Why are We so Very Musical?

In neuroscience, we can teach the primary locations and systems for visual processing, voluntary movement, language, speech production, emotions and memory formation. We cannot do that for music, and herein lies the beauty and its power. Music is diffusely activated throughout the brain—right, left, cortical, subcortical, anterior and posterior. It owns no particular ‘real estate.’ Much of the brain is involved in detection of even the simplest musical patterns.

I’ve always asked the question ‘why would that be so?’ Why would music be so robust in the human condition? What advantages could that create?

I’m currently reading a fascinating book called ‘The Great Animal Orchestra’ by Bernie Krause. Dr. Krause is a musician and a naturalist. He records the sounds of nature from both animals and non-biological sources. He calls the recordings from non-biological sources as ‘geophones.’ These are the sounds made by wind, rain and movement of the earth (volcanoes, glaciers). He asserts that these soundscapes of nature were the foundation for the animals that evolved there. They had to develop a bandwidth of sounds that could be heard in the context in which the animal species lived.

He further posits that these are the sounds in which modern humans found their voices. He states, “sound-rich habitats are humans’ most significant acoustic influences” (pg. 10). Before humans had language to symbolically communicate with specificity, they perhaps borrowed from the sounds around them to convey emotions. I think this makes sense as many animal species have differentiated calls that serve as warnings and pleas for mating.