music

A few weeks ago I was in the shower. I've been in the shower many times since then (really!) but this time was unusual for a few reasons. First, I was in Auckland, New Zealand, and secondly while I was in there I had a huge insight about a song.

I was in NZ at that time working with the very fine Greater Auckland Chapter of Sweet Adelines, a chorus of some 120 very good singers under the unstoppable leadership of Melody Lowe. We were working together on Time After Time, among other songs. Together we figured out what that song was really about, and created a vibrant and impactful story that really allowed the ladies of the GAC to shine.  With groups that good, more often than not that's what I do so they get the most bang for their buck.

Anyway I'm in the shower, singing as usual, and I find myself singing Time After Time:

Time After Time I tell myself that I'm so lucky to be loving you
So lucky to be the one you run to see in the evening when the day is through
I only know what I know the passing years will show you've kept our love so young, so new
And Time After Time you'll hear me say that I'm so lucky to be loving you

And I start to choke up, thinking about my wife Kari back in Vancouver, and how I don't tell her enough how much I love her.

And that, in a nutshell, is what makes music important. It catches you off guard and teaches you things about yourself and about the world. It gives you a chance to experience more things than you could hope to experience in a lifetime without it. That should be all the reason we need to make absolutely sure that music gets the support it needs to be and to stay a thriving, vital part of our society. It should be one of our most deeply cherished values, right after food and shelter.  And in some places, like Hawaii, you barely need shelter!

Anyway, I thanked the ladies of the GAC for their part in bringing me this experience, and promised them I would sing it for Kari. This past week we were in Hawaii together for our 10th wedding anniversary, and I surprised her on a crowded tour bus with just that serenade. Just the look in her eyes was worth it, but as a bonus everyone on the bus went home with a nice story.

More on the specifics of why I like Time After Time so much, in an upcoming post.

I told myself I would not try to write any blog entries during the holiday season.  The plan was to kick back and reflect on the first few months of Owning The Stage, what turned out to be interesting and what didn't, and thereby to come up with a plan for 2009.  However, The Economist published a really interesting article on one of my pet topics, namely the purpose of music in Society, and I had to bring it to your attention, dear reader, and add a comment or two.

If you have fifteen minutes, you should probably read the whole article, but if you're busy let me give you the whirlwind tour.

Music is really important for humans.  You can tell because it's very time consuming and expensive for Society to produce and consume it as much as we do.  But what purpose does it serve?  There are three competing theories.

Theory number one goes like this: music gives the performer a better chance to reproduce, so generation by generation that advantage breeds more musical people.  I like this theory, even if it's a bit self-serving to do so!  I live in two circles, a musical and performance one, and a computer science one, and I have certainly noticed that the people who know me as a performer respond to me quite differently.  When Realtime is singing somewhere, we all get attention from the opposite sex.  We're all quite married, of course, but the attention doesn't go unnoticed!  It's just not the same when I attend a computer-related conference.  And not just because everyone there is male.

Theory number two is that music serves to bind together groups, and creates a survival advantage in that way.  I think we can all corroborate that one too - if you're a musician, I would bet dimes to dollars that you have a clique built up around the style of music that you sing or play.  Imagine the power of that force in prehistoric times to keep the tribe together, and determine who was in, and who was out.  Makes sense.

Number three I don't much care for.  It states that our ability to comprehend and perform music is an accident - we evolved those mental capacities for other reasons.  Stephen Pinker says basically this: A brain devoted to turning sound into meaning is tickled by an oversupply of tone, melody and rhythm. Singing is auditory masturbation to satisfy this craving. Playing musical instruments is auditory pornography.

However, perhaps they are all partly right.  As the article suggets, perhaps we evolved the musical capacity for other reasons, but then put them to good evolutionary use, for reproduction and survival.  I can buy that.

Of more importance to the performer is the following:

What all of these hypotheses have in common is the ability of music to manipulate the emotions, and this is the most mysterious part of all. That some sounds lead to sadness and others to joy is the nub of all three hypotheses. The singing lover is not merely demonstrating his prowess; he also seeks to change his beloved’s emotions.

Once we understand more clearly the way that music functions in the brain to create emotions in the listener, the performing arts will no doubt be able to exploit that information to create more impactful performances.  But for the time being, we'll just have to stick with what works, and learn more by trial and error!