The Food of Love

The week before Christmas, I was excited to see the cover of The Economist magazine bear the headline, "Why We Love Music". The philosophy of music - why we respond to it, why it holds a prominent place in our culture, and how it affects our moods and behaviors - has always been of special interest to me, although more from a anthropological point of view than a neurological one. I suppose this is because my own musical interests span several different genres, and I wonder why so many different rhythms, tones and styles can all have meaning for me while "only" classical or "only" pop speak to others.

I was a little disappointed in the article's three hypotheses about why music is so eagerly consumed by our culture. While they might be scientifically proven, they seemed trite to me: 1. That music is a representation of our sexual personas and works to further our evolutionary reproductive drives; 2. That music binds groups of people together; and 3. That music satisfies an appetite in humans that is akin to "auditory pornography." It seems that most of the studies done by the scientists in the article are based on observations of primates and evolutionary biology, rather than looking at the particular relationship humans have with this "accidental language," as the article refers to it. A more insightful study of music, it seems to me, would choose to pick apart uniquely human responses to music: why, for instance, has music become more popular than ever in our cultures even though individual earphones have minimized the impact of social listening? Do we still feel unity with each other if we listen only in the virtual concerthalls of our iPods? If we're not listening in a group, what makes us feel like we're part of a group? Do we chalk up that feeling of unity merely to the marketing machine that accompanies most of today's music, or is there still something intrinsic in music -- even if experienced individually -- that links us to other humans?

The article states that "Anecdotal evidence linking music to sexual success is strong," a claim I do not doubt. But humans have drives beyond sex and a desire to belong that I believe also play into our cultural obsession with music. I would list among those alternative drives the desire to elevate ourselves to a more spiritual plane, a drive I doubt exists in primates (and one that was the seemingly-forgotten cultural force behind most of music up until the last few hundred years). Also, a drive to escape depression or to alter our mindset away from debilitating worries. A drive to express our creativity as humans, even if in a manufactured setting like karaoke or Guitar Hero.

Fortunately, this is an area of study that is still much of a mystery, so perhaps in the coming decades philosophers, anthopologists and perhaps even religious thinkers will join the evolutionary biologists in the study of why we love music. It should be a very exciting discussion.