Humans Are Built to Enjoy Music
Our strong suit as humans is the ability to speak. We evolved to be so good at it that we can now do it with people on the other side of the planet as well as people who are not on the planet. As a byproduct, we developed a new art: music. We have practiced it for 35,000 years and have created an incredibly valuable industry around it. In 2020, the music industry generated $59.48 billion. Clearly, us humans find a lot of value in music. Most of us, actually.
Four percent of the world does not like music due to congenital amusia, or tone deafness from birth. In 2007, Isabelle Peretz, Stèphanie Cummings and Marie-Pierre Dubè researched the relationship between hereditary (able to be passed down by parents) speech impediments and congenital amusia. They found that congenital amusia is hereditary, coded in our DNA. Not only can you be predisposed to have no tone recognition ability, but you can be born with the ability to recognize tones perfectly.
Some people with absolute pitch, the ability to recognize a note when played, experience it in a way that is ineffable. They can not describe how they recognize the note, they just do. For people with tone-color synthesia, or chromesthesia, it is a different case. Synthesia is perceptive disorder that causes the subject receiving sensory or cognitive stimuli to involuntarily experience another sensory or cognitive path as well. There is also congenital synthesia, congenital meaning the condition is with the patient from birth. Congenital synthesia is also hereditary.
Disorders relating to pitch are not just developed in childhood, induced through chemical agents, or a product of brain damage (all causes of both amusia and chromesthesia), but could also be caused by a variation in genetic code. Pitch recognition is embedded in our genetic coding as a byproduct of early language. Language is what allowed homo sapiens to form communities, and soon enough we dominated the planet. To this day, our ability to comprehend music has survived because the humans that developed language survived.
Aside from the evolutionary and hereditary aspects of music, something all of us can experience is our emotional and cognitive reaction to music.
Music can alleviate choking. To “choke” in reference to sports and other competitions, is to fail due to the pressure of the situation; to crack under pressure. Researchers at Victoria University discovered that playing music during stressful situations lowered the subject’s self-awareness, allowing them to perform better. To prove their hypothesis they used the game of basketball. They had two type of scenarios: low pressure and high pressure. It was discovered that when music was played during the high pressure scenarios decreased self-awareness, and enabled participants to minimize explicit monitoring of execution and reduce general distractibility”. It allowed them to think clearly during a stressful situation. (Mesagno, Merchant, Morris, 2009).
Music therapy is the clinical use of music to accomplish goals one would in regular therapy. It involves creating, performing and listening to music. Music therapy has shown to lower blood pressure, improve memory, enhance social skills and even reduce muscle tension. There are a bunch of types of music therapy but they all prove effective in some way shape or form.
Based on the information gathered from the “choking” study and the influence music can have when paired with the practice of therapy, it is apparent that music can be used as a tool for alleviating mental ailments. Not only do we simply enjoy it, but can gain from it. The response from the body and mind to music displays the ability for humans to comprehend it is on a deeper than lyrical level.
Each example of the human brain’s relationship to pitch, not even mentioning rhythm, is proof that we have an innate ability to process musical concepts and that music is not just a cultural phenomenon, but hardwired into humans by default.
References
Tilot, Amanda K., et al. “Investigating Genetic Links between Grapheme–Colour Synaesthesia and Neuropsychiatric Traits.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, The Royal Society Publishing, 21 Oct. 2019.
The Hidden Sense: On Becoming Aware of Synthesia. (2009, January). Retrieved December 4, 2022, from
Music Therapy: What Is It, Types & Treatment. (n.d.). Cleveland Clinic.
Sacks, Oliver W., (2007). Musicophelia (ed. 1). Vintage Books. ISBN: 978-0-307-26791-7
Mesagno C, Marchant D, Morris T. Alleviating Choking: The Sounds of Distraction. Journal of applied sport psychology. 2009;21(2):131-147. doi:10.1080/10413200902795091
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
This is bad causal language:
Unless you are just being unclear, there’s no causal connection between “amusia is hereditary” and “music cognition is biological.” That’s just definitional tautology, like saying “his inability to do math” is caused by “his difficulty manipulating numbers.”
Deleted the second sentence and added “coded in our DNA” for emphasis. Without the second sentence, the next sentence being the transition shows its relevance to the next idea.
The paragraph that mentions synesthesia is fascinating (I remember hearing it said that Joni Mitchell instructed her band to make their music sound more green or blue), but unless I don’t know where these random observations are headed, I think we’re off the path. Still looking for the path, to be honest.
I disagree with the characterization your researchers used to explain the value of music to improve basketball. They say, “enabled participants to minimize explicit monitoring of execution and reduce general distractibility.” I say, “playing music during high-stress sport situations was a distraction that interrupted negative self-feedback in players.” Mine’s better because it’s clearer. Theirs sounds as if the music BOTH minimalized self-feedback AND was less distracting.” Or something. If it’s that unclear, it can’t be persuasive.
I disagreed with a bit of what they said in general, to be honest. I’m not sure if that makes the paper entirely unreliable but the experiment still proved something, regardless of if their reasoning as to why is correct or not. They credited music’s effect to lyrics. There were people in the post-experiment interviews who claimed listening to the lyrics distracted them causing to split their focus and not think negatively.
This is incorrect.
The presence of music at all draws attention. Whatever is going on in the song draws attention even, and especially, silence in as song. Even if someone does not understand what is happing harmonically, or why a rhythm that they’re hearing is difficult to perform, there are still things happening in the music (sound effects, solos, instrumental breaks/fills etc.). It is for those reasons that I disagree with some of their paper. The data is still useful though. It proves that music does have an affect on performance under stress, regardless of the reason why.
The song they played for every test subject was: https://youtu.be/SJUhlRoBL8M
The music therapy discussion might relate to a more general proposition, but I haven’t located the theme well enough to know.
Is this the same as saying, “Each example of a person’s relationship to food tastes, not even mentioning mouth texture, is proof that we have an innate ability to process the relationships between flavors, and that eating is not just a cultural phenomenon, but hardwired into humans by default”?
The only reason that statement is less impressive is because we know the taste of food is hardwired into us. It’s half the reason for having a tongue, it’s a reason for having a nose, it’s the reason we avoid bad smelling/tasting things and go towards good ones. Having this complex system to comprehend taste does not mean our bodies are meant to taste rocks. We think food. It’s the same with tonality, only a portion of our hearing sense. The sound of rocks is a topic that will not often show up in a conversation about music, same as rocks to the conversation of food, even though you can taste a rock and hear a rock moving against something else. We can use our senses to perceive anything, but there’s a specific reason for having each sense in the first place.
We also have entire organs dedicated to food and processing its nutrients, aside from the tongue. We have an organ not necessarily dedicated to music, the brain, but the fact that something like pitch recognition is a function our brain can develop around (ability to understand, lack thereof or affinity for) without ever hearing a sound in the first place (congenitally) means we were meant to make sense of the pitch of a sound, not just the shape of it.
Preliminarily graded. This post is always eligible for a Regrade following substantial Revision, but time is running out.
Thank you for your feedback. I will let you know when I finish making the suggested changes.
Revised late. Grade will have to wait.