Music to the Rescue

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Jerry Goldsmith, a top film composer of the second half of the twentieth century, regularly worked on projects unworthy of his artistic expression. His filmography includes over two hundred titles, along with a hefty body of television work. Much of it is stale genre fare: thrillers, westerns, maritime adventures, and war movies. According to Mauricio Dupuis, author of Jerry Goldsmith: Music Scoring for American Movies, “It is almost proverbial, among enthusiasts of this composer and the applied cinematic genre in general, to consider Goldsmith a rare example of talent and technical ability frequently applied to projects lacking in ideas.”

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a case in point. Somewhere between mediocrity and a critical failure, the thinly-scripted and over-budget 1979 film famously strayed from the character-driven saga of the original series. It is a meandering attempt to hybridize Star Trek, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even the costumes are a bland shadow of their former selves. Director Robert Wise—legendary for helming The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music—admitted, “Thank goodness we had Jerry’s score…He really saved us.”

Film music accomplishes a number of aims: establishing atmosphere, setting a mood, building anticipation, amplifying gratification, aiding characterization, shaping narrative, unifying images, and so forth. A well-written score (or well-constructed compilation score) naturalistically undergirds and interacts with the visuals and non-musical sounds. On screen as in life, music is interwoven into human experience, at times underscoring activities, and other times transcending them.

Just as a thoughtful score can “save” a lackluster scene, good music can mitigate a less-than-spectacular day. “Good” is used here in the utilitarian sense of serving a need or function; or, as Baruch Spinoza wrote, “By good I mean that which we certainly know to be useful to us” (Ethics IV, Definition 1). A soundtrack for film or daily life is essentially Gebrauchsmusik: music for a purpose outside of the music itself. When the action is intrinsically compelling, good music enhances it. When events are droll or disappointing, good music provides a ray of light. The latter might be called “Gebrauchsmusik plus,” with the effect surpassing the reality of the moment.

University of Groningen researchers Jacob Jolij and Maaike Meurs touched on this in their 2011 study, “Music Alters Visual Perception.” They found that emotional stimuli, like music, influence not only how listeners feel, but also how they see the world. When music stimulates something positive within, the world tends to improve accordingly. (Of course, the opposite is also true.) A favorite song on the radio can temporarily brighten a slog in heavy traffic; a well-chosen playlist can ease the toil of washing dishes. And, as Jerry Goldsmith often discovered, incidental music that exceeds the quality of a film can improve the cinematic experience.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Hearing the Sacred

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

The term “sacred music” has fallen out of fashion somewhat in recent years. As a label for music used in devotional settings, it is synonymous with liturgical music, ritual music, and pastoral music. However, because “sacred” is an adjective, the term has been criticized as an attempt to distinguish some quality of the music itself. We cannot substantiate any claim of inherent sanctity, since the dividing line between secular and sacred music has never been strong and is increasingly blurred. Another problem is that when the term is expanded to performers, we get the boastful designation “sacred musician,” which may or may not accurately reflect the way a musician lives his/her life or views him/herself.

The issue lies in how “sacred” is understood. If we assume that it modifies the word next to it, then it is a misnomer. But if we see it more as a verb—something that the music does—then sacred is perfectly accurate. As difficult as it is to determine what (if anything) is holy about any sound, it is plain that sacred music is defined by its function.

A few examples from Jewish life illustrate the point. The core musical elements of the High Holy Days (called Mi-Sinai tunes, meaning “from Mount Sinai”) are derived in part from ballads and street songs of medieval Germany. A large portion of Sephardic synagogue music is essentially the same as Ottoman high court music. It is a Hassidic custom to transform popular songs into worship melodies by replacing the lyrics with nonsense syllable like “yai dai dai.” Twentieth-century America witnessed the emergence of liturgical music written in the style of 1960s protest songs; and a number of services have been composed in jazz, country, and other ostensibly “secular” idioms.

