why music?

[alocispepraluger102]

2 hours a day?

http://www.economist.com/printedition/disp...ory_ID=12795510

Biologists are addressing one of humanity’s strangest attributes, its all-singing, all-dancing culture

“IF MUSIC be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” And if not? Well, what exactly is it for? The production and consumption of music is a big part of the economy. The first use to which commercial recording, in the form of Edison’s phonographs, was to bring music to the living rooms and picnic tables of those who could not afford to pay live musicians. Today, people are so surrounded by other people’s music that they take it for granted, but as little as 100 years ago singsongs at home, the choir in the church and fiddlers in the pub were all that most people heard.

Other appetites, too, have been sated even to excess by modern business. Food far beyond the simple needs of stomachs, and sex (or at least images of it) far beyond the needs of reproduction, bombard the modern man and woman, and are eagerly consumed. But these excesses are built on obvious appetites. What appetite drives the proliferation of music to the point where the average American teenager spends 1½-2½ hours a day—an eighth of his waking life—listening to it?........

Edited December 19, 2008 by alocispepraluger102

[BruceH]

"2 hours a day?" indeed.

When I was a teen I remember listening far more than that.

But the question of what ancient need or appetite it fulfills is a valid one.

[alocispepraluger102]

"2 hours a day?" indeed.

When I was a teen I remember listening far more than that.

But the question of what ancient need or appetite it fulfills is a valid one.

indeed.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

There's a bit in there that I found most odd.

Dr Dunbar thinks language evolved to fill the role of grooming as human tribes grew too large for everyone to be able to groom everyone else. This is a controversial hypothesis, but it is certainly plausible. The evidence suggests, however, that the need for such “remote grooming” would arise when a group exceeds about 80 individuals, whereas human language really got going when group sizes had risen to around 140.

I've never heard that language got going when group sizes reached 140. How does anyone KNOW this?"

MG

[Serioza]

Dr Patel supports idea that music is not an adaptation in the way that language is, but is, instead, a transformative technology

.........music transforms people’s perceptions of the world without necessarily being a proper biological phenomenon....

well this makes sense