Elemental Resonance, Noisy Humans, and Music Education

The intersections between music, society and nature are complex and differ greatly from one culture to another, but there is no doubt that all three form important aspects of our lives as humans. The world has always been filled with natural sounds and for early humans these would have been our earliest musical inspiration. This means the initial relationship between music and nature would have been very close, with both being intrinsic parts of each other. In many cultures this is still the case, however in our western culture we have been getting more and more disconnected from nature, and in cities our acoustic surroundings consist largely of man-made soundscapes, rather than natural ones. This leads to the question: what impact does the acoustic and natural environment have on music-making practises in different cultures? In this essay I aim to explore the ways in which music is used to interact with the environment and discuss how this reflects the relationship between societies and nature.

This paper provides an attempt to conceive of music in terms of a sounding environment. Starting from a definition of music as a collection of vibrational events, it introduces the distinction between discrete-symbolic representations as against analog-continuous representations of the sounds. The former makes it possible to conceive of music in terms of a Humboldt system, the latter in terms of an experiential approach. Both approaches, further, are not opposed to each other, but are complementary to some extent. There is, however, a distinction to be drawn between the bottom-up approach to auditory processing of environmental sounds and music, which is continuous and proceeding in real time, as against the top-down approach, which is proceeding at a level of mental representation by applying discrete symbolic labels to vibrational events. The distinction is discussed against the background of phylogenetic and ontogenetic claims, with a major focus on the innate auditory capabilities of the fetus and neonate and the gradual evolution from mere sensory perception of sound to sense-making and musical meaning. The latter, finally, is elaborated on the basis of the operational concepts of affordance and functional tone, thus bringing together some older contributions from ecology and biosemiotics.

Edited Collection, 2022

Music plays an integral role in many facets of human life, from the biological and social to the spiritual and political. This book brings together interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies on the functions, purposes, and meanings of music in human experience. CONTRIBUTORS: Simha Arom; Steven Brown; John Collins; Ellen Dissanayake; Jonathan L. Friedmann; Victor Grauer; Joseph Jordania; Robert Lopez-Hanshaw; John Morton; Michael Naylor; Bruno Nettl; Elizabeth Phillips; Piotr Podlipniak; Michelle Scalise Sugiyama; Nino Tsitsishvili; Agota Vitkay-Kucsera; Maja S. Vukadinović; Alejandra Wah

In human musicality, only together are its features normally counted by us to be those of 'music' or to be 'musical'. So we may think that any one feature of human musicality does not constitute ‘music’. Thus, though any of these features may sometimes alone be counted ‘musical’, some of them may seem to us to be less ‘musical’ than others. But, in regard to 'music', the most fundamental controversy is whether the essence of 'music' is exclusively a human thing. This begs the question of what is the essence of music. We, of course, may want to know what is the essence that makes some human sonic artifacts 'music', and others not. But, even if we presuppose that the subset of human sonic artifacts that are 'music' are what make that 'music' music, the foundational issue is about how we can have the auditory perception that we call 'music'. For, if humans, as humans, had never perceived 'music', then there could not, in the first place, ever have been any human artifacts that we today call 'music'.

Revue D'anthropologie Des Connaissances, 2019

Introduction This special issue of the Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances journal is entitled “Music Knowledge and Science Studies –Resonances”. We are interested here in exploring what each of these two worlds says about and does to the other, and what these reciprocal echoes can teach us. This is an enterprise that could be summed up by two questions. What can music tell us about the sciences and science studies? What can we learn from the sciences of musical worlds and knowledge? Why ...