The list could go on, but the message is clear: sacred has little to do with the music itself, and everything to do with its purpose. This puts considerations like congregational preference and comfort level at the forefront. In order for the music to work (and thus be called sacred), it must be conducive and not disruptive to the worship experience. If it is sufficiently well liked and shown to succeed on a regular basis, it may earn a spot among the conventional favorites. Indeed, it is easy to forget that even the most popular and frequently sung synagogue melodies had premiere performances, and had to pass through several stages from novel to accepted to standard.

So, what is “sacred” in sacred music? The answer to this question is that it is the wrong question. Sacredness is not found in pitches, rhythms, intervals, or phrases, but in themes, intentions, and performance settings. All sorts of styles have been used in this capacity, and their suitability for worship is, in the end, a matter of taste. It is not necessary (or really possible) to apply objective measurements to sacred music. What is important is that the music helps cultivate a prayerful mood, no matter what it sounds like.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

The Invention of “Art”

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Marxist philosopher Paul Mattick, Jr. once remarked that “art” has only been around since the eighteenth century. On the surface, this audacious claim seems to dismiss the creative impulse evident in hominids since the cave-painting days and probably before. But, really, the idea of art as something abstract or “for itself” is a Western construct with roots in the Enlightenment. That era gave rise to the notion of “the aesthetic” as a stand-alone experience, as well as individuals and institutions that actively removed artistic creation from organic contexts: critics, art dealers, academics, galleries, museums, journals, etc. Terms previously used in other areas, like “creativity,” “self-expression,” “genius” and “imagination,” were re-designated almost exclusively as “art words.”

Prior to this period (and still today in most non-European cultures) art was not a thing apart, but an integral and integrated aspect of human life. Sculpture, painting, ceramics, woodwork, weaving, poetry, music, dance, and other expressive mediums were more than mere aesthetic excursions. They beautified utensils, adorned abodes, demarcated rituals, told stories, and generally made things special. Skill and ornamentation were not valued for their own sake, but for their ability to draw attention to and enhance extra-artistic objects and activities.

Eighteenth-century Europe witnessed the extraction of art from its functionalistic origins. It was segregated from everyday life and displayed as something of intrinsic worth. With this program came the panoply of now-familiar buzzwords: commodity, ownership, property, specialization, high culture, popular culture, entertainment, etc.

In the world of music, the contrivance of “absolute art” is even more recent. As New Yorker music critic Alex Ross explains, the “atmosphere of high seriousness” that characterizes classical concerts—with the expectation of attentive listening and quiet between movements—did not take hold until the early twentieth century. When public concerts first became widespread, sometime after 1800, they were eclectic events featuring a sloppy mix of excerpts from larger works and a miscellany of styles. Attendees chatted, shouted, scuffled, moseyed about, clanked dishes, and yes, even applauded (or booed) between (or during) movements. The performance was less a centerpiece than an excuse for a social happening.

As concert going morphed into a refined, bourgeoisie affair, the rigid format we are now acquainted with became the norm. Hushed and immobilized audiences sat in specially designed symphony halls and opera houses, which allowed composers to explore dynamic extremes hitherto impossible. “When Beethoven began his Ninth Symphony [1824] with ten bars of otherworldly pianissimo,” writes Ross, “he was defying the norms of his time, essentially imagining a new world in which the audience would await the music in an expectant hush. Soon enough, that world came into being.”

The impact of this development was wide-ranging. In no small way, it signaled the birth of music as an attraction in and of itself—a brand-new conception in the history of human culture. Like other artistic tendencies filtered through the Western consciousness, music was artificially detached from activities with which it had always co-existed. The radical break paved the way for the more general phenomenon of “music as entertainment” (highbrow, lowbrow and in between), and the commercialization and professionalization that came with it.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

The Rudiments of Music

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Alfred Einstein (1880-1952), one of the twentieth century’s most respected musicologists (and possible fifth cousin of Albert), wrote a daring and enduring book at the age of thirty-seven. A Short History of Music first appeared in print in his native German in 1917. The preface to later English editions includes this admission: “[The book] was written in a few weeks, at a time and place that precluded resort to any books of reference.” In Einstein’s view, this was a help rather than a hindrance. Rather than drown himself (and the reader) in a swamp of names and dates, he attempted a through-composed picture of the development of (Western) music as a whole. Some specialists have pounced on this approach, but the book’s resonance among lay readers is attested in the abundance of revised printings in German and English, each amended to include recent data (the last edition I’m aware of was published in 1954).

