'Anthromusicology'

Subject: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 08:03 PM

From a New York Times review of

"...
the thesis of Daniel J. Levitin's lively, ambitious and occasionally even persuasive new book, "The World in Six Songs." Music, Levitin argues, is not just something to help pass the time on road trips and a swell facilitator for meeting girls: it is, he writes,"the soundtrack of civilization"— a force that shaped us as a species and prepared us for the higher-order task of sharing complex communications with one another.

If that sounds like a slightly esoteric argument (and all but unprovable without the use of a time machine), it's also one that Levitin is supremely qualified to make. A musician and former record producer who still pals around with the likes of Sting and David Byrne, Levitin now runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University; he covered adjacent turf in his 2007 best seller, "This Is Your Brain on Music." And to the extent that "The World in Six Songs" succeeds, it works much like a great piece of pop music, whose combined elements can induce feelings of enlightenment and euphoria, even when some of the words don't hold up to closer scrutiny.

Levitin divides his book into impressionistic chapters that address the six categories he believes all songs (or at least those possessing lyrics) fit into: songs of friendship, songs of joy, songs of comfort, songs of knowledge, religious songs and love songs. There's a nice parlor-game feel to the book as Levitin sets up these distinctions and the reader tries to figure out which groupings his or her favorite songs belong to. Is the Mothers of Invention's exuberant "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" a song of joy or a song of comfort? Is Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" a love song, or does its cautionary motorcycle-­crash conclusion make it a song of knowledge?

..." (emphasis mine -- DD)

Anybody up for the game could name their six from the folk world... ;-)

I'll submit this, and see if I can come up with a list from my favorites.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 08:28 PM

all songs (or at least those possessing lyrics)

Birds sing songs without words. Humans don't.
...........................

Most songs that comes into my mind reading that post falls into at least two of those categories. Some songs indeed, you need to strain to fit into any one of them, and even if you succeed in doing that you've done that, you'll find they fit just as well into several.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: curmudgeon
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 08:42 PM

Mouth music?

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 08:45 PM

Did he forget songs of war?

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Rowan
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 08:54 PM

I used to get students to grapple with the question "Why do birds sing and frogs croak?"

And, while I could support the claim, Music, Levitin argues, is .... "the soundtrack of civilization"— a force that shaped us as a species and prepared us for the higher-order task of sharing complex communications with one another, to me it seems limiting to, then, just concentrate on that aspect of music that is sung with text.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 08:55 PM

O.k., here's what I did: I have a list of 60 traditional songs that I know by heart (or did when I printed it! The reason for the list was to counteract that moment of blank panic when called upon for a song). I checked the list to see if I could pull out one from each of the six categories.

Hmm...

friendship -- none, though from my non-trad and non-memorized repertoire, I'd pick Judy Collins' "Open the Door"

joy -- "Rambling in the New Mown Hay"

comfort -- "All the Pretty Little Horses"

knowledge -- "Young Man Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn"

religious -- this list is thin on that point, unless the "Farmer's Curst Wife" would qualify. Though, I could easily break into "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" or a few others, if need be! ;-D

love -- it's heavy on this end, of course, although, but from the ballad point, that is involving love, but not love songs in the lyric, first-person sense. Something like "Do You Love an Apple" might be the clearest pick here. Those ballads, they'd seem to fit the love + knowledge (as in lessons to be learned) joint category.

Anyone else bite?

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 08:56 PM

And everyone prior's responses came while I was composing the above!

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 09:04 PM

It's an academic exercise, certainly, and fraught with all the difficulties of categorizing anything (like folk music, for instance...).

From the review:

The loose boundaries between Levitin's categories, however, can sometimes lead to a certain slackness in his argument. By his own account, Levitin places the Johnny Cash song "I Walk the Line" in three different categories, citing it as an example of a friendship song, a knowledge song and a love song. And his criteria for identifying a friendship song — essentially, any music that helps facilitate, prompt or motivate "synchronous, coordinated" movement — are so broad that '60s protest music and chain-gang laments turn out to be friendship songs, too.

War... not having the book's definitions in front of me, I'd guess they'd tend to fall under "songs of knowledge", that is, songs describing life, with or without an implicit or explicit lesson (my own guess at a definition), though some might be more love or friendship related.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 09:12 PM

...and for those annoyed by categorization (I've just been looking at the "what's a ballad thread")... the point for me of soliciting more seemingly pointless lists like this is as an insight into 'Catters personal repertoires -- ultimately a social exercise, in this case. :-)

Also to alert folks to the book...

~ B in T

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 09:50 PM

"Birds sing songs without words. Humans don't."

Sorry, it's called Scat singing.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 10:22 PM

Both 'scat singing' and 'mouth music' use words (though mostly they are meaningless words), usually called 'vocables' for convenience. Birdsong has been shown to have local dialects, though whether or not the sounds involved are (from a bird's point of view) discrete words with assignable meanings is quite another matter. Perhaps the confusion here arises from the American tendency to call 'tunes' (music without words) 'songs', while in other parts of the world we tend to think of a song as invariably having words of some sort.

