An Ethological View of Music and Its Relevance for Music Therapy

This article was downloaded by: [Ellen Dissanayake]On: 09 November 2014, At: 08:45Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Nordic Journal of Music TherapyPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rnjm20

An Ethological View of Music and itsRelevance to Music TherapyEllen DissanayakePublished online: 10 Jul 2001.

To cite this article: Ellen Dissanayake (2001) An Ethological View of Music and itsRelevance to Music Therapy, Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 10:2, 159-175, DOI:10.1080/08098130109478029

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08098130109478029

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoeveras to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of theauthors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy ofthe Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses,actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, inrelation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rnjm20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/08098130109478029

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08098130109478029

& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

ARTICLES

Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 10(2), pp . 159-175.

An Ethological View of Music and its Relevance to Music Therapy Ellen Dissanayake

Abstract An ethological view approaches music as an evolved or adaptive behavior that contributed to the fitness (survival and reproductive success) of ancestral humans. Such a view enlarges customary sociocultural treatments of music by seeking its components and their antecedents in evolved neural mechanisms and capacities that have emotional and behavioral correlates. Antecedents of musical behavior are identified in ritualized vocal, visual, and kinesic components of mother-infant interaction, which during human evolution provided rudiments for further deliberate "unification" as music in culturally-created ceremonial practices. An original motivation for music is posited to reside in concern or care about vital but uncertain human matters, and suggested selective functions to be relief of individual anxiety and coordination of group effort. Hypotheses that consider music's adaptiveness to lie solely in male competitive sexual display do not account for purely communal instances of music or for neural adaptations such as isometric timekeeping and pitch-blending that promote behavioral and emotional coordination. Theoretical and practiced implications for music therapists of an ethological view of music are suggested.

Keywords: Ethology - evolutionary psychology - universals of music - mother-infant interaction -individual and social functions of music - sexual selection - cooperation

Introduction

Until the last decade or so, psychologists and philosophers of music were rarely concerned with its biological origin or purpose. It was more or less taken for granted that music, like religion or language, was simply there, part of human culture. If anything, its particular manifestations required sociocultural explanation since it is obvious that musical forms and traditions differ among social groups, as do languages and customs.

Recently, however, readers of the NJMT and its website have become aware of ongoing stimulating discussions about music with regard to its neurobiological underpinnings, its evolutionary

origin, and its relationship to other aspects of human behavior such as spoken language, play, exploration, and parent-infant interaction (see, e.g., NJMT2000, Vol.9, nos. 1,2). The uniting principle behind such speculations is the recognition that music is not simply cultural, but also quite obviously "biological" - it is part of our species' nature. Like language, music relies on sensory and motor capacities and has demonstrable emotional and motivational causes and effects. These arise from the structure of the brain, which develops in certain predictable ways during embryogenesis like any other organ, say the heart or the lungs, according to biological principles, and directs an organism's subsequent activity in the world. Although, to be

Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 2001, 10(2)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISSANAYAKE

sure, individual languages, arts, and social customs differ, all humans are born predisposed to learn and practice the language, arts, and belief systems of the group they find themselves in. These universal human predispositions - to speak, to make music, to join with others in meaningful collective practices -can be viewed as evolved behaviors. Like other complex behaviors, they must have been biologically useful or they would not be so widespread, even universal, in individuals and societies. They were adaptive: they helped those who did these things to survive better than individuals who did not speak, make music, or join with their fellows.1

But how are they adaptive? What was it about our human way of life that made musicmaking important? Why and how did we ever evolve, or begin to evolve, the capacities to make and respond to music? And why should music therapists be interested in an evolutionary explanation of music? What, if anything, might such an understanding contribute to their practice? My view is that therapists already operate as if they believe that

ELLEN DISSANAYAKE is an independent scholar, writer, and lecturer, whose books, What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why (1992), and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000), explore the importance of the arts in human evolution and in human lives. Between 1968 and 1985 she lived in Sri Lanka, with periods of residence in Nigeria and Papua New Guinea, where she taught World Art and piano at the National Arts School. She has taught at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research in New York, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh in 1994-95. More recently she was Emens Distinguished Professor at the College of Fine Arts, Ball State University (1997), and Distinguished Visiting Speaker, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada (1998). Address: 1605 E. Olive Street, # 104; Seattle, WA, 98122, USA. Tel: ++1 206 325 2782. E-mail: [email protected]

features of music (e.g., its nonverbal, emotionally expressive, and relational elements) make it especially suitable for treating some clients or for treating particular problems of clients. In other words, they tacitly if not overtly work within an ethological framework in which some features of music are found to contribute to psychobiological wellbeing - that is, can be considered as "adaptive."

It is my conviction that an ethological understanding of music provides a comprehensive foundation for music therapy (and art, dance, and drama therapies), and that it embraces or supports both inter- and intrapersonal psychodynamic positions. Like evolutionary psychology, ethology, based on Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection, attempts to understand human behavior as being based on dispositions that evolved to better fit us for our lives in the world and with other people.2 We have certain physiological and psychological needs that impel us to behave in ways that generally help to ensure that these needs will be met. In humans, most of our needs require the cooperation of others so that we have an armamentarium of evolved social behaviors that serve us in getting along with our associates. Music is one of these evolved social behaviors, although psychologists and neuroscientis ts are only beginning to address its evolutionary nature and purpose. It is likely that an understanding of the unique nature and purpose of music as it evolved in ancestral environments millennia ago would help to explain why and how music therapy can improve and enhance the lives of troubled people today.

As with most new areas of study, there is conceptual confusion about framing and answering the relevant questions. Those who wish to investigate the subject of music as adaptive soon discover that the field contains a few scattered blind men, each of whom grasps one part of the body of the proverbial elephant. Seeing the elephant as a comprehensible whole still eludes us.

In the present paper, I describe some elementary

160

1 In a thoughtful paper, Kennair (2000) shows openness to the relevance of biology and evolutionary psychology to music therapy, although he questions whether music can be considered as an adaptation. Miller (2000a, p. 335) finds that music, like language, fulfills nine classic criteria for being considered to be an adaptation. 2 Evolutionary psychology, which investigates the adaptive neural mechanisms that influence human behavior, is a relatively new subfield of Darwinian evolutionary biology, (see Crawford & Krebs 1998). Ethology, or behavioral biology, is concerned with elucidating evolved behaviors of animals (including humans) and is described in some detail in the text (see also Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989). The two fields overlap and are complementary.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

mailto:[email protected]

AN ETHOLOGICAL VIEW OF MUSIC AND ITS RELEVANCE TO MUSIC THERAPY

ideas or concepts from the field of ethology - animal behavior - that seem relevant to the quest, evident in recent issues of this journal, for an understanding of human music as both a biological and a cultural phenomenon. Following this necessarily cursory summary, I briefly present my own ethologically-based view of music and suggest some implications of this view for the field of music therapy.