Naturally, Einstein gave greater attention to the area for which he was the primary authority: sixteenth-century music, especially of Italy. But no period up to his day was overlooked entirely. An intriguing case in point is the first chapter, which summarizes what was then known about “primitive” music. Aside from employing that now distasteful term, Einstein’s offerings remain the general hypotheses of the field. Indeed, while contemporary interest in the origins of music has produced fascinating details and possibilities, current research mostly complies with broad assumptions made during the first half of the twentieth century.

Einstein included seven hypotheses: (1) Singing has deeper historical roots than speaking (pre-linguistic music); (2) After singing came rhythm and percussion, which were explored in ritual dance (devotional music); (3) Song and rhythm combined to accompany labor (work songs); (4) Notes of definite pitch were used as signals in war (war songs); (5) The “easy” intervals of the fourth and fifth were the first preferred pitches (early scales); (6) Ancient songs were comprised of repeated patterns of a few notes (monotony); (7) The rudiments of harmony began with the “unintentional polyphony” of heterophony—what Einstein describes as the “arbitrary ornamentation of the same melody by several performers at the same time” (group song).

As mentioned, these premises are still foundational. Where contemporary studies have expanded upon them is in the aspect of motivation. Advances in anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology and other fields have added deeper perspectives regarding why our species began making music—the dominant theories being mating and cohesion (with variations of the two, like fitness displays, preparing for the hunt, and bonding between mother and child).

Such evolutionary theories, combined with Einstein’s strictly musical concerns of many decades ago, help us to ponder not only how the earliest music sounded, but why it was sounded at all. Fortunately, these central questions are currently on the front burners of researchers possessing great skill and imagination. And the more the topic is explored, the more interesting it becomes.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Funktionslust, Birdsong and Beauty

Jonathan L. Friedmann, PhD.

Ethology, the biological study of animal behavior, concerns itself primarily with uncovering survival advantages in animal activities. Balancing a desire to find purpose in animal behavior and avoid the sin of anthropomorphism, ethologists refrain from ascribing emotions or extraneous pleasures to non-human species. What appears to the untrained observer as a creative act or outpouring of feeling is reduced to a survival impulse or an instinctive behavior. It is, of course, wise to keep from seeing too much of ourselves in other animals. Our tendency to anthropomorphize everything around us says less about reality than it does about ourselves. Yet strict adherence to the ethologist’s code can create undue distance. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson asks in his controversial bestseller, When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals: “If humans are subject to evolution but have feelings that are inexplicable in survival terms, if they are prone to emotions that do not seem to confer any advantage, why should we suppose that animals act on genetic investment alone?”

This question is all the more penetrating given the impressive spectacles exhibited by many species. A gibbon swinging fervently from branch to branch, a dolphin thrusting itself out of the water, a cat hunting backyard critters for sport. The German language has a word for such behavior: funktionslust, meaning “pleasure taken in doing what one does best.” This, too, is thought to be adaptive. Pleasure derived from an activity increases an animal’s proneness to pursue it, thus increasing the likelihood of survival. A gibbon who spends extra time swinging in the trees is better fit to flee leopards and snakes when they attack.

But is that all there is to it? Masson points out that a loving animal (again, a controversial concept) may leave more offspring, making lovingness a survival trait. But the same animal may also provide excessive care to a disabled (and therefore doomed) offspring, exposing itself to hazards in the process.

The presumed practicality of funktionslust is further challenged by the performance of songbirds: the roughly 4,000 species of perching birds capable of producing varied and elaborate song patterns. To the standard scientist, the sounds these birds produce—no matter how inventive—serve the basic purposes of establishing territory and advertising fitness to potential mates. But some researchers argue that survival alone cannot account for the amount or variety of imitation, improvisation and near-composition evident in birdsong, nor the seemingly arbitrary times and circumstances in which the songs are often heard.

