsdam
Musical Studies Undergraduate Thesis, Dr. Jess Tyre, Advisor
There is so much music in the world that it is reasonable to suppose that music, like language and possibly religion, is a species specific trait of man. Essential physiological and cognitive processes that generate musical composition and performance may even be genetically inherited, and therefore present in almost every human being. John Blacking1
All known human cultures exhibit two common practices: language, and music.2 This is significant: many concepts which may be taken for granted in one culture are entirely absent in another. For example, among the Piraha tribe in the Brazilian Amazon, there are no creation myths, no fixed terms for colours, nor are there linguistic mechanisms for counting. Nevertheless, the Piraha have language, and an abundance of music in the form of songs.3 The universality of these two cultural phenomena has led to centuries of speculation as to the interrelationship between language and music. The tradition of interpreting music in rhetorical terms flourished during the Renaissance, when the renewed interest in the art of rhetoric led to the publication of an estimated 2,000 books on the subject between 1400 and 1700 many of these published in editions
1 2
John Blacking, How Musical is Man? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), 7.
Victoria Williamson, In search of the language of music, Psychologist, 22, 12(December 2009): 1022; Anirrudh Patel, Music in the Brain Lecture Series, The Music of Language and the Language of Music, Library of Congress Webcasts <http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4498>, Accessed 2 May 2010. Anirrudh Patel, Music in the Brain Lecture Series, The Music of Language and the Language of Music. Library of Congress Webcasts <http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4498>, Accessed 2 May 2010.
3
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which numbered 250 to 1,000 copies.4 In the eighteenth century, instrumental works were not exclusively interpreted as auditory pleasantries: they were wordless orations which consisted of carefully ordered sequences of thoughts. 5 Parallel studies of music and linguistics have led many academics to wonder as to the true nature of the relationship between the two. In order to best understand this connection, we must first understand the individual communicative nature to both language and music. When the human species evolved into being, we were equipped with several adaptations which distinguish us from other primates and animals: bipedalism; the long, opposable thumb; and a vocal tract, unique to us, which enables us to speak and sing.6 Language is much easier than music to define and identify: as the principal form of human communication,7 it is regarded as the most important human invention although it was never actively invented.8 As the human species differentiated itself from our primate cousins, language developed with us. One of the great evolutionary mysteries is the source, origin, and purpose of language. What we do know is this: without language, no aspect of human society would exist. Furthermore, it appears that language is something which is specific to the human genome.9 Is there a deeper, communicative purpose to music? This is a question which remains unresolved, and is the subject of considerable debate. Steven Pinker claims that
Patrick McCreless, Music and rhetoric, The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, Thomas Christensen ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 851. Brian Vickers established these estimates, which are further expounded upon in In Defence of Rhetoric.
4
Mark Evan Bonds, Wordless Rhetoric: Musical Form and the Metaphor of the Oration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 53.
5
Donald A. Hodges, Human Musicality, in Handbook of Music Psychology, Donald A. Hodges, ed. (San Antonio: Institute for Music Research Press, 1996), 32.
6 7Anirrudh 8
Patel, Music in the Brain Lecture Series, The Music of Language and the Language of Music.
Guy Deutscher, The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankinds Greatest Invention (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005), 1
9
See also: Takahashi, 2009; Fisher, 2005; Cavalli-Sforza, 1997.
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music is merely auditory cheesecake, without any adaptive function in human evolution. He argues that it emerged by taking advantage of the systems used to create language, without serving any inherent communicative need itself.10 Charles Darwin, however, suggested that musical behaviours may have developed in humans and other animals as part of the complex pressures of sexual selection, and that music served as a sort of protolanguage.11 Many contemporaries of Pinker responded to his controversial dismissal of music, rising to its defence: Ian Cross, Elizabeth Tolbert, Nicholas Bannan, and Robin Dunbar are only a few of the academics who support the belief that music played an integral role in the development of human culture, and go so far as to suggest that the relationship between music and language is more intimate than may have been previously believed.12 Surely, any communicative role that music might play in human socialization and interaction is much more abstract than the spoken word: if indeed it is a language, then it is an inchoate one, appealing to our pathos first and foremost. Music is understood through the senses, not through logic. Indeed, the human brain does not interpret music as simple auditory phenomena, as it might process random noise and aimless sound; rather, it is understood on an emotional level,13 indicating that music means something to the human brain. Is this emotional response based on some common human value system, or is our understanding of music and musics effect on us the result of generations of cultural
Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1997). Cited in Victoria Williamson, In search of the language of music, Psychologist, 22, 12 (2009): 1023.
10
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Victoria Williamson, In search of the language of music, Psychologist, 22, 12 (2009): 1023.
11 12 13
Steven J. Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 5.
Norman M. Weinberger, "Brain, behavior, biology, and music: Some research findings and their implications for educational policy," Arts Education Policy Review 99,3 (1998): 28-36.
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conditioning? If the latter is the case, what values and cultural elements are preserved and transmitted through the medium of music? Perhaps there is already a precedent to answer these and other such questions: the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. In the course of the following paper, I will explore the application of this theory to musical communication in the hopes of beginning to answer these questions. I will begin by comparing and contrasting the cultural phenomena of music and language, both on historical and biological levels, followed by an exploration into the theory of linguistic relativity. My research will culminate in the application of this hypothesis to musicology, drawing evidence from various musical practices in traditional cultures. By tracing the organic development of folk music and culture, I will explore the relationship between music and language, and the potential for an entirely new way of approaching musical communication. I. Music and Language: what it means to be human
As soon as one man was recognized by another as a sentient, thinking being similar to himself, the desire or need to communicate his feelings and thoughts made him seek the means to do so. Jean-Jacques Rousseau14
Before any attempt can be made at comparing music and language, we must first understand these two characteristically human constructs. What is language? What is music? Neither question produces simple answers. The definitions of music and language are diverse, ranging from the very specific to the abstract. Both are highly complex sequences of discrete structures which unfold over time, which are then
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages which treats of Melody and Musical Imitation, translated by John H. Moran, On the Origin of Language: Two Essays, John H. Moran and Alexander Gode, eds. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1986), 5. This essay was first published in 1781
14
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interpreted by the brain as a communicative whole.15 Aniruddh Patel points out that both language and music consist of similar elements: rhythm, which he classifies as patterns of timing, accents, and grouping; melody; and syntax, or the principles which guide the construction of comprehensible sequences out of discrete elements. Furthermore, Patel informs us, both have an affective goal.16 In spite of these similarities, music and language are very different both in their presentation, as well as in their neurological pathways. Most significantly, language is a referential form of communication while music is largely a-referential, characterized by a floating intentionality17 which engages individual responses and interpretations which vary from listener to listener. On a neurological level, it has been found that the two hemispheres of the brain both process sound, but each selects a different variety of sound combinations. The right half of the brain, directed and largely responsible for our emotions, interprets the world in terms of spatial relationships and non-verbal communication. Here, concordant sounds are processed. The left half of the brain, however, which processes input sequentially and is associated with the development of language, processes primarily discordant sounds.18 Although each governs very different components of interpretation and cognition, it is evident that we require both halves of our brain to communicate most effectively. Without the emotional, musical right brain, a speaker cannot understand nuances which underlie vocabulary. Paul Robertson provides an example of
15 16 17
Victoria Williamson, In search of the language of music, Psychologist, 22, 12(2009): 1022-1023. Aniruddh Patel, Music in the Brain Lecture Series, The Music of Language and the Language of Music.
