Music For Monkeys
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent” ~ Victor Hugo
I dig this article on how human music affects monkeys far less than music composed using their own animal calls as a baseline (baseline, not bassline – heh).
Given how much human music affects our moods, it would be interesting to examine this from a human linguistics point of view and apply it on test subjects — although finding human test subjects that have been exposed to language and not music might pose challenging.
I would also be interested to know if the music had the same effects on monkeys that hadn’t developed communication skills or been exposed to the calls of their own species. Would a baby monkey still be nervous the same way a chick that has never seen a chicken hawk still runs from the shadow? Is there a term for linguistics in the study of animals? Surely someone has delved into the science of animal onomatopoeia.
I’m also a bit concerned regarding what it says about me that the fearful monkey music made me edgy. To the best of my knowledge, I have no tamarin in me. I simply don’t have the facial hair to support a claim on heritage from that direction. Although I do have a huge weakness for tamarind candy. Surely, even though it’s silent, the D is important enough.
It’s possible I shouldn’t blog when thunderstorms wake me up in the middle of the night.
First of all, kudos for using “onomatopoeia” in a sentence!
Commented by Wink on September 8, 2009 at 6:34 PMI’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that cultural experience plays a large role in how we perceive music, emotionally. Compare, for instance, European music to Japanese music. Traditional Japanese music, not the catchy J-pop stuff that comes across the ocean with anime. To western ears, traditional Japanese music sounds an awful lot like cats being fed slowly through a completely silent wood chipper. (There really is more than one way to skin a cat! Wood chipper is #77)
The reason for the unfavorable comparison is that Japan, until recently, was a pretty isolated country. We in the West learned to associate music to emotion from music based upon Bach’s well-tempered klavier. Sure, we dig middle-eastern and African beats too, but we have long-standing relationships with those parts of the world. We’ve had a long time to share parts of those cultures.
Listening to music from a completely foreign culture, we lack the emotional reference points to really “get” it. I’m guessing it’s the same for monkeys.
We are all just monkeys, after all.
Dance, monkeys. Dance.