Ethology

Although people in every time and place have of necessity observed the behavior of animals and have appreciated their characteristic attributes, the systematic examination of animal behavior as a field of specialized scientific study is only about a half century old. In the 1930s, naturalists like Konrad Lorenz in Austria, Carl von Frisch in Germany, and Niko Tinbergen in the Netherlands (and later England), began to observe the behavior of animals in natural environments and to develop founding principles of a branch of biology which came to be called ethology (from Gk. ethos, or "way of life"). Although the classical studies in the field are about insects, fish, birds, and nonhuman mammals, ethological principles can be applied to humans as well (seeEibl-Eibesfeldt 1989).

The early ethologists were not articulating new problems so much as pioneering a new approach to old ones (Hinde 1982, p. 15). Ethology is interdisciplinary. It requires knowledge of (and is relevant to) several fields of study, including psychology, physiology, and social behavior, along with ecology and taxonomy. Insofar as a human activity like music can be understood within such fields, it can be approached ethologically as well.

Fundamental to ethological thinking is the evolutionary idea that behavior, like anatomy and physiology, has arisen and changed (evolved) over time to better suit an animal to a way of life in a particular environment. For example, the singing (a "behavior") of some species of birds has evolved -like wings (anatomy) and warmbloodedness (physiology) - to better enable them to live and thrive in their particular environments. B irds have evolved from featherless, flightless, coldblooded reptiles. Over many millions of years they gradually acquired

feathers, wings, warm blood, special communicative sounds, and other adaptive features that eventually came to characterize the various species of birds we know today. As ethologists, we can also ask how human song and musicmaking (however that is defined - see below) developed from ancestral forms - i.e., in hominids (upright walking creatures) that themselves evolved from anthropoid (humanlike) apes - which did not walk upright or sing or make music.

Actually, there are four different questions that can be asked about an observed behavior, such as music (Tinbergen 1963). Although ethologists are interested in all four questions, the first three are often addressed by psychologists or others who may not take an ethological/evolutionary perspective. Music therapists would also be interested in all.

1. What is its immediate cause! What seems to motivate or predispose musical behavior? In the case of birdsong, one can describe how increasing day-length in the spring affects the male bird's brain chemistry, inducing it to sing. The immediate cause of human song and other human music is not so precisely specifiable: are there occasions upon which humans, like birds, automatically or spontaneously begin to make music? Certainly on some social occasions they do - every cultural group has created particular celebrations or observances which seem to require singing and other musicmaking, and even children are quickly indoctrinated to perform as expected on these occasions, e.g., "Happy Birthday" at a birthday party. Very young children also frequently sing for no discernible reason - perhaps discharging surplus energy, or feeling excited and happy. (These suggestions could be tested as hypotheses). An emotional state of happiness in adults is often expressed by singing or whistling or dance-like movement, or by choosing to listen to music that echoes such a state. The "blues" express or echo personal suffering. In premodern societies (and often in our own modern societies), one finds that ceremonial practices (in which music is integral) appear when vital concerns (i.e., matters regarding prosperity, health, and safety) are addressed.

2. How does it develop (ontogeny)? With birdsong, experimenters have discovered that some


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISSANAYAKE

species require to hear their own species song before they can sing; others may be deafened at birth and never hear their species' song but sing it perfectly; still other species have a general "blueprint" for singing, but require practice and hearing others sing. Using methods suitable to their subjects, developmental psychologists have described musical capacities as they are displayed in human infants and children (e.g., as described by Trehub 2000). Nearly all humans "like" music; they can recognize a melody, carry a tune, and appreciate musical performances by others (Miller 2000a, p. 335).

3. What is itsfunctiotf! (Whatis itfbrl). Birdsong serves purposes such as advertising the territory of an individual male and thereby discouraging rivals from invading it. It also attracts females. Human music serves a variety of functions - it too may attract the opposite sex or excite the envy or admiration of rivals; it may soothe the savage breast, increase self-esteem, relieve tedium, provide recreation, evoke a spiritual world, encourage group coordination, and so forth (see Miller 2000a).

The most usual sorts of functional explanations for human behaviors are. proximate. Proximate (or immediate) explanations of a behavior tell us why people do it - usually because in one way or another doing it "feels good" or "right." Proximate explanations make clear the importance of motivating behavior by creating emotions - so that behaving in such a way (e.g., making music) feels good or desirable. However, evolutionists are also concerned with ultimate function. By attracting females to his territory, and repelling rival males, the singing of a male bird contributes to his reproductive success, that is, his overall ability to transmit his genes into future generations. Males who sing the loudest, lengthiest, and most complex songs are the most "successful" because females choose them to mate with in preference to singers of weaker, shorter, and simpler songs. Over time, singing (in some species) has become a way for female birds to assess male quality (health, vigor, access to resources of food and shelter), and is an evolved, intrinsic behavior in normal male birds.3 The most comprehensive functional explanations of human 5 Females need not know they are assessing such attributes mates those who sing them.


music address ultimate function in this manner and show how proximate mechanisms help to accomplish ultimate function (e.g., Merker 1999, 2000; Miller 2000a, b).

4. How did the beluivior evolve (phylogeny)? What was its origin and evolutionary course? What were precursor behaviors in the course of its evolution, and what adaptive requirements influenced it and "drove" it to its current state? In the case of birdsong, one might examine environments and ways of life in birds that do not sing, or compare closely-related or other kinds of birds which make varying use of sounds. An ultimate functional explanation of human music should propose how it originated and changed over evolutionary time.

Some investigators (Brown 2000a, Falk 2000, Molino 2000) note the resemblances between music and language, and their neurological overlap, hypothesizing that these are evolutionarily related, possibly having a common origin. Falk (2000, pp. 210, 214) suggests that music may have begun in the emotive and affective calls of early hominids such as Australopithecus, perhaps in chorusing and drumming (see also Merker 1999, 2000). I have proposed that music developed from several "proto"musical components that first arose in temporally-organized interactions between ancestral mothers and their infants, these components gradually becoming "music" when early humans developed ceremonial ritual (see below and Dissanayake 2000a, 2000b).

Such hypotheses are necessarily speculative. Their plausibility, however, rests upon their compatibility with a large body of other relevant knowledge - about primate and human evolution, the neurology, physiology, and anatomy of such features as the vocal tract and auditory apparatus, and neurological concomitants of other musical abilities such as the capacity to beat or keep time in synchrony with an external timekeeper. Before proposing such hypotheses, one should also have some familiarity with the variety of ways humans in non-Western societies have used music and be acquainted with the ontogeny of musical behavior in infants and children.

They simply need to like such songs and choose as

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

AN ETHOLOGIC AL VIEW OF MUSIC AND ITS RELEVANCE TO MUSIC THERAPY

Our eventual understanding of the evolutionary origin and function of music will require placing all these subjects of investigation into their proper configuration - the total elephant. However, our choice of a facet to focus upon is affected by what we think "music" is, or what feature(s) of music we consider to be critical.

What Is Music?

Although there are intrinsic problems in defining any subject of study, it does not seem overly difficult to surmise what might be meant by "behaviors" such as locomotion, mating, or parenting. The term "music," however, covers such a variety of different and sometimes odd practices and notions that its definition remains largely unresolved and contested. Music is not a unified and homogenous reality, but mixed and heterogeneous (Molino 2000, p. 169). Nevertheless (pace Miller 2000a), although some theoretical positions may dispense with definitions, an ethological view of music must postulate an identifiable behavioral entity with musical or protomusical features that could have arisen in creatures like our ancestors and upon which natural selection could have acted.

