Introductions

"No known human culture now or anytime in the recorded past lacked music."

~Daniel J. Levitin, author,  This is Your Brain on Music

Many authors have set out to explain the human fascination with music.  There are volumes on the history, theory, psychology, education and and subcultures of music, and many more are in process.  The above quote is taken from a book called This is Your Brain on Music, which attempts to explain the neuroscience behind how our brains understand and interpret musical sounds.    

While I am interested in this scientific analysis of how our brains do it, I am satisfied to leave this to the PhDs and remain fixated on experiences which remind me that our brains do it.  The music itself will do the trick for me.  When I sit in a black box theater and feel the buzz of crowded energy at a Chris Smither concert, or kneel in mass while a cantor sings a psalm into my prayers, or while watching an olympian swell with pride when hearing his national anthem played, these tell a great deal.   This exploration of music and our experiences, how we use it and change it and thrive on it are all encompassed in the study of ethnomusicology.   

A brief excerpt from Levitin's book describes some good examples of this:

"The power of music to evoke emotions is harnessed by advertising executives, filmmakers, military commanders, and mothers.  Advertisers use music to make a soft drink, beer, running shoe or car seem more hip than their competitors'.  Film directors use music to tell us how to feel about scenes that otherwise might be ambiguous, or to augment our feelings at particularly dramatic moments.  Think of a typical chase scene in an action film, or the music that might accompany a lone woman climbing a staircase in a dark old mansion: music is being used to manipulate our emotions, and we tend to accept, if not outright enjoy, the power of music to make us experience these different feelings.  Mothers throughout the world, and as far back in time as we can imagine, have used soft singing to soothe their babies to sleep, to distract them from something that has made them cry." (p.9)

This blog is an attempt to record observations and experiences that have been cluttering up the back of my mind for many years.  I've got a long list started, and it keeps growing.  Hopefully if I get it all out on paper (or the blogosphere), I will be able to translate my thought fragments into coherent ideas that are useful or interesting to people.  (Although probably not both.)

My song of the day is by an artist named Brooke Fraser, who has an unusual talent for both poetic, thought provoking lyrics AND musical ingenuity.  This is a light-hearted summertime song called "Something in the Water."

More to come.