Ian Cross, Is music the most important thing we ever did? in Music, mind and science, S.W. Yi, ed. (Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1999), 10-39. Cited in Victoria Williamson, In search of the language of music, Psychologist, 22, 12 (2009): 1025. Paul Robertson, Music and the Brain: A Musicologists Viewpoint, Neurology of the Arts, F Clifford Rose editor. (London: Imperial College Press, 2004), 308.
18
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such a case: a patient who had had a large portion of his right hemisphere removed was asked the question, How do you feel? The patients response, literal in meaning and unmusical in tone, was: With my hands. Alternatively, Robertson discusses an individual who, following a massive stroke which damaged his left hemisphere, found himself without the ability to speak, read, or write. In spite of the loss of his verbal self, this man was still able to communicate through music, composing and improvising at the piano.19 Clearly, in spite of several differences in formation and function, music and language are connected and interrelated within the human communication system. The loss of one faculty does not necessarily affect the other, but effective self-expression often requires both. Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed that language was the first social institution,20 without which none of the later developments of human society could ever have occurred. Without language, there would be no creation myths; no trade; no stories; no empires; no revolutions; no teaching or learning; no questions or answers. Whether spoken or signed, language is the primary mode of communication and interaction between individuals and societies. It is dynamic and reflexive, in a constant state of evolution so long as a language has native speakers.21 There are differing opinions on what a true definition of language is, but it is generally agreed upon that language must have meaning; productivity,22 or the ability to remix and reassemble a finite number of
19 20
Paul Robertson, Music and the Brain: A Musicologists Viewpoint, 308-309.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages which treats of Melody and Musical Imitation,, 5. Nancy Bonvillain, Language, Culture, and Communication: the Meaning of Messages, 4th edn. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003), 7.
21
Hauser et al refers to this component as recursivity. Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has it, and How Did It Evolve? Science, 298, 5593 (22 November 2002): 1569.
22
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discrete words to form endless new communication; and displacement, which is the ability to discuss things or abstract ideas that are not present.23 The origin of language is still being discovered, and remains the source of considerable consternation and debate in scholarly circles. Linguistics as a science blossomed in the nineteenth century, although the origin of languages was a taboo subject. The Linguistic Society of Paris, founded in 1866, forbade any discussion of the origin of language, a prohibition which continued for nearly a century.24 Today, theories abound among linguists and anthropologists as to the origin and purposes of language. One postulation asserts that the use of tools triggered brain development in humans, which led to the necessary acquisition of language.25 Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch discuss the evolution of language at some length, and they point out three primary issues which plague the debate over the evolution of language: first, the shared versus unique distinction in the presence of communicative systems in non-human animals; the question of whether language evolution was gradual or saltational; and the issue of whether language evolved out of extant animal communication systems, or if aspects of language were exapted from a previous adaptive purpose, a perspective which the authors call the continuity versus exaptation issue.26 Hauser et al divide the concept of language into two categories: FLB (the faculty of language in its broadest sense), which includes a sensory-motor system and a conceptual-intentional system, as well as the mechanisms necessary to combine a finite
23 24
Temple Grandin, Animals in Translation (New York: Scribner, 2005), 274.
Steven Mithen, The singing Neanderthals: the origins of music, language, mind, and body (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2006), 1-2.
25 26
Mary R. Haas, The Prehistory of Languages (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 13.
Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, The Faculty of Language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science, 298: 1570.
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set of linguistic components into an infinite number of utterances; and FLN, which includes only this final quality of recursivity, and is identified as a uniquely human component of language.27 Noam Chomsky is a leader in the field of linguistics, and is a champion of the innatist perspective for first-language acquisition and the theory of the Universal Grammar. Children, he argues, do not simply learn a language by repeating what linguistic elements they are exposed to, since adult language is rife with false starts, incomplete sentences, grammatical flaws and errors. Chomsky suggests that all humans are born with an innate predilection for language acquisition, which manifested itself as a template which contains all the principles universal to human languages. This biological construct is called the Universal Grammar, and is directly coded into the human genetic sequence.28 The ease and natural tendency for human children to acquire language, especially when compared to non-human primates and other animals, suggests that language is a mechanism which evolved after humans diverged from a common ancestor some 6 million years ago.29 Some scientists perceive language as the by-product of distinct, hybrid regions of the brain evolving, such as Brocas area;30 others feel that language is a more complex, but nevertheless analogous to, the
This is a topic which is still hotly debated. Much research has been done in the communication systems of non-human animals, including a very interesting study analyzing the distress calls of Gunnisons prairie dogs conducted by Con Slobodchikoff. The result of this study what that prairie dog colonies have communication systems which consist of discrete elements including nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Temple Grandin discusses his research in her book Animals in Translation; for further reading into this study, see C.N. Slobodchikoff, Cognition and Communication in Prairie Dogs, The Cognitive Animal: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives on Animal Cognition, Marc Bekoff, Colin Allen, and Gordon M. Burghardt, eds (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 257-264.
27
Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada, How Languages are Learned (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 15.
28
Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and W. Tecumseh Fitch, The Faculty of Language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?: 1576.
29
David C. Geary, The Origin of the Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2005), 102.
