What have songs for us?

Subject: Origins: What have songs for us?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 10:07 PM

Music is admittedly a big part of my life. Songs breed like rabbits around here, and minutes turn to hours. Ancient and just plain old songs come bursting into new life at the merest inspired listening moment... Like a reality check in reincarnation enactment. People listen with mixed emotion, often wondering what (non-existant) double message I must be implying... Creative thought is reluctantly wrested into action, by a music muse that bears little resemblance to a faithful and lusty lover. People cheer, and expect an encore when this mus(e)ical entity sends chills up and down taut and enervated spines... What does music do for us?, I ask... ttr

Subject: RE: Origins: What have songs for us?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 22 Nov 02 - 10:35 PM

Everything. Nothing.

Subject: RE: Origins: What have songs for us?
From:
Date: 23 Nov 02 - 09:37 PM

Has anybody taken up this question in some way beyond the affective? Really, what does music do for us? Is its universality due to instinct, like language? Are there cultures where rhythm, melody, the elements aren't known? Has anyone floated a psychobiological explanation? There's an article which pokes at the same question w/r/t poetry in the very first issue of "Oral Tradition," must be a decade back, but probably available in a big library.

I recall that there was one topic the International Linguistics Society would not take papers on: origins of language. Too much bullshit, too little data, they said, in some more elegant way. And maybe this is the same kind of question.

Adam

Subject: RE: Origins: What have songs for us?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Nov 02 - 02:23 AM

I like to bandy about the thought that the reason that most, if not ALL, beings respond to music is that the earth itself is harmonic, that it's a genetic, visceral response in the inhabitants of Earth. It's kind of nice to picture standing outside our world and realizing that it pulses with sounds and rhythms. In other words, I don't think it's an accident that music is important to us.