It has been well remarked that people in many societies do not even have a word for "music." Yet the fact that there are human societies without such a word or concept does not in itself invalidate the search for a specifiable referent for the term. These societies may not have words for "education" or "ethics" or "taxonomy" either, and yet we can observe instances of practices that can be justifiably included in such concepts. But even in our own contemporary Western societies, a useful concept of music (i.e., one that is neither too general nor too restrictive) is difficult to pin down. Few would disagree that a concept of'music" typically includes such things as singing and instrumental playing, both composed and improvised instances, numerous styles or varieties (e.g., "pop," folk, electronic, classical [or "art"] music, etc.), and the use of elements of melody, harmony, rhythm, and pulse or meter. But is whistling music? Drumming? Chanting? Humming to oneself or under one's breath? Moving rhythmically, as regularly tapping

a toe or wiggling a knee? Dancing? Which of these forms or components of music do we want to say evolved, or served as origin(s) for music? How are they related to one another (if at all)? Is one more important than the others or do all have something fundamental in common (a universal feature or features) beneath their apparent differences?

Universals in Music The literature on musical universals is vast, and for some idea of the scope of the subject, I refer interested readers to Section V in the volume edited by Wallin, Merker and Brown (2000). Apparent universals relevant to an evolutionary understanding of music include:

1. Universal features that arise from inherent physiological and anatomical capacities or mechanisms. These include perceptual and cognitive constraints on the person's capacity to process and produce sound. For example, Erik Christensen (2000: p.33) identifies crucial components in the ability to hear and process sounds of any kind, not only music. He names five basic biological dimensions to any animal's ability to listen: intensity (detection of sound); timbre (quality of sound that permits distinction, recognition, and identification of sound); space (permits localization of sound source); movement (perception of change) and pulse perception (experience of regularity). While these dimensions characterize listening to anything, not only music, they establish aural parameters for the components of musical behavior.

Trehub and associates have specifically described "processing universals" and innate learning preferences (Trehub 2000) that affect or bias the sorts of rhythmic and melodic patterns that appear widely, or can appear at all, in human musics. These include concomitants of the perception of consonance and dissonance, interval relationships in scales, rhythmic forms, and considerations of "good" and "not good" melodies (Trehub 2000). Everywhere octaves are perceived as equivalent; all scales have seven or fewer pitches (per octave); and rhythmic patterns are based on patterns divided into twos & threes (Brown et al. 2000, p. 14).

Wittman and Poppel (1999) describe temporal processes of the central nervous system that enable the perception of succession and duration and that


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISS AN AYAKE

affect perceived grouping of individual elements, permitting both anticipation and the sense of temporal order. Merker (1999, p. 30; 2000, p. 319) emphasizes the uniquely human capacity to "entrain" to a repetitive beat - to keep time - and considers this to be the "irreducible biological root" for human music.4 Isometric timekeeping makes possible anticipation and thus both the ability to alternate and to synchronize behaviorally with others.

Malloch (1999) describes an interesting neurological and behavioral principle that underlies human communication generally, and is "particularly exploited in music": "communicative musicality." This is an intrinsic (inborn) organizing principle in healthy parent-infant interaction that facilitates turn-taking, regulates pitch contours, and inflects the timbre of vocalizations. Trevarthen (1999) and Trevarthen and Malloch (2000) explore this fundamental capacity in humans, present at birth in the regulatory core of the brain, for sharing with others a sense of time and for making and recognizing phrases and narratives of feeling. Their work emphasizes the motivational and emotional roots of musical behavior.

2. Universal features that give emotional color or direction to musical phenomena, and arise from our phenomenal felt existence. Among these are temporal feelings in human life (Imberty 2000, p. 461; Mache 2000, p. 475; Malloch 1999; Trevarthen 1999) - the bodily and psychological meanings of slow and fast, accelerando and ritardando, repetition, rubato, of uneven progression, and so forth. There are analogic or "sentic" factors (Brown 2000: p. 288; Clynes 1977,1982; Trevarthen 1999), which reflect "multimodal" neural processing, where a melodic contour, for example, is experienced as rising not only in time but in space, and such rising or lifting echoes feelings of expansion or yearning or release. High pitch is widely associated with happiness, affection, tenderness, and increased arousal in both normal and synthesized speech (Frick 1985; Krauss etal. 1983; Schererand Oschinsky 1977). Emotional excitement is universally expressed through loud, fast, accelerating and high-registered sound patterns (Brown et al. 2000, p. 14). Daniel Stern (1985) calls such features "vitality contours" or "vitality 4 Merker notes that a few lower animals, such as some in

1 6 4 Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 2001, 10(2)

affects," and I have referred to them as "rhythms and modes" (Dissanayake 2000b).

3. Universal features which appear widely in the social or personal uses to which music is put. Nettl (2000, p. 468), for example, points out that music seems to be universally used in rituals, where it is associated with dance. Additionally music is used culturally to provide some kind of fundamental change in individuals' consciousness, and to mark importance. Such observations are relevant to several ethological questions - immediate cause, proximate function, and evolutionary origin.

4. Miscellaneous universal features. Observations that all known societies perform vocal music, that music is performed by both men and women, that some music in all societies uses only three or four pitches, that the major second is used everywhere, and that meter or pulse is characteristic of all music may seem trivial, but they are valuable claims to consider in a theoretical reconstruction of the features that could have characterized the earliest types of music (Nettl 2000).

A Proposed Ethological Definition of Music Like other definitions, an ethological definition of music (that is, characterizing it as an evolved behavior) must account for all its manifestations and characteristics. Because musical behavior today varies so widely among cultural groups, few theorists have offered a definition more precise than those of Blacking (1973), "humanly organized sound," or Nettl (1983), "human sound communication outside the scope of spoken language."

The ethological definition of music that I propose here refers to a behavioral capacity rather than to a conceptual category. It need not account for anomalous or contradictory examples that confound its original adaptive nature such as the performer's silence and immobility in the John Cage composition, 4'33", or to the lack of overt movement in listeners that is required by modern classical concert listening protocol. (One would not consider motorcycle riding or wheelchair operation to be relevant to an ethological investigation of bipedal locomotion).

Thus I offer a provisional ethological definition (delineation or delimitation) of music as follows: the :ts or frogs, also produce synchronous sounds.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14


capacity to "artify" and/or respond to the unification by others of various protomusical components, including concurrent vocal, visual, and kinesic elements, whose effects encourage participation and positively affect the participant's sense of well-being.

Artification will be described more fully below; it includes such activities or operations as formalizing, repeating, exaggerating, and elaborating, all with regard to a metric pulse. Like spoken language, music is predisposed and emerges spontaneously, but requires a facilitating social environment in which others are making music.