30
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communication systems of other primates, whose brains include homologous regions to Brocas and Wernickes areas.31 These two regions, Brocas and Wernickes areas, are both found on the left hemisphere of the brain. Brocas area was discovered in 1861 by Pierre Paul Broca during an autopsy of a patient named Monsieur Leborgne, nicknamed Tan after the only syllable with which he could respond to a question. Tan had lived without the ability to speak for twenty-one years. During the autopsy, Broca found that a neurosyphilitic lesion had destroyed a part of Tans brain, now named after Broca himself. It is this region of the brain that is associated with speech,32 and along with its right homologue, is specialised to quickly and automatically parse syntax.33 In 1873 Carl Wernicke, a German neuro-psychiatrist, made an analogous discovery with the brain of a man whose faculties for speech and hearing were unaffected by a stroke, but was nearly incapable of processing and understanding anything said to him. Wernicke found a lesion on the brain near to the auditory centre of the brain, thus leading him to conclude that this region of the brain was responsible for processing speech comprehension.34 Here, in the brain, the most concrete connections between music and language are present. Although the two are evidently not completely linked (as exhibited by the presence of musicality in an aphasic individual, or of language in a person with amusia), these two processes certain share many neurological substrates and pathways. For
31 32
David C. Geary, The Origin of the Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence, 102.
Anne Karpf, The Human Voice: How this extraordinary instrument reveals essential clues about who we are. (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 56. Burkhard Maess, Stefan Koelsh, Thomas C. Gunter and Angela D. Friederici, Musical Syntax is processed in Brocas area: an MEG study, Nature Neuroscience, 4: 543.
33 34
Anne Karpf, The Human Voice, 57.
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instance, Maess et al established that Brocas area processes musical syntax in addition to linguistic syntax, implying that the brain understands music as a relative of language.35 The importance of this discovery is strengthened in that the subjects studied were all non-musicians, which is suggestive of an implicit musicality in human cognition.
36Additionally,
children who struggle with linguistic syntax face similar
challenges with understanding musical syntax. What is music? This is a question which has proved over and over again to be incredibly difficult to satisfactorily answer. The discovery of traditional music, as well as exploratory approaches to art music throughout human culture have produced a wide variety of opinions as to what is, and what is not, music. An oft-cited example of this difficulty is 433 (1952) by John Cage: can this piece, a study in ambient sound and musical reticence, be considered music? Often music is broken down into its requisite components. Hroar Klempe cites four necessary characteristics of music: sensuality; distinct pitches combined with rhythmic structures; the subversion of clear meaning; and harmony.37 Aniruddh Patel points out the presence of rhythm, melody, syntax, and affect as key elements of music, which are notable for having parallels in linguistic expression.38 Victoria Williamson describes music at its most fundamental level as a collection of sounds produced by the human voice or an instrument.39 Bruno Nettl, one of the foremost figures in ethnomusicology, defines music as human sound
35 36
Maess et al, Musical Syntax is processed in Brocas area: an MEG study,: 540.
Sebastian Jenstschke, Stefan Koelsch, Stephan Sallat, and Angela D. Friederici. Children with Specific Language Impairment also Show Impairment of Music-Syntactic Processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 11 (2008): 1940-1951. Hroar Klempe, How to Understand Communicative Musicality? Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 43(2009): 263.
37 38 39
Anirrudh Patel, Music in the Brain Lecture Series, The Music of Language and the Language of Music. Victoria Williamson, In search of the language of music, Psychologist, 22, 12 (2009): 1022.
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communication outside the scope of language.40 Finally, McDermott and Hauser identify music on three levels: as structured sounds produced by humans either directly or through instrumental proxy; the sounds produced are often made to convey emotions and enjoyment; and often (but not always) consist of a complex structure.41 As evidenced by the above attempts to define and explain music, this is a challenging concept to pin down. For the purposes of this exploration, I will propose my own definition of music: first, it is a structured entity balancing some proportion of intentional sound and intentional silence.42 The resulting sound is the product of a finite number of discrete elements which can be combined into a potentially infinite number of permutations, of which the composer uses a select number to satisfy the aesthetic goals of a piece. Furthermore, the produced sound uses both elements of rhythm, melody, and harmony in proportions which vary from culture to culture43. The purpose of music is to communicate some concept or ideal for which spoken language is inadequate, even if this may be reduced to simply providing pleasure. There are other questions to consider: At what point or points in human history did music begin to emerge; where does it come from, from an evolutionary standpoint; and what purpose does it serve? These speculations have been receiving an increasing amount of attention over the past several years, and the proposed theories and
40 41
Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals, 11
Josh McDermott and Marc Hauser, The Origins of Music: Innateness, Uniqueness, and Evolution, Music Perception, 23, 1: 30. The inclusion of intentional silence is of particular importance, as composed art music as well as folk music often depends largely on the balancing powers of negative space provided by rests or silence. In the case of John Cages 433, the composition is entirely of negative space, and the projections of self which the audience then produces.
42
Although melody and harmonic elements are most important in the Western music as a whole, McDermott and Hauser point out that these elements are of much less significance in other world musics. In their place, rhythm is the primary method of musical expression. (McDermott and Hauser, The Origins of Music: Innateness, Uniqueness, and Evolution,: 32.)
43
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hypotheses have been met with an unsurprising amount of debate. On one end of the continuum, Steven Pinker dismisses music as auditory cheesecake, claiming that it arose by taking advantage of structural processes used in language production, but serving no other evolutionary purpose.44 Such an opinion is supported by the observation that unlike other human functions and activities such as eating, sleeping, talking, and sex, music production yields no obvious benefits.45 There is evidence both for and against Pinkers music as cheesecake theory. In many respects, music appears maladaptive to early Homo sapiens: musical practice requires a large amount of energy, and would potentially attract predators or enemies while simply providing entertainment46 a generally useless development for a species which was still eking out an existence against all the odds in a harsh environment, battling starvation, the elements, and predators. While the shared mechanisms of musical ability and language support Pinker, there is evidence provided by current research that music does not rely exclusively on structures dedicated to language. These separate structures have been demonstrated by aphasic patients who have musical skills left intact, or conversely, in individuals with amusia who are able to communicate through spoken language, proving that language and music are at least partially independent.47
Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1997), 528. Cited in Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: 5.
44 45 46
Josh McDermott, The Origins of Music,: 29.
W. Tecumseh Fitch, The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspective, Cognition 100 (2006): 199. Evelina Fedorenko, Anirrudh Patel, Daniel Casasanto, Jonathan Winawer, and Edward Gibson, Structural integration in language and music: Evidence for a shared system. Memory and Cognition, 37, 1 (2009): 1.