David Rothenberg and other birdsong experts see this music-making as approaching pure funktionslust, or pleasure derived from a native ability exceeding any evolutionary purpose. In his book Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song, Rothenberg proposes that songbird patterns rival human music in terms of structure, aesthetics, expressiveness, interactiveness and extra-practical life enhancement. A philosopher and jazz clarinetist who “jams” with songbirds in the wild, Rothenberg has been accused of the double infractions of anthropomorphism and evaluating birdsong with the bias of a musician. In his defense, he concedes that birds, not people, are the arbiters of their own songs, and only they can know what their repertoires mean to other birds. But he calls it art nonetheless, quoting Wallace Craig: “Art is a fact and after all it would be rather ridiculous from our evolutionistic ideology to deny the possibility that something similar may occur in other species” (“The Song of the Wood Peewee,” 1943).

Following this argument, we might deduce that songbirds experience beauty in their songs. This proposition harmonizes with the work of Denis Dutton, a philosopher of art who posits an evolutionary basis for the human perception of artistic beauty (The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution). Dutton identifies Acheulean hand axes as the earliest hominid artwork. Prevalent from 500,000 to 1.2 million years ago, these teardrop carvings have been located in the thousands throughout Asia, Africa and Europe. This sheer number and the lack of wear on their delicate blades suggest they were not used for butchering, but for aesthetic enjoyment. Indeed, they remain beautiful even to our modern eyes. The reason for this, explains Dutton, is that we find beauty in something done well. We are attracted to the meticulousness and skill evident in the axes. They satisfy our innate taste for virtuosic displays in the same way as well-executed concertos, paintings and ballets. Beauty is in the expertise.

If this attraction existed among our prehistoric ancestors, why not in songbirds? Taking funktionslust in a logical direction, might we assume that songbirds sing for the joy of it, and that their skilled displays feed aesthetic yearnings of other songbirds? These questions point to a possible compromise, in which animal behavior retains its evolutionary explanation and art finds evolutionary justification outside of the drive to survive.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Music Non-Lovers

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Aaron Copland wrote a brief and candid article for the music industry magazine Billboard in February of 1964. In it, he explained the dilemma of the modern symphonic composer, whose livelihood is built on commissions, royalties and rights collected for public performances. It is a ruthless system that grants few successes, partly because there aren’t many places or productions that pay well for original works, and partly because of something Copland was brave enough to admit: “Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.”

Sitting through an orchestral performance is not something most people were born to do. Patient reception of drawn-out passages and serene acceptance of slowly developing movements are virtues obtained through discipline, education and cultural training. Even some classical musicians will confess—usually off the record—that lengthy performances can be less than tolerable. Copland found it refreshing whenever people told him they cared little for orchestral fare. He knew that as a composer and music educator, he could drift out of touch with the average listener.

There is one instructive exception to this orchestral rule. Composers have a firm and steady place in movies and television. Anyone who has watched an anxious or action-packed scene with the sound turned off realizes that it is far less anxious or action-packed without the frantic strings, blaring horns and penetrating percussion. The ears are more emotionally attuned than the eyes. Visuals attain their full effect through the aid of the score.

The cinematic example is reflective of how humans have utilized music since the dawn of the species. Music’s original and still overwhelming purpose is as an accompaniment to other things: teaching, storytelling, dancing, healing, praying, relaxing, eating, competing, warring, rejoicing, socializing, driving, watching, shopping, napping, waking. Listening to music for its own sake is a recent and largely Western phenomenon, and the amount of people for whom absolute or “for itself” music has any real appeal is so small as to be statistically insignificant.

A multitude of musical functions might be simultaneously present in a given context. For instance, melodies sung and played at a religious service establish sacred time, foster cohesion, encourage introspection, enliven texts, guide choreography, focus concentration, recall memories, inspire sensations, affirm heritage, facilitate moral instruction. The list could go on, and similar lists could be devised for other musically aided events.

It is difficult to imagine just how impoverished a service would be without its musical component. If melody were eradicated, attendance would surely diminish and would probably disappear altogether.

