Wed 5 Mar 2008
Setting aside the pat answer of “because we can”, where does singing come from? Why do we do it? What’s the story with bursting into song?
Posted by Josh Millard7 answers so far!
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Rhythm or sing-song) aids in memorization. Pre-written language, information had to be stored in the memory- singing aided in recitation and memorizing.
That’s my simplified version of what I feel like I’ve heard. It makes some sense to me.
The breathing changes are relaxing, and it socially expresses emotions that speech cannot.
Why do we sing?
Because it feels good.
Why does it feel good?
I don’t know.
This is more imaginative than constructive:
I think song is truly the most beautiful thing our species has constructed. It is simply something we excel at. Accident of evolution or benefit, the range of our vocal chords and our hearing is astonishing. That our ears, however imprecise, can recognize harmonic overtones and revel in them is so amazing and strange. That our brains can perceive order in a set of (abstract) frequencies is amazing and strange. That nearly every single member of our species is capable of making music is amazing and strange. Humans are built to make songs. I imagine a future in which our neck of the galaxy is all wearing the latest moonboots from Epsilon Indi, the latest psy-suits from Delta Pavonis, watching darkstar dramas from Tau Ceti, and everyone is listening to Earth Musique on their astro-radios. We knew it when we sent up Voyager — our music is our legacy and our most important export.
This is slightly more constructive:
Because, as Ambrosia Voyeur said, language is sometimes unable to sufficiently express what we want to communicate.
This is sorta a ‘because-we-can’ answer:
There is a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye called “How Palestinians Keep Warm” that ends with the lines —
This is imaginative again:
I’ve been wondering lately about the possibility that music is a precondition of the universe. I mean song is just sets of frequencies and those frequencies all exploded outward in the beginning-times. It is in the air already and we are just humming along. That maybe our songs are a bit like a karaoke sung to the tune of the noise of the cosmos.
Dude.
We do it because it gets us laid.
Sometimes I sing at the top of my lungs when I’m alone for the emotional release. It also forces you to control your breathing and so can be calming.
I believe there is something to be said for the notion that as a species, we could sing before we could talk.
Language is just so incredibly handy - it isn’t hard to imagine that even before intricate systems of sounds and symbols, humans used verbal communication yet to somehow negotiate security, food, and mating.
Now, it will be hard to prove that this qualifies as singing, exactly: still, I believe that song must have been involved at some level. Then again, a rudimentary system of grunts varying in, say, length, rhythm, or intonation - that’s melody, right? - might be defined as song, or as a precursor. One might even argue that all language is music and therefore song, and I’m enough of a Hofstadter fan to fall for that completely.
So yeah, the short answer would be: to not die, to not be hungry, and to get laid. God knows that’s what I do it for.