47
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Music has been suggested to be a biological adaptation which functions in a variety of arenas. It may be associated with courtship and sexual selection,48 or with social cohesion49 within cooperative groups such as religious networks, prehistoric tribes, or warriors.50 Lullabies, which are extremely common,51 aid considerably in the mother-infant bond, and would play a large role in language acquisition for babies. Children attain linguistic faculties by interacting with this communicative system however, not all cultures use the motherese speak so common in North American homes. Among the Kaluli and Inuit peoples, for example, adults do not converse with young children.52 As a result, children would first be exposed to their mother tongue through lullabies, which would train the infant ear to the prosody of their language. As children in such cultures begin to babble and talk, they would begin to interact with other siblings and peers, only entering the social and linguistic realm of adults as they reached maturity. A number of theories and hypotheses have been put forward regarding musical development in the human species, particularly with regard to its relationship to language. Charles Darwin postulated that, before the onset of either music or language in their modern incarnations, humans communicated via a system which exhibited characteristics of both. From this primitive system, he suggested, music and language emerged as separate entities.53
48 49
Josh McDermott, The Origins of Music,: 29.
Donald A. Hodges, Human Musicality, in Handbook of Music Psychology, 52; Josh McDermott, The Origins of Music,, 29.
50 51 52 53
See also: Merker (2000); Cross (2001); Huron (2001); Josh McDermott, The Origins of Music,: 33. Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned, 21-22.
Charles Darwin, The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. (London: John Murray). Cited in W. Tecumseh Fitch, The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspective,: 198
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Steven Brown, a musicologist, made a similar proposal in 2000, naming this protolanguage musilanguage.54 According to Brown, musilanguage exhibited the shared features of language and music, including phrase units and formations, as well as functional purposes on both a phonological level and a meaningful one. Musilanguage, Brown suggests, evolved out of the vocalizations of primates which he names referential emotive vocalization, or REV; these vocalizations were calls, not songs, which communicated emotive responses to environmental stimuli, and are exemplified by the alarm call system of the African vervet monkey.55 Steven Mithen proposed another model for the development of music and language, which he called Hmmmmm communication, an acronym for a communication system that was: Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical, and mimetic in character.56 Again, this model proposes a sort of musical protolanguage from which capacities for language and music both evolved.57 Instrumental music, as an element of human culture, is estimated to be at least 36,000 years old due to the discovery of ancient bone flutes; however, it is likely that instrumental music is much older than this possibly 4,000 years older. The existence of contemporary instruments, primarily percussion instruments, which are made out of perishable materials, suggests that their primitive ancestors were similarly susceptive to the environment, easily destroyed by the elements or unable to withstand the ensuing
Steven Brown, The musilanguage model of music evolution, in The Origins of Music, Wallin, Marker, and Brown eds (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2001), cited in Rudolf Botha, On musilanguage/Hmmmmm as an evolutionary precursor to language, Language & Communication, 29 (2009): 63.
54
Steven Brown, The musilanguage model of music evolution,, cited in Rudolf Botha, On musilanguage/Hmmmmm as an evolutionary precursor to language,: 64.
55 56 57
Steven Mithen, The singing Neanderthals, 221. See also: Livingstone, 1973; Marler, 2000; Merker 2000; Merker 2002; and Richman, 1993.
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millennia.58 There is tantalizing speculation that music instrumental music is even older than this: an artifact supposed to be a Neanderthal flute which was radiocarbon dated to 43,100 700 years old was discovered in Slovenia in 1997. The presence of two clearly preserved holes led its discoverers to conclude that the artifact, made out of a bears bone, was a flute. The instrument was damaged by a carnivores chewing at some point, however, which may have been the cause of three other holes on the object; this damage has resulted in considerable scepticism on the function of the object. In the case that this item was used for musical purposes, however, it would suggest that music was utilized even before humans or Neanderthals had fully developed spoken language,59 as well as evolutionary divergence between these two hominid species,
60supporting
the
notion that music and language evolved out of a proto-communicative system which was founded upon the homologous elements which form the backbone of these two unique modes of expression. Peter Fletcher sums up the relationship between these two essentially human characteristics by stating: Language is seen as a cognitive mode, its capacity deep in the mind, while music is not essentially cognitive, and extends beyond mind, beyond the body.61 Although the origins of music and language remain largely theoretical at this juncture, it is clear that there is a connection between the two. The likelihood that both of these faculties are functionally related, and may have developed out of a common ancestor is strongly supported both by characteristics of the two systems and shared pathways in the brain. A number of studies suggest that, although music and language
58 59 60 61
W. Tecumseh Fitch, The biology and evolution of music: a comparative perspective,: 196-7. W. Tecumseh Fitch, The biology and evolution of music: a comparative perspective,: 197. W. Tecumseh Fitch, The biology and evolution of music: a comparative perspective,:200.
Peter Fletcher, World Musics in Context: A Comprehensive Survey of the Worlds Major Musical Cultures, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3.
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are produced independently of one another, the syntactic structures of both are processed together.62 The correlation between the two opens the possibility that music and language may be of similar value in understanding the worldview and experience of a culture. II. Linguistic relativity: language and culture affect one another
Actually, thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. Benjamin Lee Whorf63
In the middle of the twentieth century, a number of linguists observed a unique relationship between language and culture. Linguistic anthropology in American scholarship was part of a four fields approach, where anthropology as a whole was approached holistically: as a discipline, it incorporated a study of the physical (or biological), linguistic (or philological), cultural, and archaeological records. The study of language itself was championed by Franz Boas (1858-1942), who is largely credited with founding the American field of anthropology.64 Boas was among the first to recognise the unique role language played in indigenous cultures. As an educator, he trained his students to develop grammars and dictionaries of traditional languages based on culturally significant texts.65 Having studied the Eskimos and Kwakiutl Indians, two Native American tribes located on the Northwest Coast, Boas came to conclude that it was not only of
62 63
Evelina Fedorenko et al., Structural integration in language and music,: 3.
Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Mind, and Reality, in Language, Thought, and Reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, John Carroll, editor (Cambridge: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956), 252.
64 65
Alessandro Duranti, Linguistic Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 52.
Marianne Mithun, The Value of Linguistic Diversity: Viewing other worlds through North American Indian Languages, in A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, Alessandro Duranti, ed. (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 122.
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theoretical interest, but practical and necessary to study a cultures language. Without an understanding of the linguistic expression of a people, one would have an incomplete knowledge of the culture in which the language was spoken.66 Different languages, he found, would classify and explain the world and human experience in culturally unique ways, a discovery which has been used to bolster the argument for cultural relativism, which states that cultures ought to be understood on its own terms, as opposed to being related to foreign cultures.67 These contributions would be perpetuated by one of Boass students, Edward Sapir, (1884-1939) whose further research would have profound ramifications upon the field of linguistic anthropology. Sapir and his student, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941) were largely responsible for the early development of linguistic anthropology in the early twentieth century, focusing much of their study of the languages and cultures of Native American tribes.68 Their research led to the formation of what is known to today as the linguistic relativity principle.69 Sapir claimed that human experience was mediated through both culture and language: only items, events, and forces of cultural significance would be labelled. Comparatively, once labelled, the identified element would become culturally significant.70 As such, language and culture were mutually reflective and mutually generative, existing in a perpetual state of give-and-take between the two, each mediated by the force of the other. Languages cultural specificity is illustrated by Thomas Widlok, who pointed out the erroneous approach to the languages of hunter-gatherer tribes in the African bush.