This returns us to Copland’s observation. It is certainly the case that not everyone is a music lover. The pure musical experience removed from any practical purpose is a learned and essentially artificial activity. Yet, it is also true that human beings are music “needers.” Whether we are conscious of it or not, we rely on musical sounds to support, assist and enhance all sorts of endeavors. This is what Austrian-Jewish musicologist Victor Zuckerkandl meant when he penned these dramatic yet hardly exaggerated words: “man without music is not man and a world without music is not our world.”

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

After the Song

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

The biblical account of the Israelites’ journey out of Egypt concludes with the fabled crossing of the Red Sea. As the story goes, Moses held out his arm over the sea and split the waters, revealing a path of dry ground leading to freedom’s shore. When the sea march was complete, Moses raised his arm again, this time causing the waters to fall upon the pursuing Egyptians. The unlikely victory filled the Israelites with a mixture of elation and awe. Mere words could not express the magnitude of their feelings or do justice to the spectacle they had witnessed. Without hesitation and without rehearsal, they burst forth in a spontaneous yet poetically elaborate song of gratitude (Exod. 15:1-21).

Though clearly legendary, this episode is musically significant. It is the first prayer-song we encounter in the Bible and the first example of what might be called congregational singing. It shows music performance as a natural response to momentous events and overwhelming emotions. It presents song as a means of proclaiming group affiliation and expressing national pride.

These and other aspects of the musical occasion are repeated elsewhere in the Bible and are common to human societies throughout the ages. The depiction of the Red Sea song is memorable in large part because it resonates with our own experiences. Most of us have, at one time or another, felt the camaraderie of communal singing, turned to music as an emotional outlet, or used songs to assert our identities. These universal musical functions are readily ascertained from the climactic song of the exodus. There is, however, a less obvious but similarly important role the song plays in the biblical narrative: the return to normalcy.

A characteristic remark appears in the verses leading up to the Red Sea crossing. Catching sight of the advancing Egyptian army, the frightened Israelites ask Moses, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness?’” (14:11-12). This sort of complaint—and the lack of trust underlying it—recurs throughout the Israelites’ desert sojourn. They were unmitigated complainers, constantly pressing Moses to satisfy their physical and psychological needs, and prove the alleged might and compassion of their deity.

We can, then, classify as anomalous the exuberant words of thanksgiving the Israelites sang while gazing at the sea. Although springing organically from their lips, the lyrics were a departure from their ordinary disposition. Indeed, the scene’s immensity is accentuated by the fact that the song was so atypical of this grumbling lot. The Israelites were stunned  both by the remarkable chain of events and by the unusual feelings it excited. The rush of sentiments and sensations was unlike anything they had experienced before, and singing was the best they could do to deal with it. The song’s success in this regard is demonstrated shortly after the music stopped: “the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’” (15:24).

This normalizing effect should be added to the more familiar musical elements of Exodus 15 (e.g., congregational singing, emotional outlet and identity assertion). When the course of life is interrupted by dramatic incidents—big or small, good or bad—music can help ease the transition back to a comfortable and ordinary state. If the exodus legend is any indication, this effect was as well appreciated by the ancients as it is today.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Instability and Control

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

The concept of liminality was first formulated by ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in 1908. Victor Turner fleshed out the theory in the 1960s. Both men were intrigued by the various ways small-scale societies identify, confront and resolve times of flux and uncertainty, known as liminal periods. Almost without exception, these changes—which occur in the human life cycle and in the cycle of time—are met with rituals designed to ease the precarious movement from separation to transition to incorporation. In large-scale societies, rites of passage and rites of time can be informal, as with birthday and holiday parties, or formal, as with wedding ceremonies and time-specific prayer services. At the root of all these activities is the desire to conquer the “betwixt and between” of liminality and reenter a state of relative equanimity.

Not surprisingly, music tends to play a major role in these formal and informal rituals. The order implicit in most types of music infuses transitional periods with a measure of assurance and stability. The structure of music—especially music that is familiar and that has been used at similar events—injects a steady presence into an unsteady time. Consciously or unconsciously, the music provides an undercurrent of consolation for the actor or actors in transition.