Mother-Infant Interaction and Music: Ritualization and "Artification"

Music therapists have for some years been aware of "musical" features in the intimate interactions between mothers (or caretakers) and very young infants. These interactions have been described in detail by psychologists of infancy such as Papousek andPapousek(e.g., 1981), Stern (e.g., 1985/2000), and Trevarthen (e.g., 1999), who, with others, have produced many papers that describe this remarkable, apparently universal, dyadic behavior. (See also references made to these papers in recent articles in the NJMT.) Generally speaking, the mother-infant theorists have not related their findings to ethology or evolutionary theory, and ethologists and evolutionary psychologists for the most part are unfamiliar with the mother-infant work. In my opinion, both have much to learn and incorporate from each other.

In previous publications (Dissanayake 1999, 2000a, 2000b), I have developed a theory of the origin and subsequent evolution of the human behavior of music (and the other arts), which seems to me to follow from and agree with mother-infant studies when viewed from an ethological perspective and integrated with findings from other fields -neuroscience, paleontology, and ethnomusicology. Although there is not space for anything like a full redescription here, I will summarize my ideas, relate them to the ethological principles described previously, and point out their implications for theory in music therapy.

I suggest that the human behavior of music originated from protomusical vocal, visual, and kinesic components that were first developed in affiliative interactions that evolved between early human mothers and their infants, probably well before the evolution of speech. I see this interaction as originating in response to an adaptive problem, as follows. We know that our hominid ancestors walked upright and had larger brains than their quadruped predecessors. By the time of Homo erectus, some two million years ago, these features demanded a comparative reduction of gestation (and consequently, more helpless infants) because the anatomical changes that permitted upright walking precluded sufficient enlargement of the birth canal for a larger-brained infant. If a human baby today were as mature at birth as an infant chimpanzee, it would have to spend another year in utero (Portman [1941], cited in Martin [1990, p. 426]) and would weigh two or three times more at birth than newborns presently do. Although ancestral human mothers would surely have been attentive mothers (like chimpanzees, bonobos, and other great apes, our nearest relatives), the greater demands for care required by such immature infants over months and years would have favored psychological adaptations (expressed behaviorally) that ensured a mother's solicitude. I posit that mother-infant interactions (as described by Malloch [1999], Stern [ 1985/2000], Trevarthen [ 1999], and others) evolved as a behavioral means of creating and sustaining an emotional bond between ancestral human mothers and their increasingly immature infants.

Major elements of the interaction include characteristic vocal, visual, and kinesic signals performed as a "package" by the mother (or caretaker) to the infant, who has evolved to respond to them and to prefer them to ordinary speech and movement. In this package are vocalizations (sometimes called "motherese" or "infant-directed speech"), which are soft, undulant, high-pitched, and breathy compared to utterances directed to adults;/ac/a/ expressions, which include wide eyes, raised eyebrows, open mouth, and sustained smiles; and kinesic movements, which include nodding the head, throwing the head back sharply ("bob"), tongue-clicks, and touching - rhythmically patting and stroking, or moving the baby's hands and feet

Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 2001, 10(2) 1 6 5

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISSAN AYAKE

back and forth, and so forth. These behaviors seem to be drawn from similar sounds, expressions, and movements in human adult-adult communication that indicate friendliness, readiness for contact, and a general disposition for affiliation. (One can also find antecedents of these in primate affiliative behaviors). However, in mother-infant interaction, these "'affiliative signals" have been altered from their casual, practical uses in ordinary, everyday human communicat ion: they are simplified (stereotyped or formalized), exaggerated in time and space, repeated (with regard to a metric pulse), and in some cases elaborated.

Ritualization

Such "operations" - simplification and formalization. exaggeration, repeti t ion, and elaboration -characterize what ethologists call (in other animals) "ritualized" behaviors, where a movement from a practical context (say self-grooming, or flapping the wings before flight) has become changed (formalized, repeated, exaggerated, and elaborated) so that attention is drawn to it. and it then communicates a new social message. No longer does preening indicate simply cleaning one's feathers, but when ritualized means "Notice me. I want to mate with you." Wing-flapping, when ritualized , no longer indicates preparation for flight, but means "Note this: This is my territory and I will defend it."

I suggest that ancestral human mothers, with their infants, evolved a ritualized performance in which ordinary happy, affiliative sounds, expressions, and gestures became "e.v//Y/ordinary" - thus unmistakable - and, when coordinated by a common or isometric rhythm, served to unite the pair in an emotional bond. As Trevarthen and Mai loch (2000) describe, the components of mother-infant interactions are additionally coordinated (shaped), as the pair co-create and share a common pulse and quality in "affecting chains" or sequences of expression.

The emotional bond produced by such interactions would have been, in evolutionary

terminology, adaptive: the affectionately bonded mother would be more likely to provide better care, thereby contributing to the infant's survival and the mother 's reproductive success. Making repeated, exaggerated affiliative signals would also have reinforced the neural circuits for affiliative feelings in a mother's own brain, apart from what it communicated to the preverbal infant: "Look at me. I like you. You make me happy."

The ritualized vocal, visual, and kinesic expressions used in mother-infant interactions were not yet a "behavior of music." but antecedents of such a behavior.5 For specifically musical behavior to arise, a facilitating circumstance or motivation for such behavior was necessary. The universal use of song-like vocalization (often with percussive timekeeping, dance and mime) in human ceremonial contexts to mark importance, suggests to me that the originary motivation may have developed as a response to uncertainty or anxiety. Let us examine this possibility.

At some time concurrent with or after the establishment of ritualized (evolved) mother-infant interaction in ancestral hominid or early human populations, early forms of what we call today ritual practices or ceremonies would also have begun. As described by anthropologists for traditional societies, ritual practices articulate or express an individual's or group's investment in the outcome of important but uncertain biological concerns. Such matters have to do with success in the vital but unpredictable ventures of hunting or fighting, achieving prosperity or averting harm, healing, reconciling internal conflicts, and with riles of passage in the fraught transitions between one life stage and another. Everywhere, the arts of song, dance, and visual display are conspicuously present in such practices. Indeed they are the ceremony.

I suggest that the human behavior of music (including percussion and dance) would have evolved gradually, perhaps initially from regularized, repetitive movement, which - performed individually or communally - would have been soothing, as it is today. Synchronized chorusing (Merker 1999,2000). "rudimentary song" and mimetic representations

* In a similar manner. Malloch (1999) says thai pulse, quality (contour and timbre) and narrative (a shared sense of passing time) in the mother-infant dyad are "attributes of human communication, which arc particularly exploited in music." [My italics).


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14


(Donald 1991) and other preverbal (and protomusical) behaviors such as alternation (call and response) may well have been other elements of music derived from protomusical antecedents in mother-infant interactions. As our ancestors gained sufficient memory of the past and the foresight to wish to affect vital outcomes, regularized, rhythmically-entrained movements and sound would provide, as they do today, a psychological sense of control, of "doing something," and thereby would actually reduce the debilitating effects of stress hormones (Sapolsky 1992). As musical practices developed, additional skills (say, more complex or subtle use of prosody and dynamics, and manipulation of anticipation) could be recruited, and further developed differently in each social group (from the already-existent "behavioral reservoir" of innate competencies and sensitivities to make and respond to the ritualized vocal, visual, and gestural signals that were in place from infancy), and made more specifically musical and additionally compelling through further deliberate elaborations and manipulations. The resulting arts-saturated ritual practices or ceremonies eventually became, as they still are today, means of passing on important cultural information and uniting a group in common cause. These effects themselves are further adaptive to members of groups who practice them, and susceptibility to vehicles of these effects (arts) would thus enhance fitness.