66 67 68 69 70
Alessandro Duranti, Linguistic Anthropology, 52. Alessandro Duranti, Linguistic Anthropology, 54. Nancy Bonvillain, Language, Culture, and Communication: the meaning of messages, 47. Also referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, although the accuracy of this term has been contested. Nancy Bonvillain, Language, Culture, and Communication: the meaning of messages, 47.
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The languages of the various Bushmen were reduced into one lexicon, an act which Widlok claims, implicitly collapsed the landscape and its people. 71 George Orwell also noted the incredible power words have over the thoughts of the speaker: in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak not only took away the linguistic tools to dissent, but also the cognitive seeds of individuality. Language and culture are in a constant state of ebb-and-flow. Culture, both the human manifestation, as well as the natural environment in which a language is spoken affect language. Language use, in turn, clues in the human mind to important elements, influencing culture, and so on. It is well-known that the human brain develops a sort of filter on stimuli: we can tune out sounds, smells, or visuals which appear to be unimportant, freeing up our consciousness to focus on relevant stimuli. Similarly, the linguistic component to our interaction with the world around us is selective for elements of importance. The increased importance of various facets of a culture may be expressed in a variety of ways, often with the most important factor being described with a greater variety of nuanced terms. What happens when music replaces language in this model? How do cultural norms and values gravitate toward musical expression, and how is music moulded and modelled after the aesthetics and beliefs of a people? Do scales and cadences vary from one culture to the next in accordance to inherent values? How do the interactions between musician and instrument, the relationship between music-makers, or restrictions on who may or may not participate in musical expression reflect a society? The relationship between music and psyche of the people who produce it would most likely be clearest in traditional culture, and less so in the art music of society. This
Thomas Widlok, Landscape unbounded: space, place, and orientation in 5Akhoe Hai//om and beyond, Language Sciences, 30 (2008): 363.
71
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includes the art music of the Western Classical tradition, as well as the art music of what are commonly referred to as folk cultures. Art music, music which is produced for aesthetic pleasure and entertainment, is present in a variety of cultures across the globe. As a genre, it has a tendency to be to be much more self-aware and refined than music intended for communication. For this reason, I will focus my research in this paper away from art music. III. Singing our way to becoming human: How music and culture express one another
Musics social and cultural role is always that of shape-changer, if not trickster. Mark Slobin72
Musical practice, especially in traditional cultures, has the power to encapsulate the values, beliefs, and social structures which characterise a people. Music gives definition to the boundaries of thought and values to the culture which has produced it. These cultures might be national or ethnic, at other times based on the shared experience of gender, work, or any other common identity shared by people. The Hungarian composer and scholar Bla Bartk (1881-1945) firmly believed that musical expression was related to the location in which it was produced.73 Even the most cursory of glimpses into musical traditions from around the world reveals that the performance and function of music in everyday life is rich with meaning, both implicit and explicit. Often, music mimics the patterns and rhythms of the local language. In his lecture The Music of Language and the Language of Music, Aniruddh Patel spoke of
Mark Slobin, Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1996), 4.
72
Tina K. Ramnarine, Ilmatars Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music, (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 4.
73
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the relative lengths of vowels in spoken French and English, and their parallels in French and English music. English language and music was characterized by greater contrast in adjacent vowels or note values, while French was much more evenly spaced out.74 The implications between music and language and linguistic relativity reach far beyond this. Obviously, one of the most immediately observable links in the relationship between the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and musical relativity would be in the discussion and analysis of song texts: the topical material of songs indicates the value of various themes in a cultures life. Some concepts are more universal than others, as with love songs or laments; others are more culture-specific. Musical relativity, however, extends far beyond song. Musical textures and preferred tonalities, for example, are unique to various cultures and regions. The pentatonic scale and three-part polyphonic singing are ancient musical approaches, and are widely used in the folk music of southern Albanians, Epirote Greeks, and western Macedonians,75 amongst others. Performance practice also indicates cultural values and experiences. Alan
Lomax hypothesized that specific song structures were indicative of social functions within a society: solo song was expected to be found in centralized societies, and cultures with a simpler political structure would have an abundance of leaderless performances; and cohesive societies would have unified choirs, while the music in cultures which emphasized the individual would have diffuse choirs.76 This particular perspective has been criticized for being overly simplistic, reducing the complex nature
These findings were later replicated with a much larger sampling of French and English music in 2003 by David Huron and Joy Ollen.
74
Timothy Rice, The Music of Europe: Unity and Diversity, in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, v. 8: Europe. (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2000), 10.
75
Alan Lomax, Folk song style and culture, (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1968), ix.
76
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of a society to a minimal rubric. Nevertheless, Lomaxs suggestions are indicative of the potential relationship between ensemble structures and various social norms. Although this field is yet young, there are already tantalizing glimmers of research which indicates that music is culturally relative that the ways in which a people choose to or are able to express themselves through song, dance, and instrumental music are reflective of the environment in which they were created. Similarly, the notion that musical expression can in turn affect its creators has begun to receive more attention. Issues of gender roles, age, social structure and stratification, geography, lifestyle and professions, and natural resources are all expressed through the medium of music. In this study, I will present two very different aspects of a society which are reflected in music: gender roles, and occupational songs. It is important to consider that purpose of exploring musical relativity is not to draw generalizations about a culture itself rather, the social and cultural norms and values expressed through music provide greater insight into the overall fabric of a people. The observations of one culture may at times appear to be contradictory the variance, however, reflects the many facets and dimensions of a culture. Gender An understanding of sexual roles and identities is central to a cultures sense of self. The division of sexes is not always strictly a male/female construct, but an awareness of the biological difference between the two has led to a number of social distinctions. A societys gender ideology views the sexes within the context of itself, and may exclusively be applied to members of that society. Musicians in Bali distinguish between Balinese women, who are expected to conform to the culturally-accepted values
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of femininity, and American women, who the Balinese consider more berani (bold, brave), like Balinese men. 77 There is no culture where males and females have equal access to musical opportunities.78 In some cases, women are considered to be the primary producers of music, as with the Akan of Ghana;79 alternatively, there may be social stigmas associated with certain instruments, as with the Munduruc women of central Brazil, who are forbidden to see men's sacred flutes under penalty of violence and rape.80 Until recently, the Balinese performing arts have been the domain of men: this included the gamelan, a traditional instrument, as well as theatre and dance, where men would portray both male and female figures. It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that the gamelan wanita, or the all-female gamelan troupe came into being.81 In the majority of cultures, however, women are the exclusive performers of laments and wedding songs,82 both of which are based on the principle of leave-taking or transition. Womens dominance over this genre may suggest a belief in the female connection to the supernatural, and idea likely to be based upon the mysterious feminine role in the creation of life. In Albania, the peculiar nature of the women who sing
Catherine Diamond, Fire in the Bananas Belly: Balis Female Performers Essay the Masculine Arts, Asian Theatre Journal, 25, 2 (2008): 232.