Frontiers in Psychology, 2018

Music is at the centre of what it means to be human-it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways. We argue that music comes from the way in which knowing bodies (Merleau-Ponty) prospectively explore the environment using habitual 'patterns of action,' which we have identified as our innate 'communicative musicality.' To support our argument, we present short case studies of infant interactions using micro analyses of video and audio recordings to show the timings and shapes of intersubjective vocalizations and body movements of adult and child while they improvise shared narratives of meaning. Following a survey of the history of discoveries of infant abilities, we propose that the gestural narrative structures of voice and body seen as infants communicate with loving caregivers are the building blocks of what become particular cultural instances of the art of music, and of dance, theatre and other temporal arts. Children enter into a musical culture where their innate communicative musicality can be encouraged and strengthened through sensitive, respectful, playful, culturally informed teaching in companionship. The central importance of our abilities for music as part of what sustains our well-being is supported by evidence that communicative musicality strengthens emotions of social resilience to aid recovery from mental stress and illness. Drawing on the experience of the first author as a counsellor, we argue that the strength of one person's communicative musicality can support the vitality of another's through the application of skilful techniques that encourage an intimate, supportive, therapeutic, spirited companionship. Turning to brain science, we focus on hemispheric differences and the affective neuroscience of Jaak Panksepp. We emphasize that the psychobiological purpose of our innate musicality grows from the integrated rhythms of energy in the brain for prospective, sensationseeking affective guidance of vitality of movement. We conclude with a Coda that recalls the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, which built on the work of Heraclitus and Spinoza. This view places the shared experience of sensations of living-our communicative musicality-as inspiration for rules of logic formulated in symbols of language.

In recent years, questions regarding music, sound, and nature have intensified. This intensification is visible in various domains of musical practice, such as the increased audibility of composers involved in acoustic ecology as both practitioners within and theorizers of the field; the global presence of sound collectives employing audio recordings and music scholarship for the purpose of denouncing environmental problems; and the emergence of what are considered "new fields" of study, such as ecomusicology, biomusic, and zoomusicology. This coincides with a growing interest in listening and in sound as phenomena and the institutionalization of sound studies as a disciplinary field.¹ Finally, it coincides with a renewed I thank Julio Ramos, Jairo Moreno, and Gavin Steingo for helpful critical and generous conversations and comments, and Margaret Havran for her editorial work on this essay. I would also like to thank Arturo Escobar and Enrique Leff for their help and encouragement, even though a deeper engagement with the specific elements of their work has inevitably been left for another moment. The responsibility of the content of this essay is, of course, mine. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 1. Jonathan Sterne, ed., The Sound Studies Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Michael Bull, ed., Sound Studies (London: Routledge, 2013).

This article addresses the place of music in the Western worldview, arguing for a greater appreciation of music in a modern eco-cosmology which embraces environmental priorities as central to human prosperity, while contextualising defensible connections between music, sound and environment potentially useful for electroacoustic musical practice. Precise analytical terminology is established, and the methodology of environmental history is used to assess Western understandings about the role and place of music. Origins and ideas regarding immersive space, emotive power and the development of dualistic ‘nature–culture’ schemas are explored. Impacts of key developments in twentieth-century technology and environmental thought are examined as they relate to electroacoustic research. Biomusicology is reviewed for insights into innate musical structures and possibilities, and a recent linguistic study is analysed from a musical perspective to advance a cross-disciplinary argument: music may represent a form of mitigational behaviour used to balance the evolutionary tradeoff that enabled modern language. This argument suggests that if music in itself represents an environment critical for human mental health, then the contribution of electroacoustic music is vital for fresh eco-critical debate and awareness, and that an increased musical practice, especially in participatory contexts, may be essential for the human project.

2015

Do we have musicality, or are we musical? To what extent is music an artefact and how much does it shape us? It is suggested that our first musical experience is in the mother’s womb, that we result from an accurate selection by ancestral women towards ’musicians’, and that music affects our brain, cognition and mood. It will be concluded that the inseparability of humans from music makes us musical beings.

2021

Unpublished presentation asks what is the place of music in the social world? This problem turns on two preliminary issues, usually framed as questions: what is music? and what is a social world? but I reframe it and instead ask about the sounds of animals (including human animals) and their social worlds. Reframing the question thusly enables new perspectives on numerous problems that ethnomusicologists have grappled with for decades.