My consideration of music in its origins as fundamentally multimodal - that is, composed of movement and mime as well as sound, as other theorists have noted - is borne out in traditional societies, which do not have a word for "music" but often employ a term (like saapup in the Blackfoot of aboriginal North America) that means singing, dancing, and ceremony all together (Nettl 2000, p. 466). In the Tswana of Southern Africa, the term go bina is similar, as was the word mousike in ancient Greece.6

In the view of music that I present here, it is important to emphasize that "something else" is done to the ritualized prosody, rhythmic entrainment,

and kinesic movement that originate in mother-infant interaction. In human ritual ceremony, they are made additionally extraordinary (i.e., intentionally "artified") through deliberate further formalization, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration. These operations say "Look at [pay attention to] this message [matter, outcome]!" or "I care about this." In this view, early humans made music when they cared, i.e., when they were emotionally-invested in the outcome of what the music was about, what it expressed. That is, the music had emotional meaning, and the proximate motivation for music was articulating that meaning. Song/dance sounded (felt) good insofar as it was meaningful, and it was meaningful insofar as it sounded (felt) good.

"Artification" is like Ritualization

The operations of ritualization, described previously, are ways to attract (and sustain) attention in immature infants and other animals.7 When deliberately used in the arts - as further manipulations or artification of ordinary behavior or materials -they attract the attention of adults, directing their interest to the artifacts or messages that are so enhanced. For example, ordinary bodily movements from everyday life are, in dance, formalized, repeated, exaggerated, and elaborated; in visual art, these operations are performed on ordinary materials (e.g., wood, stone, clay), bodies, surroundings, and objects from everyday life; and in poetic language, on the verbal components of ordinary speech. In song, the prosodic (emotionally-expressive) elements of speech - ups and downs, dynamic features (loud-soft, fast-slow), stresses, and pauses - are also formalized (sustained and regularized), repeated (often with variation), exaggerated (in volume and velocity), and elaborated (with melisma and other devices).

An example of the artification of a natural behavior and verbal utterance is the lament, a widespread type of mourning ritual in which sounds (weeping and wailing) and words expressing grief are

6 The fundamental association of "music" with dance (and bipedality) is remarked by Merker (1999, 2000), Freeman (2000, p. 412), and Nettl (2000, p. 466), among many others. ' Ethologists have sometimes referred to these enhancements as "supernormal stimuli" (Tinbergen 1951) — "more stimulating than the natural object".


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISS AN AYAKE

regularized and formalized, repeated (downward phrases, stylized sobbings), exaggerated, and elaborated (with archaic vocabulary), thereby containing or molding - controlling - the sorrowful emotions and expressions. Another natural behavior, readying a baby for sleep, is also universally artified. Trehub (2000, p. 438) describes lullabies as songs that are simplified and repetitive, compared to other songs, with higher pitch, slower tempo, distinctive timbre, perturbations in fundamental frequency ("jitter"), and intensity ("shimmer"), all of which give these songs their heightened emotional expressiveness. Just as higher pitch is widely associated with happiness, affection, tenderness, and increased arousal (see above), slow tempos connote tenderness and affection (see citations in Trehub 2000, p. 438).

In his discussion of music universals, noting that all societies have a kind of sound communication that they distinguish from ordinary speech, Nettl (2000, p. 466) wonders whether we can consider these to be the same kind of thing. In the scheme outlined here, whether lament, lullaby, or any other song, music is always "the same kind of thing" insofar as it has been made "extra"ordinary by the operations ofartification.

Concomitants of an Ethological View of Music

The ethological view of music presented in this paper encompasses and enlarges others' views of the nature of human music, including their ideas about its evolutionary origin and function. The emphasis on music's antecedents in mother-infant interaction, composed of sequential, simultaneously-presented vocal, visual, and kinesic elements, helps to explain some of music's most notable characteristics - its common occurrence with movement, its emotional expressivity, and its multimodal (synaesthetic) associations.

In its origins, music was almost certainly conjoined with movement - as dance, or also as clapping, stomping, or foot-tapping. We see this combination not only in traditional contexts, in the musics of premodern societies, but in children who up to the age of four or five, for example, cannot


distinguish the rhythm of a piece from accompanying movements, nor sing without moving their hands and feet (Suliteanu 1979). Even though bodily movement may be suppressed by modern classical music concert audiences, it is typically part of human musicmaking in both performer and audience - as it is in interacting mothers and infants.

As described, mother-infant interactions achieve their effects, multimodally, with expressive dynamic and temporal changes that convey emotional state. Music does this too, and carries analogic sentic and modal associations with other experience. These emotive and synaesthetic features account for the intrinsic power of musical behavior to reinforce and enhance whatever words or actions it is allied with (McNeill 1995). Insofar as music conjoins individuals, as in mother-infant interactions, it is iconic of accord: physical synchrony both instills and demonstrates emotional concord.

Importantly, the ethological view of music presented here gathers together a number of features, components, or elements that have been proposed as essential to music, and places them in one behavioral category, with a proposed evolutionary origin and both proximate and ultimate functions. In papers that have addressed the origin of music, Merker (1999,2000), as described earlier, has made an important contribution when he locates the "irreducible biological root for human music" in the ability to synchronize or entrain our behavior to a musical pulse (see also "shared sense of time" in Trevarthen and Malloch 2000). Whether or not this crucial element in human music originated in synchronized chorusing in hominid males, as Merker suggests, it is certainly prefigured in the coordinated interpersonal timing (Beebe et al., 2000, Jaffe et al., 2001) of vocal and kinesic behaviors in the mother-infant interaction. Similarly, Trevarthen posits an Intrinsic Motive Pulse in humans, a spontaneous self-regulating brain activity that generates "gestural mimesis and rhythmic narrative expression of purposes and images of awareness, regulated by, and regulating, dynamic emotional processes" which form the foundations of human intersubjectivity and of musicality (Trevarthen 1999, p. 155)

The ethological view proposed here considers these and other universal features, capacities, or

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14


brain mechanisms (e.g., perceptual and cognitive constraints, prosody, "communicative musicality") aspratomusical. Although they are certainly crucial or intrinsic to musical behavior (and to human verbal and nonverbal communication generally), in order to be "music" they require that something more be done to them - what I have called artification. Music as an evolved behavior is the deliberate (i.e., not unintended) artification (i.e., formalization, repetition, exaggeration, elaboration) of such protomusical elements, and I suggest that its original motivation resided in ritual or ceremonial expressions of concern or care about vital human matters, expressions that provided feelings of control and conjoinment that resulted in relief of anxiety. One sees these motivations and effects occurring in premodern ceremonies, and in both religious and secular forms in modern societies as well.