77
Ellen Koskoff, Women in Music, III: World music, The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 25 June 2010).
78
Kwasi Ampene, Female Song Tradition and the Akan of Ghana, (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 17-18.
79 80 81 82
Ellen Koskoff, Women in Music, III: World music. Catherine Diamond, Fire in the Bananas Belly,: 231.
James Porter, "Lament," The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 25 June 2010).
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laments, thus creating a bridge between this world and the next, marks them as powerful beings to be avoided.83 Gender roles may also be explicitly expressed through song texts. In the traditionally patriarchal Gky society, found just outside of Nairobi in Kenya, popular songs in the 1970s and 1980s were sung by men, who were more mobile and had access to more technology than did women during this post-modern era. The arrival of the female voice in the later 1980s and 1990s, notably that of Jane Nyambura (otherwise known as Queen Jane), marked the movement toward an era of gender equality. A comparison of the lyrics and grammatical elements in the songs of Queen Jane and those of her male counterparts betrays the singers role and perception of this male-dominated society. Songs sung by men would venerate the submissive female as a possession, celebrate the mother without giving her an active role in the song, vilify the disobedient woman as a source of misery, and any reference to a wayward man was in the context of an equally broken and corrupt world. Queen Janes songs rejected this attitude, now viewed as antiquated and sexist, the result of a culture which had absorbed the influence of contemporary western perspectives. The values expressed through her music were the result of a new culture, which had adopted and adapted elements of foreign cultures. She empowered the female, who could save her impoverished family with an education, and maligned the men who did not support their families or who behaved shamefully.84 Using the familiar template of music to convey new social concepts, both in the lyrics and the performer, challenges accepted musical connotations, and thus the listeners perception of sexual roles and standards.
83 84
James Porter, "Lament," The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online.
Michael M. Mwara, Artistic Discourse and Gender Politics in the Gky Popular Song, Songs and Politics in Eastern Africa, Kimani Njogu and Herv Maupeu, eds. (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2007), 62-64.
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Mwara further elaborates upon the grammatical differences between male songs and female songs: as the personal pronouns in Gky do not carry gender markers, it can often be ambiguous as to the sex of the dramatis personae in songs. It would be easy for the listener to assume that the singer was representative of the first person in the songs, particularly those which criticize an unfaithful lover, who is presumed to be female. A closer analysis of songs, however, through subtle references to behaviours and allegorical equations to animals in nature, suggests that the narrator of the song is a female, and the philandering lover a male. Queen Jane is not so veiled in her use of language, using gender markers to identify shameful men in her songs.85 Gender ideologies are also expressed through instrumental music. At times these distinctions may be drawn on a physical level, as with the erotic Andalusian Flamenco, where the guitar is likened to the sensuous curves of the female form, as the castanets are gendered as male or female, with differences in physical structure to differentiate the two.86 In assigning genders to instruments, a culture also betrays the qualities that characterise each. The Tboli view instrumental aesthetics with regard to values for masculinity and femininity, with female instruments (lutes, zithers, pipes, flutes, and harps) emphasizing dexterity, grace, and a delicate touch, while male instruments (gongs and other percussion instruments) feature strength and volume. These qualities reflect gendered lifestyles and occupations. Manolete Mora quotes Mendung Sabal explaining why these instrumental genders were established:
85 86
Michael M. Mwara, Artistic Discourse and Gender Politics in the Gky Popular Song,, 56.
Timothy deWaal Malefyt, Inside and Outside Spanish Flamenco: Gender Constructions in Andalusian Concepts of Flamenco Tradition, Anthropological Quartery, 71, 2 (1998): 64.
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It is easy to learn the gongs because you can pick it up easily, but the lute is difficult to learn. It is like the work of a woman, lemnek. It is true that the work of a woman is not heavy, not so painful, but it is very lemnek, just like the utom [composition] of the lute. The gongs are like the work of a man, like ploughing the fields and cutting trees. All of hat is easy for men to do even though it is heavy. But it doesnt compare to the work of a woman, just like the lute.87 Cross-cultural differences in gender roles are also displayed through musical performance practices and symbolism, as well. In many traditional Southeast Asian societies, genders are interpreted as complementary to one another. This is the case with both the Tboli, an ethnolinguistic group from the southern Philippines,88 and the mappurondo community, a minority religious community living in the hills of south Sulawesi, Indonesia.89 Although both cultures appear to view genders as complementary to one another, their roles in musical expression are very different: the mappurondo men wield a considerable amount of control over women musically, while the Tboli have a much more egalitarian approach, with men and women often playing musical instruments of the opposite gender. Why are women selected to sing laments in the majority of cultures? What does this, and other gender-specific genres, have to say about the social role of that sex within a culture? Does the subtle glossing over of or blatant reference to gender in Gky popular songs constitute an awareness of a social system which is no longer tenable in a modern era? Answering these questions can lead to a deeper understanding of implicit gender roles, and the awareness of them, in a culture. What is known,
Manolete Mora, Lutes, Gongs, Women and Men: (En)Gendering Instrumental Music in the Philippines, Ethnomusicology Form, 17, 2, (2008): 232.
87 88 89
Manolete Mora, Lutes, Gongs, Women and Men,: 227-228.
Kenneth M. George, Music-Making, Ritual, and Gender in a Southeast Asian Hill Society, Ethnomusicology, 37, 1 (1993): 4.