Two cases drawn from the anthropological literature help illustrate this point. The first is an eight-day puberty ceremony enacted for girls of the Mescalero Apache tribe. During the rite, the girls take on the persona of the female deity and are celebrated into womanhood. Physical changes are translated into a spiritual transformation. Time-structuring elements of song—pulse, modulation, repetition, silence, etc.—are carefully arranged to give the ritual a sense of flow and logical progression. The imprecise and seemingly haphazard events of the first day gradually resolve into coordinated actions through the rhythm of rattles and the jingles of dresses. As the days move along, formulaic songs, chant-like verses and contoured refrains are performed to mark and enhance sections of the ceremony. On the eighth and final morning, the music comes to an end, the tipis are dismantled, food and sweets are passed around and ordinary time resumes. Liminality is overcome and the actors assume their new social standing as adults.

The second example involves lullabies sung by Iraqi Jewish mothers. In contrast to a formal rite of passage, the setting of this ritual is informal, private, domestic and daily. Yet it, too, confronts a liminal period: the disquieting shift from day to night and wake to sleep. The mother’s songs are more than just solace for the child; they are opportunities for her to address her fears, worries and emotional pain. The anxiety of evening brings life’s uncertainties to the surface, and the mother sings herself (and her child) into reassurance. A typical lullaby contains these lyrics: “And when I am depressed you will cheer me, and when I am troubled you will come to me . . . and you are safe, precious ones, so you will be my help.”

Our species is keenly aware of thresholds in life and time, and instinctively greets them with ritual behaviors, whether religious, civic or personal. At moments that challenge the normal pattern of existence and evoke palpable uncertainty, we long for and manufacture a means of control. And because music projects order and stability, it frequently assumes a prominent role in the process.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Necessary Cheesecake

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Literature on the origins of music is dominated by two theories. The first is sexual selection, or the idea that animals develop features that help maximize reproductive success. Charles Darwin introduced the concept in The Descent of Man (1871), writing that the human inclination for music came about in much the same way as ornate peacock feathers, lion manes and the antlers of male deer—that is, as sexual enticement. Musical skill, he theorized, stemmed from the biological compulsion to court a mate. Recent scholarship supports this hypothesis, highlighting the performer’s dexterity, creativity and mental agility as signs of fitness and desirability. Evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Miller published a study demonstrating a correlation between music-making and the reproductive life of jazz musicians, whose musical output tends to rise after puberty, peak during young adulthood and decline with parenthood and/or advancing age.

The second prevalent view involves group solidarity. In modern experience, music is regularly used to foster and enhance cohesion. This effect likely originated when small bands of people struggled for survival in the precarious prehistoric world. Populations lacking strong ties stood little chance of continuance, and music—especially song and dance—helped keep them intact. Robin Dunbar of Oxford University contends that while music eventually expanded into the area of courtship, it was group selection—not sexual selection—that prompted its emergence.

These theories frame music as basic to the endurance of our species. They assert that music was born of the necessities of reproduction and solidarity, and continues to be a means of sexual attraction and communal togetherness. However compelling, these functional explanations are not immune from criticism. Among the most prominent opponents is Harvard language theorist Steven Pinker.

Pinker devotes just ten pages to music in his massive book, How the Mind Works. The quick gloss owes to his assertion that music is not an evolutionary adaptation, but a tangential technology: a human capacity developed and exploited for its own sake. Although musical sounds tickle our requisite capacities for language, auditory scene analysis, emotional calls, habitat selection and motor control, they are, in Pinker’s phrase, “auditory cheesecake.” Like the decadent dessert, which over-stimulates our biological desire for fat- and sugar-rich foods, music supplies us with an oversupply of sound. An article in The Economist likened Pinker’s assessment to calling instrumental playing “auditory pornography” and singing “auditory masturbation,” both of which sate an appetite that is beyond strict biological need. In other words, if music were to vanish from our species, little else would change.

Although widely disseminated, Pinker’s proposition contains at least two faulty assumptions. The first is his argument that music-making is the domain of a small subset of people, and thus not a universal trait essential for survival. This reflects an understanding of music as it exists in the modern West, where professionalization and music as entertainment have done much to inhibit the participation of large segments of the population—a phenomenon unknown for most of human history and in contrast to many places in the world today. The second is his point that music is variable in its complexity from culture to culture, thus indicating an aesthetic rather than fundamental purpose. This may be an accurate comment on the nature of musical diversity, but does not negate the possibility that music production, generally speaking, began as a human need.