The proximate motivation of mother-infant interaction is to have fun with one's partner, while its ultimate ancestral function was to coordinate the pair emotionally and thereby ensure better maternal care. Extrapolating from traditional societies of the recent past, ancestral music probably occurred as a multimodal performance package (of song, dance, and mime) in communal ritual practices that addressed uncertain biologically-important circumstances about which people cared, thus the proximate motivation of music was to accomplish some purpose (e.g. healing, attracting or taming a spirit, displaying veneration, achieving spiritual transformation) through participation in an emotionally-gratifying vehicle of meaning. Its original ultimate function would have been to relieve individual anxiety and to coordinate group effort, thereby ensuring group oneheartedness and a unified approach to existential problems. Today that function may be largely irrelevant, although music (listening and making) continues to provide emotional solace and a sense of individual transformation, even when musical behavior may be expressed as solitary listening to another person's recorded performance.

Perhaps the greatest difference in my view of music's origin and function is the relative lack of emphasis that is given to sexual selection as the predominant evolutionary force. Prevailing

evolutionary orthodoxy extrapolates from art-like behavior in nonhuman animals, in which beauty and extravagance characterize male sexual displays and serve as honest signals of fitness (e.g., Miller 2000a, 2000b). Although I do not deny that individual male performers of music/dance/drama/visual art may certainly attract female attention and thereby gain enhanced mating opportunity, there are three primary reasons why I think sexual selection alone is an inadequate explanation of human music and the other arts, particularly in traditional societies like those in which human nature evolved.

1. The creation and performance of music/art is as commonly communal as individual. In traditional societies, the arts are typically made as a cooperative effort. In some societies, leaders organize the displays (and presumably gain prestige that can be converted to reproductive opportunity) and individual artist-specialists are known and admired for their skills. However, in other societies, particularly in hunter-gatherer societies whose way of life most resembles that of our ancestors, the arts are spontaneously organized and each person participates, frequently in identical costumes. Artifacts and performances are not expected to show individual creativity (so that an artist might be singled out for his originality), but rather to reiterate as exactly as possible the traditions of the past.

Even in animals, "singing" is not only competitive. For example, duetting (or antiphonal singing) may serve pairbonding in birds that form long-term monogamous pair bonds (Slater 2000, p. 58), as it does in siamangs (Geissman 2000, p. 111). In the four genera of primates who "sing", males and females both do so in duets, which are sometimes called "territorial song" (Haimoff 1986), as such songs keep intruders away. Interestingly, however, these primates are all thought to be monogamous, and Geissman (p. 112) suggests "that the evolution of singing behavior in primates and of duet singing behavior in general are somehow related to the evolution of monogamy" - that is, coordinated singing is not for sexual display but rather for pair bonding, which in these primates is presumably adaptive.8

1 Geissman also suggests that the function of early hominid music may have been "to display and possibly reinforce the unity of a social group toward others" (p. 119). This would have been, of course, cooperation for the sake of inter-group competition, as it may well have been in our genus also.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISS ANAYAKE

2. The intended purposes of music/art are preponderantly communal. Although it is granted that the intention of a practice (its proximate cause) may obscure its ultimate purpose, there are just too many counter-examples of group function for music to make a convincing case that the major selective force is or has been male sexual display. Certainly some music and other arts in premodern societies are obviously intended to (and do) show off individuals' talents; however, an equal or greater number are obviously meant for (and succeed in) social reinforcement.

Moreover, in traditional societies, a number of ceremonies are specific to one sex and prohibited to the other, making sexual display impossible. Pace Miller (2000a, p. 332), love is not the most common lyrical theme in a traditional society's songs (e.g., Damane and Sanders 1974, Emeneau 1971, Kailasapathy 1968,Roseman 1991,Strehlow 1971), nor are the musicians always or even primarily young adults in their reproductive prime. Religious devotion and the valor of past heroes or clan founders are subjects of equal or higher importance in songs, and older men have greater knowledge of these subjects, which, in any case, serve to reinforce group loyalty.

In a survey of ethnomusicological descriptions of music as it appears in some thirty traditional societies, Dissanayake (forthcoming) identifies six social functions of ritual music: (a) displaying individual (or group) resources; (b) controlling or channeling aggression; (c) facilitating courtship, (d) acknowledging and relieving anxiety, (e) establishing and maintaining social identity through rites of passage, and (f) maintaining group cooperation and prosperity. The first three functions have obvious counterparts in ritualized behaviors of other animals and are congruent with evolutionary models of individual fitness maximization, including mate attraction.

The fourth function of ritual music - relief from anxiety and psychological pain - seems to have less application to ritualized behavior in animals or to sexual display. Apart from redirecting aggression, the ritualized behaviors of nonhuman animals cannot

be said to relieve anxiety, enable repression, or provide the illusion of coping with troubling events - certainly not to the degree that occurs in human rituals.9 A significant proportion of traditional ceremonial music is meant to engage with and assure the assistance of mysterious or frightening spirits. Concern about escaping injury in battle, dealing with the possible anger of restless ancestors, avoiding evil spirits, or mourning the death of a loved one seem unlikely (or at best, neutral) roles in which to be found attractive by prospective mates.

The remaining two social functions of ritual music - establishing and maintaining social identity through rites of passage, and assuring group cooperation and prosperity - have few, if any, convincing parallels with other animals. Although much ritual music is used for entertainment and celebration, engendering and expressing feelings of pleasure, well-being, cheerfulness, and fellowship - and thereby providing an atmosphere for individual sexual display and arousal - virtually every serious non-biological writer on the function of human music emphasizes its contribution to the integration, stability, and continuity of the society, culture, or social group that engages in it (e.g., Merriam 1964; Lomax 1968; Nettl 1983).

In point of fact, one might say that in general all rituals serve to maintain the well-being of the society and its individuals as they join in common cause. Even ceremonies that incite a group to hate or attack another group promote cohesion and cooperation among the ritual's participants. By "making society work," cooperative rituals are integral, not dispensable. A society of uncooperating individuals is not likely to thrive and maintain itself over generations, and music appears to have been one of the indispensable means for instilling and maintaining group cohesion and hence perpetuation.

3. Song and dance, in particular, make use of evolved mechanisms that - even as they may draw attention to individual performers - are particularly suited to cooperative endeavor and to emotional conjoinment. Darwin, who speculated that music had a role in sexual selection, noted that although music arouses various emotions, these do

9 The chimpanzee male "rain dance" described by Jane Goodall (van Lawick-Goodall 1975) might be considered a rudimentary instance of the emotional release of individual and perhaps group anxiety in a nonhuman primate during a time of uncertainty.

170 Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 2001, 10(2)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14


not include "terrible" ones like horror, fear, or rage. As it happens, the emotions he mentions are all affiliative (e.g., tenderness, love), even "triumph and ardor for war," which also reinforce community and are communally aroused and expressed (Darwin 1885, p. 571). Emotions appropriate to rituals are confidence, pride, joyfulness, well-being, resolve, release, and unification - experienced collectively as much as (if not more than) individually.

