.. rhythmic in nature. Drumbeats, handclapping, beating on a log, things that imitate the pulse, which could have either a soothing or stirring effect. ...All tones have naturally occuring overtones that please the ear ..
But there's no practical natural reason things imitating the pulse should have a soothing or stirring effect (and if there were it would likely have one of those effects and not the other). Nor is there any practical natural reason that tones should please the ear. One can reason out why a taste for sweets and a dislike for bitter things would lead ancestral humans to eat good things and avoid bad ones. But rhythm, musical tones - there's no such reason underlying them.
Look at the different tonally based languages, or the languages that use clicks and whistles; music is heavily tied up with language development.
OTOH many languages don't use tones or clicks so they clearly aren't necessary for language. I'm not even sure there's any necessary link between language and music and see no reason language causes music.
.. there are theories that say it is part of survival in that it helps recognize and connect motor skills and other functions, e.g., interpreting the gait of an approaching predator.
Seems extremely far-fetched. I doubt there have been any studies performed which support that idea. Look at the vast number of creatures every bit as good or better at evading predators than us - all of whom get by w/o music.
Daniel Levitin who wrote "Your Brain on Music", says that
...when we hear music that we like, a vast network of brain regions involved in reward and pleasure start to fire. Neurons in the mesolimbic system, the nucleus accumbens and the hypothalamus begin an exquisite orchestration of neurchemical uptake and release, connecting to neural activity in the front lobe and the cerebellum. These same regions become active in response to other highly pleasurable activities-- such as winning a sum of money, eating chocolate, or having an orgasm-- mediating the release of dopamine and a host of other processes which have been shown recently to actually reduce physical pain. If our neurons could talk, they might well say “Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!”
That means music is pleasurable. Of course, we didn't really need to check our neurons to know that.
In time we will find there are plenty of natural causes for the development of the appreciation of music as now know it.
That is a statement of faith, of course. |