Nevertheless, Pinker’s analysis is a worthy challenge to the assumed evolutionary significance of music. It could very well be that music is an enhancement rather than a building block of human life. Yet it takes little effort to harmonize the biological theories with Pinker’s contrarian view. For instance, it is possible that music originated as a sexually selected feature, developed into a group-selected trait, and over time became an attraction in itself. It began as raw material for survival and, in some ways and in some cases, took on the qualities of “audible cheesecake.” Music may no longer be essential for human life, but life’s enjoyment would certainly be diminished without it.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

That’s All Folk

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Louis Armstrong once remarked to the New York Times, “All music is folk music; I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song.” This quotable quip suggests that music-making is among the creative behaviors that set human beings apart from the instinct-driven animals of nature. This supposition has been challenged with some success in recent years. There is growing recognition of intentional sonic production (read: music) among nonhuman species from rodents to whales. Armstrong’s point reflects the conventional view that humanity’s claim to distinction—which is ever diminishing in light of evolutionary theory—is somehow proven by our musical imagination.

Although the notion of a song-less horse may be faulty, the first part of the phrase jives with the deconstructive tendencies of the postmodern age. All human music is, in a sense, folk music—or at least has the potential of achieving that distinction. This is true not only in the literal sense Armstrong implied—folk is a synonym for people—but also in the technical sense that folk music, as a category of musical material, has become less amenable to definition and more inclusive of kaleidoscopic sounds.

Folk music first entered the nomenclature in the nineteenth century, alongside other cultural elements somewhat derogatorily identified as folklore. Words like simple, savage, unsophisticated, primitive, rough and unschooled were common in those early writings. As the designation proliferated in the musical literature, its meaning expanded at a corresponding rate. A casual review of its usage over the past century and a half reveals an array of imperfect, oft-chauvinistic and non-binding definitions: music passed on orally; music of indigenous peoples; music of the lower classes; music with unknown composers; music with collective origin; music interwoven with a national culture; music long associated with an event; non-commercial music; music that comes to identify a people in one way or another.

Any one of these meanings is susceptible to collapse under closer inspection, and contradictions arise when they are placed side by side. For instance, cherished songs of unknown authorship are commonly packaged for consumers as art songs, recordings, concert performances and other profit-seeking ventures. Does this eliminate their folk-ness? Oftentimes, too, melodies identified as folk can be traced to known composers and may have been extracted from more elaborate works written with commercial aims. This is the origin of many “traditional” melodies of the church and synagogue, and describes how show tunes and other popular idioms find their way into the nursery, where they pass from the mouths of one generation to the next.

While matching a presumed-anonymous tune with its true composer is admirable and responsible, it does nothing to change its folk status. The same can be said for similar investigative pursuits. This is because folk music is a process, not a thing (we might dub it “folkalization”). Almost any music of almost any origin can become folk through widespread circulation, continuous use, accumulated associations and its role as an identity marker for an affinity group.

In his instructive book, Folk Music: A Very Short Introduction, musicologist Mark Slobin concedes that the term folk music is so widely applied and has so many nuanced meanings as to evade simple summary. He stresses that it is a fluid amalgam of sounds that constantly adapts as it travels from person to person, location to location, and age to age, and that it is best to identify it using the practical, though unscientific, measurement of “we know it when we hear it.” One of Slobin’s key points is that folk music is not a body of fossilized tunes but the record of a living experience, which is subject to shift depending on cultural trends, courses of events, a performer’s whim, etc. As he relates: “Every group has a stock of tunes and texts that have come together so skillfully that they have no past and which expand into an unlimited future.”

With all of the sentiments, convictions, disputes and controversies a discussion like this entails, the best we can do is scratch the surface. The topic is endless. Yet despite the uncertainties, speculations and counter-speculations folk music has and will provoke, it is increasingly apparent that Louis Armstrong was, perhaps unintentionally, on to something.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.