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books2009-05-28 11:01 pm
pseudo_tsuga) wrote in books2009-05-28 11:01 pm
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The World In Six Songs by David Levitin (2008)
The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature By Daniel J. Levitin.
I read the previous book of his, This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and enjoyed it so much it has a permanent place on my shelf. Most of the insights weren't new because of arts school but the writing was great with examples ranging from Classical to Elvis.
This one is not nearly as good. The book is not about six specific songs that explain the human condition but rather six types of songs: Friendship, Joy, Comfort, Knowledge, Religion and Love. They're not necessarily what's obvious either; the Hokey Pokey belongs under religion because it teaches a specific set of rituals that's only performed in special circumstances. Neat! Some of his ideas are intriguing, such as the reason musicians are so sexy is because it's harder to fake an emotion in a song than to lie. But since his reach is much more broad than his previous book, he badly overreaches his area of expertise. Worse still, he relies pop evolutionary psychology which is next to useless for proving a point. Anyone can spout an explanation for why this or that behavior is evolutionary hardwired!
He relies much more on anecdotes and namedropping and both left me flat. He closes the chapter on friendship, for example, by thinking adoringly of the sleep-in of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. As I am one of the few people in the world with a cynical enough heart not to like "Imagine", it inspired only impatience for the next interesting science tidbit.
He also relies on celebrities to provide additional explanation. There is a reason they are more famous for their music than their words. Joni Mitchell especially made some comments that made me pause.
...yeah.
I read the previous book of his, This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession and enjoyed it so much it has a permanent place on my shelf. Most of the insights weren't new because of arts school but the writing was great with examples ranging from Classical to Elvis.
This one is not nearly as good. The book is not about six specific songs that explain the human condition but rather six types of songs: Friendship, Joy, Comfort, Knowledge, Religion and Love. They're not necessarily what's obvious either; the Hokey Pokey belongs under religion because it teaches a specific set of rituals that's only performed in special circumstances. Neat! Some of his ideas are intriguing, such as the reason musicians are so sexy is because it's harder to fake an emotion in a song than to lie. But since his reach is much more broad than his previous book, he badly overreaches his area of expertise. Worse still, he relies pop evolutionary psychology which is next to useless for proving a point. Anyone can spout an explanation for why this or that behavior is evolutionary hardwired!
He relies much more on anecdotes and namedropping and both left me flat. He closes the chapter on friendship, for example, by thinking adoringly of the sleep-in of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. As I am one of the few people in the world with a cynical enough heart not to like "Imagine", it inspired only impatience for the next interesting science tidbit.
He also relies on celebrities to provide additional explanation. There is a reason they are more famous for their music than their words. Joni Mitchell especially made some comments that made me pause.
"White are afraid to show their emotions particularly joy [...] I think it goes back to the original sin and the biblical accounts of Adam and Eve being embarrassed—that has negatively impacted white social interactions for centuries. Most white singers don't have anywhere near the emotion that black singer do [...] every single note is invested with all the feeling of human existence. In my younger days, I had my little white girl folk voice, and I didn't know how to put emotion in it, and I also hadn't experienced enough of the world to really express life's emotions fully. Black culture is much more balanced, they put a value on emotion and spirituality. White culture wants to keep all that stuff quiet and locked away."
"The Genesis story, originally, was about the Earth Mother; all the primitives believe this, and I'm a primitive at heart too. It's the smarter myth, the original one. they're all myths, but of all the myths, that's the one that is most intelligent for living on this planet: 'Earth Mother gives birth to Creation without a sire.' Then that evolved into 'Earth Mother gave birth to the planet with a sire,' which devolved into—these are all de-evolutionary—'Earth Mother is killed.' Eventually it comes down to the last one, which is 'Father gives birth to the planet without a mother.' So here we are in this godessless situation; out of balance, no more Mother Earth or Father Sky. Mother Earth got killed off and what we ended up with is a narcissitic, war-loving, woman-hating religion, and that's what Christianity, Islam and Judaism are. They try to teach it otherwise, but they aren't. It's a fundamental hatred of the feminine principal and a domination of it.
...yeah.