Levitin's thesis isn't new. Music and language are interdependent, and without the former there's a good chance we wouldn't have the latter. It sounds like a very interesting book, though.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 10:55 PM

I think the categories are specious, because any song that doesn't fit in a familiar slot (love, comfort, friendship) can be stuck into 'songs of knowledge,' a category so broad as to be undefinable.

A song about a ghost? 'I know a ghost story.'
A song about work? 'Here's how to do this job.'
A song about radishes? Teaching the next generation life skills.


Don't laugh. I had a roommate once who used to sing a song in Spanish about radishes.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Sep 08 - 10:59 PM

never mind. parlor games is what I had in mind.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Paul Burke
Date: 02 Sep 08 - 04:44 AM

...it is written that animals are divided into:

(a) those that belong to the Emperor,
(b) embalmed ones,
(c) those that are trained,
(d) suckling pigs,
(e) mermaids,
(f) fabulous ones,
(g) stray dogs,
(h) those that are included in this classification,
(i) those that tremble as if they were mad,
(j) innumerable ones,
(k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush,
(l) others,
(m) those that have just broken a flower vase,
(n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Rowan
Date: 02 Sep 08 - 08:07 PM

And I'm glad you did, DD.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: M.Ted
Date: 03 Sep 08 - 07:37 PM

Only two kinds of songs, actually--those that I like, and those that I don't.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 03 Sep 08 - 08:11 PM

O.k., forget the games...

Has anyone read Levitin's previous book: "This is Your Brain on Music"? It came out at the same time as Oliver Sack's "Musicophilia", which seemed to overshadow it in public attention (though I see it got on the NY Times bestsellers list, too). It sounded more interesting to me, but I haven't gotten to either, yet.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 03 Sep 08 - 08:31 PM

I posted a review of both books (from the science journal, Nature) last year. I guess I'd better get to the library.

~ B in T
(it's always a little embarrassing to be the most frequent poster to a thread one starts...)

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 04 Sep 08 - 07:13 AM

Becky, this is very interestng- I read Levitin's "Brain" book but haven't yet read the Sachs book, though I want to. And I didn't even know about Levitin's latest! Let me see if I can find songs to fit your categories. 'Scuse me while I cut and paste:


"friendship -- none, though from my non-trad and non-memorized repertoire, I'd pick Judy Collins' "Open the Door""
Couldn't agree with you more!

joy -- My chorus sings so many joyful songs, I can't really pick one. Unless it's "Deck the Hall with Boughs of Holly"- children sing it all year round, add new words, use it to express all kinds of joyful moments.

comfort -- "Blessed Quietness", "All through the Night"

knowledge -- Hmmm, have to think about that one.

religious -- "this list is thin on that point," For me it's vast, though many of my songs point in different directions (or not, depending on your point of view!). A few for me would be "How can I keep from singing", "Alleluia, the great storm is over", "Amazing grace", "Om nama shivaya", "God danced the day you were born"...


love - Dorothy Attneave wrote a lovely round called "The love your deepest heart desires" which pretty much says it for me

This is fun- I may have to build a chorus season around this concept. Thanks, Becky!

Allison

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Sep 08 - 09:36 PM

I wonder where songs about death fit in. They would seem to be a general category whether death be accidental, intentional or a natural process of being born on this earth. I'm sure Levitin has a rationale, maybe even an empirical one, for his six categories but I don't find them particularly satisfying.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 05 Sep 08 - 01:41 PM

Thanks for the list Allison!

It was interesting for me to look that way at my little list -- the list certainly isn't all the songs I know, but what I'd want handy if called upon at a session... thus no "Deck the Halls", and probably also the reason for the dearth of religious items. Shows up, also that I don't keep too many chorus songs on that list, it's more about performance (for myself or others) than group singing.

Any act of categorization has its uses in shaping an analysis or in providing a framework for practical application. But, it seems to me that categorization (if not categorizors!) is always going to be open to alternative approaches. (And haven't we found that to be true here?!)

Not having read the book (and this being true for everyone commenting here), it's hard to form a cogent argument one way or another about this particular framework of categories. It sounds to me like it was an interesting exercise for looking at how song has operated as a form of communication and record-keeping. To me, that overarching theme is more interesting than arguing about particular categories.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Stringsinger
Date: 05 Sep 08 - 01:55 PM

Songs of protest and topical criticism of political and social conditions is missing here.

Calypso, blues, Corridos, Woody, songs from the Depression, American Revolutionary War Songs that preceded the conflict, songs from the labor movement, (IWW, strikes etc.)
protest songs from the Vietnam period, rap or "conscious" Hip Hop, etc.

Subject: RE: 'Anthromusicology'
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 05 Sep 08 - 03:54 PM

Stringsinger, your categorization system is obviously entirely different from Levitin's; I'm sure he's got protest and topical songs under one of his big categories (like knowledge).

Your second list is a mish-mosh of approaches toward categorization, and more about where or when or who the songs come from than what they're about.

FWIW.

~ B in T