Music as a Soundtrack to Our Lives
Since the beginning of recorded human history music has created a sense of the sacred around key life events such as birth, marriage and death, heightening the experience of these peak moments. The ancient Greeks used music in all kinds of rituals to the gods, such as rain-making rituals (Haland, 2001). In Plato’s Laws (Fourth to fifth century BC), he spoke at length about the use of music and dance in rituals to the gods. Terracotta figures found in Ibiza, Spain which date from the fifth to third centuries BC, depict women playing musical instruments and were likely used in funerary marches or fertility rituals (Lopez-Bertran & Garcia-Ventura, 2012). Similarly in ancient Egypt, music was used to appease the gods, and musicians often held religious titles (Lopez-Bertran & Garcia-Ventura, 2012). The Chinese Xunzi (ca. 312-230 BC) also discussed the attainment of perfection in ritual through music (Knoblock, 1994).
There is evidence of music use even in pre-human times. The Divje Babe flute, found in a Slovenian cave, is believed by many to be the earliest found example of a musical instrument, being over 40,000 years old and possibly manufactured by Neanderthal man (Tuniz et al., 2012). The Hohle Fels flute is also an example of a musical instrument dating from the paleolithic era (Conard, Malina, & Muenzel, 2009). The finding of a female figurine on the same site as the Hohle Fels flute, probably used as a symbol of fertility, suggests that the two items were linked and may have been used together for ceremonial purposes (Conard et al., 2009).
While the functions and uses of these prehistoric musical instruments can only be speculated upon at this stage, it is likely that early rituals involving music and dancing served as ways of binding communities together in a common purpose. To our evolutionary ancestors, cooperation between members of the group was important in terms of survival. Not only are groups more effective at defending against predators—picture the lone zebra being attacked by a lion as opposed to a herd of zebra stampeding away—but they are also more effective at obtaining precious resources such as food. One theory about the evolutionary origins of music therefore suggests that music was a form of ‘vocal grooming’ that developed when social groups amongst our ancestors became too large for physical grooming to be a practical way of bonding between individuals (Dunbar, 1998). Music may therefore have become a way of improving group cohesiveness and cooperation.
There is no doubt that even today music has a binding function between individuals in a group. In live performance venues, hundreds of people may move in unison together, sing in unison, and experience the emotional highs and lows of the music as one. One of the most powerful mechanisms believed to trigger emotional responses to music is that of emotional contagion, in which, through a process involving empathy, mimicry and mirror neurons, the listener begins to feel the very emotions being expressed in the music (Molnar-Szakacs & Overy, 2006). In a group listening situation this contagion is compounded when the people around also begin to express emotional responses to the music, in much the same way that the impact of a film viewed in a crowded cinema may be heightened by the emotions of those around us (Garrido & Macritchie, 2018). In fact, research suggests that the situation in which music is heard can have a profound impact on both the functions music serves and how we respond to it (Greb, Schlotz, & Steffens, 2017).
However, while music has evidently been a powerful force for binding communities and groups together from prehistoric times until today, increasingly in the modern world it also provides a way of isolating an individual from the world around them. The advent of recording technology was the first step in shifting music from being a communal activity to something that could be enjoyed in private.
The invention of the phonograph enabled people to listen to music in solitude in the comfort of their own homes rather than in a concert hall. As digital technology advances, music is becoming ever more portable. Listeners can now carry hundreds of tracks of music on small devices that can be taken wherever they go. The use of headphones means that even while walking on a crowded city street or sitting in a cram-packed train at peak hour, an individual can create a sense of personal space, a bubble of isolation from those around them (Garrido & Schubert, 2011). Thus, music in the modern world is playing an increasingly important role in our inner lives as individuals. We use it on a daily basis to create atmosphere, shape our moods, to aid us in the fulfillment of personal goals, to express personal values and emotions, and to delineate personal and cultural boundaries. Our daily lives are accompanied by a musical soundtrack that is sometimes of our own creation and sometimes not, with the key moments of our existence as humans being marked by music in striking ways.
One of the primary ways by which music is able to take on such significance in our inner world is by the way it interacts with memory. Memories associated with important emotions tend to be more deeply embedded in our memory than other events. Emotional memories are more likely to be vividly remembered (Kensinger & Corkin, 2003) and are more likely to be recalled with the passing of time than neutral memories (Sharot & Phelps, 2004). Since music can be extremely emotionally evocative, key life events can be emotionally heightened by the presence of music, ensuring that memories of the event become deeply encoded. Retrieval of those memories is then enhanced by contextual effects, in which a recreation of a similar context to that in which the memories were encoded can facilitate its retrieval. Thus, re-hearing the same music associated with the event can activate intensely vivid memories of the event. Memory is therefore closely intertwined with how our musical preferences develop and the personal significance that music holds in our individual lives, and will be a key theme considered throughout this volume.
Globally, music listening is now the predominant musical experience enjoyed by most people, with statistics revealing that sales of recorded music worldwide are massive: US$17.3 billion in 2017 (IFPI, 2018). At other points in history, prior to recorded sound and the mass production of recorded music, musical enjoyment was contingent on active participation. Many people had skills that facilitated communal musical activities ranging from barns dances to sing-alongs in pubs. The notion of music listening as a rarefied experience was not imaginable. There is thus no doubt that the recording revolution in the availability of recorded music has changed the way people use music. Questions remain about the degree to which this has changed our very perception of music.
While the ways in which we engage with music have changed dramatically in the last century—with an inevitable flow-on effect to the functions that music serves—in some ways music still fulfills fundamental purposes that have ensured its prominence in human society since the beginning of recorded history. One of the primary aims of this volume is to examine the twists and turns in the flow of music use throughout history, with a view to generating a better understanding of the role it serves both socially and psychologically in our lives today.
The Conceptual Framework of This Book
How are our personal soundtracks of life devised? What makes some pieces of music more meaningful to us than others? The answer is that a complex interaction o...