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however, is that the vast number of case studies which examine the role sexual ideologies play in a culture not only are affected by, but in turn influence and reinforce (or are used to oppose) accepted gender roles in a society.90 Work Songs One of the beautiful aspects of culture is that it is a concept which is not limited by national or ethnic borders. Cultures are easily constructed by any group of people with any common denominator. One of the most widespread societies of this nature is that associated with earning a living. Until very recently, song was an essential part of work, dating as far back as when man was still surviving as a hunter-gatherer. Work songs, as Gerald Porter points out, are very rarely about work itself.91 As a genre, the songs of labour are as varied as the occupations they accompany. Hunters and gatherers, farmers, herders, sailors, coal miners, cowboys, lacemakers, lumberjacks, quarry workers, and prisoners: they all used and adapted song and music to their unique purposes. Most often in the form of song, the manifestation of music reflects the needs and experiences of the workers themselves, as well as the nature of their work although much of this is expressed through the song lyrics themselves, the musical structure is also indicative of these differences. Consider, for example, the difference between the song of the hunter and the song of the cultivator: the former is exuberant and full of energy, much like the band who has returned from the wild, giddy with the thrill of the hunt. The songs of the
See also: Johnson (1990), Tolbert (1990), Ziegler (1990), Reinhard (1990), Brandes (1990), Schmidt (1990), Schwrer-Kohl (1990), Yeh (1990), Rossen, (1990), Kaeppler (1990),Askew (?), McLaren and Qinjian (2000), Jones (2008), OShea (2008) and Zheng (1999)
90
Gerald Porter Work the Old Lady Out of the Ditch: Singing at Work by English Lacemakers, Journal of Folklore Research, 31, 1-3 (1994): 36.
91
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cultivator, however, are much more pensive and sober, suggesting a very different nature between the two occupations.92 The experience of the worker is also reflected in the instrumentation and performance of song. During the nineteenth century, commerce in industrial societies relied heavily on overseas trade. It was a time when ships were made of wood, and men were made of steel: sails were furled and unfurled, anchors lowered and hoisted, ropes knotted and loosened in the midst of icy gales, and all of this was powered by the hands of men.93 The purpose of the shanty on board a ship in the British Merchant Navy was to marshal the collective energies of the sailors, so that on specific beats all hands would pull together, creating a force of almost superhuman strength: Shantyman: Well haul the bowlin so early in the morning Chorus: Well haul the bowlin, the bowlin haul!94 As Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Noted in Two Years Before the Mast, A song is as necessary to sailors as a drum and fife to a soldier. They cant pull in time or pull with a will, without it. The shantyman was the leader of the song, usually the strongest and best singer on the ship with an acute memory and a knack for improvisation. It is, however, important to point out that the shanty was sung only on ships of the Merchant Navy: the men of the Royal Navy, however, were not allowed to sing at work, their motions instead dictated by the bosuns whistle.95 Here, the presence or absence of song is indicative of the unique culture on board the ship the leading voice carries distinct power over the morale of the ships crew. The absence of the shanty on board a Royal
92 93
Ted Gioia, Work Songs, (Durham, N.C. and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 26.
Roy Palmer, "Shanty," The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 25 June 2010), http://www.oxfordmusic.com.
94 95
Michael Hurd, Sailors Songs and Shanties, (New York: Henry Z. Walck, Inc., 1965), 11. Michael Hurd, Sailors Songs and Shanties, (New York: Henry Z. Walck, Inc., 1965), 11.
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Navy ship indicates a different structure of power and a different set of social expectations. Instrument profiles are also indicators of cultural staples. The materials used to create musical instruments identify elements of value, utility, and accessibility. The choice of instrument, however, was also influenced by the environment in which it was created, and its intended audience. In herding music, drums are quite rare, while pipes, whips, small stringed instruments, and vocal music abound. This is likely due to the distressing effect percussive sounds may have on the animals in the herd it must be remembered that herders made music not only for their own gratification and amusement, but to communicate with the herd and each other.96 Hunters would use the hunting bow and harp (a close relative of the musical bow), as well as the horn and flute the former two instruments were readily accessible, as parts of the hunters set of tools. The flute, for its part, may have evolved out of the remains of animals bones, the meat and marrow stripped by other carnivores whose sharp teeth left puncture holes which would later be reproduced by budding musicians. Other Connections Lifestyle is not the only influence upon a culture and the products of the culture. There is also speculation that music reflects and accommodates the geographical profile where it originated. James Porter correlates leaping dances and the yodel to mountainous regions, such as in the Basque region, the Alps, Scandinavia, the Scottish highlands, and the Carpathians;97 is it possible that early man sought to mimic the natural world around him through the composition of song? Would one find that the music in plains regions and that savannah would have more narrow ranges and stable
96 97
Ted Gioia, Work Songs, 74.
James Porter, "Europe, Traditional Music of," The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 25 June 2010), http://www.oxfordmusic.com
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dynamics? Is it likely that people living in a region more prone to environmental events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, or monsoons would have parallels to these phenomena in their music? Unquestionably, the power of music to create a sense of community, to reflect, enforce, change, or contribute to relations between sexes, to function as a metronome to choreograph the motions of seamen and lumberjacks, and to serve as a link both between one solitary musicmaker and other people, elevates music to more than a utilitarian by-product of language, but a sort of inchoate language of its own. Every musical aspect had great purpose and communicative power; songs served as charms against evil and connections to the spirit world - both of which very real aspects of life in many cultures. Songs of men and women, mother and child, of work and leisure, rite and ritual, prisoner and protestor alike are rich with meaning for the people who produce them. Alan Lomax broke new ground in 1968 with the publication of his research into cantometrics. His research, which he made largely available to other researchers, studied the interaction between music and culture. He established correlations between musical and socio-political structures, a perspective which Steven Feld took an alternative approach to exploring in 1984, in an article which explored the musical behaviours of the Kaluli, a traditional ethnic group in Papua New Guinea. Feld outlined six large rubrics by which the music of a culture could be broken down: competence, form, performance, environment, theory, and value and equality. These categories placed music within the matrix of the environment and perspectives of the people who created it. The defining feature in understanding music in terms of linguistic relativity is that it is not only a product of a culture, but is actively involved in the perpetuation
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and production of perspectives and values. It is not only the birds whose songs are most prevalent in the environment in which a society lives, but those that their voices can imitate which elevate these creatures to cultural significance. This is the critical point where fresh research must be embarked upon, with the specific goal of observing the mutual gravity which music and culture exert upon each other. The boundaries which define the cultures (or subcultures) studied could be founded upon common ethnic issue, gender, age, occupation, or lifestyle. The everchanging faces of adolescent cultures here in America is a ripe field for study the social categories which adolescents adhere to are often characterized by unique musical sounds. Not only does commercially-produced music influence these people, but the teenagers and young adults can have a profound impact on the directions and evolution of popular music and social factions. IV. An Encroaching Silence: Implications For Further Research
A language is a flash of the human spirit. Wade Davis98 War is wasteful of lives, but only rarely and at its most dreadful does it eradicate a whole way of life. On the other hand, big government, national education, information networks, and a worldwide marketing system kill off cultures whose ways do not conform to those of the power center ... Each of these communication structures, now being swept off the board, may be capable of seeding a whole new cultural development ... Each of these traditions can serve as a bridge of dignity and continuity for the people of a simple culture as they move across the stream of change into their uncertain future. A verse can recall a whole epoch; a turn in a tune can hearten a people through a generation of struggle; for, if the written word preserves and expands knowledge, the multileveled symbolic structure of music and art can preserve and expand a life-style. Alan Lomax99 Wade Davis, Ted 2003, Wade Davis on Endangered Cultures, Ted: Ideas Worth Spreading <http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html>.
