Songs of ourselves

A 

Music is one of the human species's relatively few universal abilities. Without formal training, any individual, from Stone Age tribesmen to suburban teenagers, has the ability to recognize music and, in some fashion, to make it. Why this should be so is a mystery. After all, music isn't necessary for getting through the day, and if it aids in reproduction, it does so only in highly indirect ways. Language, by contrast, is also everywhere but for reasons that are more obvious. With language, you and the members of your tribe can organize a migration across Africa, build reed boats and cross the seas, and communicate at night even when you can't see each other. In all its technological extravagance, modern culture springs directly from the human talent for manipulating symbols and syntax. Scientists have always been intrigued by the connection between music and language. Yet over the years, words and melody have acquired a vastly different status in the lab and the seminar room. While language has long been considered essential to unlocking the mechanisms of human intelligence, music is generally treated as an evolutionary frippery, mere auditory cheesecake, as the Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker puts it.

B 

But thanks to a decade-long wave of neuroscience research, that tune is changing. A flurry of recent publications suggests that language and music may equally be able to tell us who we are and where we're from – not just emotionally, but biologically. And in an article in the August 6 issue of the journal Neuroscience, David Schwartz, Catherine Howe, and Dale Purves of Duke University argued that the sounds of music and the sounds of language are intricately connected. To grasp the originality of this idea, it's necessary to realize two things about how music has traditionally been understood. First, musicologists have emphasized that while each culture stamps a special identity onto its music, music itself has some universal qualities. For example, in virtually all cultures, the sound is divided into some or all of the 12 intervals that make up the chromatic scale – the scale represented by the keys on a piano. Second, these intervals are not equally distributed across cultures. Some musical systems, such as those of Indonesia or India, use intervals differently than the Western classical tradition does. The question, then, is why human cultures around the world would independently develop musical systems that share certain features yet differ in others.

C 

The Duke researchers proposed an answer that is startling in its simplicity. They suggested that the intervals we hear in music are not arbitrary inventions but rather reflections of the intervals we hear in speech. To test this hypothesis, they analysed hundreds of recordings of English, Mandarin, and other languages, measuring the frequencies of sound waves produced by speakers. They discovered that the distribution of tonal intervals in speech closely matched the distribution of intervals used in the musical scales of the corresponding cultures. In other words, the music of a culture appears to be shaped by the characteristic sound patterns of its language. English, for example, tends to use intervals of between two and five semitones in everyday speech, and these are precisely the intervals that predominate in Western music. Mandarin, with its complex tonal inflections, shows a different distribution, mirrored in traditional Chinese music.

D 

This connection between speech and music may explain why music evokes such powerful emotional responses. If music is built from the same acoustic building blocks as language, it may tap into neural circuits that evolved to process emotional cues in speech. A rising pitch, whether in speech or song, can signal excitement or urgency; a falling pitch can convey resignation or sadness. By exaggerating and patterning these natural speech contours, music creates a heightened emotional experience. This theory also accounts for the fact that instrumental music, without words, can still move us deeply. The emotional content is carried not by lyrics but by the musical intervals themselves, which mimic the expressive patterns of the human voice.

E 

Further research has supported and extended these findings. Neuroimaging studies show that listening to music activates many of the same brain regions involved in processing language, including Broca's area and Wernicke's area, long associated with speech production and comprehension. Music also engages the limbic system, the brain's emotional centre, explaining why a particular melody can trigger joy, sorrow, or nostalgia. Some researchers have even suggested that music and language evolved from a common ancestor, a kind of protolanguage that combined elements of both. In this view, the two abilities diverged over time but retained deep structural similarities.

F 

The implications of this research extend beyond academic curiosity. If music is indeed rooted in the sounds of speech, it may have practical applications in education and therapy. Children with language disorders, such as dyslexia, sometimes show improvements after musical training, perhaps because music exercises the same neural pathways needed for processing speech. Stroke patients who have lost the ability to speak may retain the ability to sing, and music therapy can sometimes help them recover language function. For elderly people with dementia, familiar songs can unlock memories and emotions that words alone cannot reach.

G 

None of this diminishes the uniqueness of music as an art form. Music is not merely language by another name; it has its own syntax, its own expressive possibilities, its own power to transcend cultural boundaries. But the research suggests that music is far more than "auditory cheesecake." It is woven into the fabric of human biology, shaped by the same evolutionary forces that gave us speech, and capable of revealing fundamental truths about who we are. As the Duke researchers conclude, the songs we sing may ultimately be songs of ourselves.