Among primates and other mammals, humans are unique in their ability to keep time - to entrain themselves rhythmically to an external beat (Brown 2000a, p. 293). As described previously, coordinated interpersonal timing (Beebe et al. 2000; Jaffe et al., 2001) is present in young infants as they interact with adult caretakers, suggesting that the human individual psychology of time is built on interactions with others. This human-specific capacity that makes possible anticipation of and participation with an isochronous temporal pulse is emphasized by virtually every psychologist of music (e.g., Brown 2000a, Brown, Merker, and Wallin 2000, p. 12, Imberty 2000,p.461,Merker, 1999,2000).'° It is an evolved capacity of the human nervous system. Freeman (2000) mentions altered states induced by rhythmic behavioral activation, induced by drumbeats and music, leading to the formation of allegiance and trust.

Additionally, Brown (2000a, b) points out the aural concord that arises from another unique human ability, to blend vocal tones. Unlike speech, where two individuals cannot talk at the same time but must alternate between speaking and listening, humans can sing or vocalize simultaneously and coordinate their expressive behavior. Brown (2000b) proposes that music (including pitch-blending and isometric timekeeping) may be the first cognitive adaptation that is not explainable by individual selection mechanisms, and as such is a challenge to those who refuse to entertain group selection arguments.

Human music is at least as different from the communicative sounds of other animals as is human

speech and can provide a window into the human evolutionary past that has heretofore been overlooked. It is likely that natural selection for mechanisms of collaboration and cooperation in individuals of our species were as critical in human evolution as was sexual selection. It is even conceivable that the immature hominid infant's need for emotional conjoinment with its mother, made necessary by increasing bipedalism and encephalization, was the starting point for subsequent evolutionary emphasis on psychobiological mechanisms to promote interdependence and intersubjectivity among individual humans as adults. I suggest here that what we call music emerged from these and provided humans with unique cognitive and emotional satisfactions that require the cooperation of others and may supercede the narrow self-interest that characterizes so many other behaviors of humans and other animals.

Implications for Music Therapy

As an outsider, it may seem presumptuous for me to suggest implications for music therapy to specialists who have years of experience and knowledge about their field. I offer the following quite humbly, with the hope that the ethological ideas in this paper will stimulate in readers useful ideas for theory and applications for their work in addition to what I propose.

The finding that young infants are inherently "musical" (i.e., they are predisposed to respond to prosodic affiliative features in human voices and to dynamic changes in vocal, facial, and kinesic behaviors as well as to coordinate the timing of their vocal and kinesic behavior with that of another) makes clear that these abilities are fundamental to human life in the world. That their development requires participation with another, with a mother or other adult caretaker, suggests that musical interaction between a compromised person and a


' Trevarthen (1999) and Merker (1999) have each remarked on the possible contribution of bipedality to the development of the unique human sense of rhythm and of the ability to move to a measured pulse. Both walking and running automatically supply continuous graded (in tempo) and repetitive timekeeping signals. The earliest "dance" movements could have been done in place, from one leg to the other, with others, with synchronous singing.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISS ANAYAKE

therapist reprises not simply an individual's own maternal relationship but an evolved, adaptive encounter that has characterized human psychological development for at least two million years.

The current psychodynamic theories that are in use in therapeutic practice have developed over the past century in order to understand and address the peculiar psychological problems that occur in modern societies and post-traditional lives. It is important to realize, however, that human psychology developed over millennia to meet the requirements of a hunter-gatherer way of life, which is how our genus lived for 99.9 percent of its evolutionary history. In such societies, an individual's sense of personal identity and belonging, sense of competence at conducting and controlling his or her life, and sense of meaning in life were satisfied in life as lived, and were expressed and reinforced with others ceremonially (Dissanayake 2000b). Insofar as human lives today have diverged from those of hunter-gatherers, humans disregard their evolved nature and may expect to suffer individual and social pathology (Nesse and Williams 1994; McGuire and Troisi 1998).

Judging from hunter-gatherer societies of today, musical participation with others was almost certainly a normal and frequent occurrence in ceremonies that contributed to individuals' sense of identity, belonging, meaning, and competence. Appreciating the deep roots of musical behaviors and their adaptive importance both in infancy and in subsequent social life provides for music therapists a theoretical justification for their practice.

The inherently social or intersubjective nature of music described in the work of Trevarthen (1999), Malloch (1999) and others, makes clear that therapy of any sort will rely on "musical" capacities in both client and therapist - capacities that music therapists are especially prepared to employ and that may be only obscured by talk. That is to say, music therapy "works" not simply because it is somehow "preverbal" (or extraverbal), but because it uses temporal and dynamic mechanisms that underlie all emotional and intersubjective communication and that persist from birth throughout life.

Therapeutic constructs that are based on cognitive or self-psychology (e.g., self-organization,

1 7 2 Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 2001, 10(2)

self-concept, ego psychology) will, I believe, gain in efficacy when it is realized that the self is organized, conceptualized, and developed only in relationship to others or another, and that musical interaction ("communicative musicality") is the basis for and a means to such relationship.

The ancestral and traditional uses of music for addressing biologically important but uncertain matters about which one cares indicates that music - with its capacities for entrainment and capturing attention (through repetition, formalization, exaggeration, and elaboration) and its unique inherent possibilities for both turn-taking and synchrony - allows for therapeutic manipulation of anticipation and fulfillment of expectation, giving practice in the give and take of social life, as well as reducing anxiety in step with the client's capacity to undergo and cope with uncertainty. The emotion-rich associations with kinesic, haptic, and even visual perception that reside in music's multimodal neural processing allow access to psychological material that may be closed to verbal consciousness. The inner life that music penetrates and expresses may well be otherwise inaccessible and inexpressible.

An ethological view is not intended to "explain away" music's felt profundities and complexities but rather to provide natural, rather than supernatural, bases for these in human biology and evolutionary history. Indeed, the profound emotional and transformative powers of music in human experience are testament to its antiquity and importance in our species.

References

Beebe, Beatrice, Jaffe, Joseph, Lachmann, Frank, Feldstein, Stanley, Crown, Cynthia L., and Jasnow, Michael D. (2000). Systems Models in Development and Psychoanalysis: The Case of Vocal Rhythm Coordination and Attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal 21(1-2) pp. 99-122

Blacking, John (1973). How Musical Is Man ? Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Brown, Steven (2000a). The "musilanguage" model of music evolution. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14


Origins of Music (pp. 271-300). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Brown, Steven (2000b). Evolutionary models of music: From sexual selection to group selection. In Tonneau, F. and Thompson, N.S. (Eds.). Perspectives in Ethology XIII (pp. 231-281). New York: Plenum.

Brown, Steven, Merker, Bjorn, and Wallin, Nils L. (2000). An introduction to evolutionary musicology. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 3-24). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Christensen, Erik (2000). Music Precedes Language. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy. Vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 32-35.

Clynes, Manfred (1977). Sentics: The Touch of Emotion. London: Souvenir Press.