98
Alan Lomax, Folk Song Style and Culture (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1968), 4-6
99
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The purpose of my research here has been to lay the foundations for further research in the unique relationship between music and culture. Through the course of this study, I have endeavoured to illustrate not only the connection between music and language, but the joint connection of these two universal social constructs and the human cultures which produced them. We have seen how music, like language, has the ability to reflect cultural norms and values, which brings one to the inevitable question: so what? What does this all mean? Is Steven Pinker right: is music just auditory cheesecake without which the human species would be virtually unchanged? As is often the case, the answer is both yes and no. Yes, music is a construct which is not essential to the survival of the human species we would be able to gather and hunt for food, find shelter, and procreate without it, much like other species inhabiting out planet. However, these functions would likely be able to be carried out without the benefit of language, and it is likely that the earliest ancestors of humans did exactly that. As human beings, however, we would be radically different without music. Language and music are essentially human, and research is beginning to suggest that one, if not both, of these functions has a biological precedent. The two, however, manifest themselves in culturally distinct ways, with prosodies and vocabularies, lexicons and syntaxes which vary from one group of people to the next. We take pride in our ability to know things we are, after all, Homo sapiens, the knowing man. An understanding of musicality, while essential to many of the nuances to spoken language which make human cultures possible, allows us to reach into a deeper, more emotional realm of ourselves. Musical expression is beyond the explicit
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descriptions of self, and is grounded in a subconscious understanding. Music, much like language, is one of those essential components of our humanity. There is a need to understand who we are as individuals, as members of a culture, and as members of this diverse and complex species. And yet, tragically, the rich and multifarious tradition of music which permeates human cultures throughout the world is gravely endangered. With the loss of traditional languages and musical styles, the cultures associated with them are dying out, choked out of existence by an encroaching push for homogeneity. For reasons social, political, religious, or economical, popular and commercial music is supplanting the songs which have accompanied people of the world since time immemorial. Children are learning languages of trade and mainstream society, vestiges of the havoc wreaked by European colonial powers in previous centuries: as a result, children are not only unable to communicate with older generations of their family, they are unable to understand the unique mindset associated with traditional languages. Ancient knowledge and wisdom is unable to be passed along, elegant song traditions and musical lore is fading away, and all that once was is being slowly forgotten. Roughly every two weeks, one lonely light of consciousness, the last speaker of a traditional language, is extinguished. With that voice, and entire way of life vanishes. Over the course of just a few decades, the number of languages spoken in our world has dropped precipitously according to some figures, the drop has been from 6,000 to less than 3,000.100 Once a language is no longer spoken by native speakers it dies, and with it an entire culture, worldview, and way of life silently passes out of existence. If the implied connections between language and music are considered, then it is safe to
100
Wade Davis, Wade Davis on Endangered Cultures.
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conclude that the same fate threatens endangered music. The truth of disappearing music cannot be denied, whether it is part of a larger ethnic culture, or part of a more local culture, such as those associated with occupations. Ted Gioia writes of the Gan people in Burkina Faso: in 1996, a sole surviving member of these people was found to perform upon the shepherds side-blown bamboo flute. This performance was among the last of its kind, and was luckily recorded when he died the next year, this tradition died with him, for neither the instrument nor the lifestyle it accompanied were passed on to later generations.101 This is increasingly the case: only the older generations know their traditional songs, dances, instruments, and stories. The loss of these marks the loss of a way of life; of a perspective with which to comprehend, interact with, and contribute to the world. Understanding the relationship between music and a culture is more crucial now than ever before: researchers can come to understand where a people had been, where they are now, and what the future may hold for them. Not only does this provide insight into an individual culture, this knowledge provides clues as to our own humanity, as we are all connected through evolution to a time when early man was scraping out a meagre existence in a world which only remotely resembles that in which we live today, before we had spread out of Africa to become the dominant animal on our tiny planet. It is a matter of course that civilizations and cultures rise and fall, and that a culture which does not adapt to the influence of the changing world will very likely perish. It is unreasonable to expect that all human cultures remain and do not change through time. In an age where we are seeking out our identity, however, it is useful to understand the social and cultural foundations for the worldview of our global
101
Ted Gioia, Work Songs, 74.
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neighbours. Furthermore, in an attempt to better comprehend the values, perspectives, and origins of our own cultures, it is worthwhile to know our own histories. The influence of various cultures on present-day societies is present throughout the globe. We must strive to understand the many manifestations of human culture and, perhaps more importantly, take steps to preserve them for future generations to experience. Certainly, to forget these songs and traditions is to lose a considerable amount of our humanness. In a world where intelligence can be created artificially, where craft is increasingly mechanized, and we begin to explore what it truly means to be a human being, it is all the more imperative that we hold on to a knowledge of where we once were. It is possible that what distinguishes us from other living things is not necessarily encoded within our DNA, and it is not what we have accomplished to date, but how we reached this point, and where we intend to go. Studying the linguistic and musical traditions of contemporaneous and historical cultures sheds light upon at the former part of this question; what we do with this knowledge determines the latter.
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Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

The Human Spirit Speaks Through Song

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

See also: Takahashi, 2009; Fisher, 2005; Cavalli-Sforza, 1997.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Paul Robertson, Music and the Brain: A Musicologists Viewpoint, 308-309.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Temple Grandin, Animals in Translation (New York: Scribner, 2005), 274.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Anne Karpf, The Human Voice, 57.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

children who struggle with linguistic syntax face similar

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals, 11

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Josh McDermott, The Origins of Music,: 29.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Josh McDermott, The Origins of Music,: 29.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Evelina Fedorenko et al., Structural integration in language and music,: 3.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

James Porter, "Lament," The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Manolete Mora, Lutes, Gongs, Women and Men,: 227-228.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Ted Gioia, Work Songs, 74.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Wade Davis, Wade Davis on Endangered Cultures.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Ted Gioia, Work Songs, 74.

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

Caitlin MacKenzie Mannion Music as Language

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