Clynes, Manfred (Ed.) (1982). Music, Mind and Brain: The Neuropsychology of Music. New York: Plenum Press.

Crawford, Charles and Krebs, Dennis L. (Eds.) (1998). Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Damane, M. and Sanders, Peter B. (1974). Lithoko: Sotho Praise Poems. Oxford: Clarendon.

Darwin, Charles (1885). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: John Murray, 2nd ed.

Dissanayake, Ellen (1999). Antecedents of musical meaning in the mother-infant dyad. In: Cooke, Brett & Turner, Frederick (Eds.). Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the Arts (pp. 367-397). New York: Paragon House.

Dissanayake, Ellen (2000a). Antecedents of the temporal arts in early mother-infant interaction. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn,, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 389-410). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Dissanayake, Ellen (2000b). Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Dissanayake, Ellen (submitted). Ritual and ritualization: Musical means of conveying and shaping emotion in humans and other animals. In: Brown, Steven and Voglsten, Ulrik (Eds.). Music and Manipulation.

Donald, Merlin (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Eibl-Eibesfelt, Irenaus (1989). Human Ethology. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Emeneau, Murray B. (1971). Toda Songs. Oxford: Clarendon.

Falk. Dean (2000). Hominid brain evolution and the origin of music. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 197-216). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Freeman, Walter (2000). A neurobiological role of music in social bonding. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). 77ie Origins of Music (pp. 411-424). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Frick, Robert W. (1985). Communicating Emotion: The Role of Prosodic Features. Psychological Bulletin. Vol. 97, pp. 412-429.

Geissman, Thomas (2000). Gibbon songs and human music from an evolutionary perspective. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 103-123). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Haimoff, Elliott H. (1986). Convergence in the Duetting of Monogamous Old World Primates. Journal of Human Evolution. Vol. 15, pp. 51-59.

Hinde, Robert A. (1982). Ethology: Its Nature and Relations with Other Sciences. New York: Oxford University Press.

Imberty, Michel (2000). The question of innate competencies in musical communication. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 449-462). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Jaffe, Joseph, Beebe, Beatrice, Feldstein, Stanley, Crown, Cynthia L., and Jasnow, Michael D. (2001). Rhythms of Dialogue in Infancy, Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development. Maiden, MA: Blackwell.

Kailasapathy, K. (1968). Tamil Heroic Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon.

Kennair, Leif Edward Ottesen (2000). Developing Minds for Pathology and Musicality. Nordic


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

ELLEN DISS ANAYAKE Journal of Music Therapy , Vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 26-37.

Krauss, Robert M.; Curran, Nancy M. & Ferleger, Naomi (1983). Expressive Conventions and the Cross-Cultural Perception of Emotion. Basic and Applied Social Psychology. Vol. 4, pp. 295-305.

Lomax, Alan (Ed.). (1968). Folk Song Style and Culture. American Association for the Advancement of Science Publication No. 88. Washington, D.C.: AAAS.

McGuire, Michael T. and Troisi, Alfonso (1998). Darwinian Psychiatry. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mache, Francois-Bernard (2000). The necessity of and problems with a universal musicology. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 473-479). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Malloch. Stephen N. (1999). Mothers and Infants and Communicative Musicality. Musicae Scientiae. Special Issue 1999-2000, pp. 29-57.

Martin, Robert D. (1990). Primate Origins and Evolution: A Phylogenetic Reconstruction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

McNeill, William H. (1995). Keeping Together in Tune: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Merker, Bjorn (1999). Synchronous Chorusing and The Origins of Music. Musicae Scientiae Special Issue 1999-2000, pp. 59-73.

Merker, Bjorn (2000). Synchronous chorusing and human origins. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, & Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 315-327). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Merriam, Alan (1964). The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Miller. Geoffrey (2000a). Evolution of human music through sexual selection. In: Wallin, NilsL., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 329-360). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Miller, Geoffrey (2000b). The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Doubleday.

Molino, Jean (2000). Toward an evolutionary


theory of music and language. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 165-176). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Nesse, Randolph M. and Williams, George (1994). Evolution and Healing. London: Phoenix.

Nettl, Bruno (1983). The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Nettl, Bruno (2000). An ethnomusicologist contemplates universals in musical sound and musical culture. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 463-472). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Papousek, Mechthild and Papousek, Hanus (1981). Musical Elements in the Infant's Vocalisation: Their Significance for Communication, Cognition, and Creativity. In: Lipsitt, Lewis P. and Rovee-Collier, Carolyn K. (Eds.). Advances in Infancy Research, Vol. 1 (pp. 163-224). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex.

Roseman, Marina (1991). Healing Sounds of the Malaysian Rainforest. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sapolsky, Robert M. (1992). Neuroendocrinology of the stress-response. In: Becker, Jill R., Breedlove, S. Marc, and Crews, David (Eds). Beliavioral Endocrinology (pp. 287-324). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Scherer, Klaus R. & Oshinsky, J.S. (1977). Cue Utilization in Emotion Attribution from Auditory Stimuli, Motivation and Emotion. Vol. 1, pp. 331-346.

Slater, Peter J. B. (2000). Birdsong repertoires: Their origins and use. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). 77ie Origins of Music (pp. 49-63). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Stern, Daniel N. (1985/2000). The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology (Second Edition with new Introduction). New York: Basic Books.

Strehlow, Theodor G. H. (1971). Songs of Central Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

Suliteanu, Gisela (1979). The role of songs for children in the formation of musical perception.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14


In: Blacking, John and Keahinohomoku, Joann W. (Eds.). The Performing Arts: Music and Dance (pp. 205-219). The Hague: Mouton.

Tinbergen, Niko (1951). The Study of Instinct. Oxford: Clarendon.

Tinbergen, Niko (1963). On Aims and Methods of Ethology. Zeitschriflfiir Tierpsychologie, Vol. 20,pp.410-33.

Trehub, Sandra (2000). Human processing predispositions and musical universals. In: Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.). The Origins of Music (pp. 427-448). Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Trevarthen, Colwyn (1999). Musicality and the Intrinsic Motive Pulse: Evidence from Human Psychobiology and Infant Communication. Musicae Scientiae Special Issue 1999-2000, pp. 155-215.

Trevarthen, Colwyn and Malloch, Stephen N. (2000). The Dance of Wellbeing: Defining the Musical Therapeutic Effect. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy Vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 3-17.

vanLawick-GoodalI,Jane(1975). Thechimpanzee. In: Goodall, Vanne (Ed.). 77;<? Quest for Man (pp. 131-169). London: Phaidon.

Wallin, Nils L., Merker, Bjorn, and Brown, Steven (Eds.) (2000). The Origins of Music. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Wittman, Marc and Poppel, Ernst (1999). Temporal Mechanisms of the Brain as Fundamentals of Communication - with Specific Reference to Music Perception and Performance. Musicae Scientiae Special Issue 1999-2000, pp. 13-28.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Elle

n D

issa

naya

ke]

at 0

8:45

09

Nov

embe

r 20

14

An Ethological View of Music and Its Relevance for Music Therapy

Documents

Transcript of An Ethological View of Music and Its Relevance for Music Therapy