Product Description

The author of the New York Times bestseller and Los Angeles Times Book Award Finalist This Is Your Brain on Music tunes us in to six evolutionary musical forms that brought about the evolution of human culture.

An unprecedented blend of science and art, Daniel Levitin's debut, This Is Your Brain on Music, delighted readers with an exuberant guide to the neural impulses behind those songs that make our heart swell. Now he showcases his daring theory of "six songs," illuminating how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms—for knowledge, friendship, religion, joy, comfort, and love. Preserving the emotional history of our lives and of our species, from its very beginning music was also allied to dance, as the structure of the brain confirms; developing this neurological observation, Levitin shows how music and dance enabled the social bonding and friendship necessary for human culture and society to evolve.

Blending cutting-edge scientific findings with his own sometimes hilarious experiences as a musician and music-industry professional, Levitin's sweeping study also incorporates wisdom gleaned from interviews with icons ranging from Sting and Paul Simon to Joni Mitchell, and David Byrne, along with classical musicians and conductors, historians, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The result is a brilliant revelation of the prehistoric yet elegant systems at play when we sing and dance at a wedding or cheer at a concert—or tune out quietly with an iPod.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12226 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Charles Darwin meets the Beatles in this attempt to blend neuroscience and evolutionary biology to explain why music is such a powerful force. In this rewarding though often repetitious study by bestselling author Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music), a rock musician turned neuroscientist, argues that music is a core element of human identity, paving the way for language, cooperative work projects and the recording of our lives and history. Through his studies, Levitin has identified six kinds of songs that help us achieve these goals: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love. He cites lyrics ranging from the songs of Johnny Cash to work songs, which, he says, promote feelings of togetherness. According to Levitin, evolution may have selected individuals who were able to use nonviolent means like dance and music to settle disputes. Songs also serve as memory-aids, as records of our lives and legends. Some may find Levitin's evolutionary explanations reductionist, but he lightens the science with personal anecdotes and chats with Sting and others, offering an intriguing explanation for the power of music in our lives as individuals and as a society. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Fans that have read This Is Your Brain on Music are in for another treat; newcomers to Levitin will still find much to enjoy in this consideration of music and human civilization. Levitin writes with both knowledge of neuroscience and evolutionary biology and a deep appreciation for the musician’s craft—one that will resound loudly with musicophiles. The New York Times Book Review, however, questioned some of Levitin’s “unprovable” scientific claims, and others faulted him for taking a reductionist view of evolution, shamelessly namedropping, cherry-picking songs from a select era, and failing to edit a verbose tome. Despite such flaws, most readers will find something to connect with in the book—even if it’s just one song.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

Review
“Music seems to have an almost willful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know, leaving its power and mystery intact, however much we may dig and delve. Daniel’s book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox. There may be no simple answer or end in sight, but the ride is nonetheless a thrilling one, especially in the company of a writer who is an accomplished musician, a poet, a hard-nosed scientist, and someone who can still look upon the universe with a sense of wonder.”
--Sting

“Without music, we would be little more than animals, and Daniel Levitin explains it beautifully.”
--Sir George Martin, CBE, producer of The Beatles

“Why can a song make you cry in a matter of seconds? Six Songs is the only book that explains why. With original and awe-inspiring insights into the nature of human artistry, it’s irresistibly entertaining. Anyone who loves music should read it.”
--Bobby McFerrin, vocalist and guest conductor, London Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic

“Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.”
--Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon

“Daniel Levitin writes about music with all the exuberance of a die-hard fan, and all the insight of a natural-born scientist. This is a fascinating, entertaining book, and some of its most inventive themes may stay stick in your head forever, something like a well-loved song.”
--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“To try to cover the meaning of music throughout the history of mankind to how we still use it everyday is extraordinarily ambitious. Combining musical expertise, psychology, anthropology and evolutionary science, Daniel Levitin’s Six Songs has accomplished this astonishing task.”
--Jon Appleton, Composer and Professor of Music, Dartmouth College and Stanford University

“I was skeptical when I began reading. The stated goal seemed outlandish. But by the time I was about one-third the way into The World in Six Songs, I realized just how powerful it is. It really is a tour de force. It is exquisitely written, and brings together a vast array of knowledge, tying things together in creative ways, while always remaining accessible. This promises to be not only another widely read hit, but also an important document for the field of music cognition.”
--Jamshed Bharucha, Provost and Professor of Psychology, Tufts University

“Passionate and insightful. Daniel Levitin has written a delightfully personal epic poem proposing a central role for music in the evolution of human emotion and behavior. Now, musicians and neuroscientists have a common vocabulary with which to argue our human origins.”
--Julie R. Korenberg, M.D. Ph.D., The Brain Institute, University of Utah

“In a brilliantly novel approach to human evolution, Levitin has sought to encapsulate diverse cultures in a set of six songs representative of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love. That he is able to achieve so much with this small set of songs says something truly important about our common humanity.”
--Michael I. Posner, Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon

“This wonderful, lucid book takes on one of the great eternal questions: Why is there music? What does music do for humanity—for individual development and for a culture--that in turn accounts for its existence in every known society? Daniel Levitin is not only the preeminent expert in answering such questions, but one of those unique writers about science who understands his field so profoundly that he can make the complex straightforward. This is an exciting, revelatory book.”
--Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent and Ordinary Heroes

Customer Reviews

Songs in the key of life
This fascinating book explores the powerful force music has played in shaping our common humanity. It's evolution, with a backbeat. Author Levitin makes the case that six basic types of songs have existed throughout the course of human history, all over the world. Mankind, apparently, shares a soundtrack.

The six broad categories of music are songs about friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love. Each has a different function, but all serve to bind us together. They make us stronger as a species.

Levitin, a musician and scientist, cites anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, neurosurgeons, psychologists, and many famous musicians in this book. He includes lyrics from a great range of songs, including "At Seventeen," "The Hokey Pokey," "I Walk the Line," "Twist and Shout," and "Log Blues" from Ren & Stimpy.

Music can be so evocative. A snippet of song can take you back to the exact moment you heard it in childhood or high school or whenever. It's like there is a direct link that exists in the human brain between music and memory.

This books tells us that Americans spend more money on music than they do on prescription drugs or sex, and the average American hears more than five hours of music per day. It's obviously important to us. After reading The World in Six Songs, you'll have a much better idea why.

Here's the chapter list:

1. Taking It from the Top or "The Hills Are Alive..."
2. Friendship or "War (What Is It Good For)?"
3. Joy or "Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut"
4. Comfort or "Before There Was Prozac, There Was You"
5. Knowledge or "I Need to Know"
6. Religion or "People Get Ready"
7. Love or "Bring `Em All In"

Music is often better than words
As the drum, drum, drumming in the air grew louder the usual pregame roar in Ball One Ballpark in Phoenix softened and attention swung to a pre-game show by the Bashas' Bears High School drumline.

They are good. The driving pulse of a drumline, like the beat of a powwow drum circle, is captivating, dynamic, addictive and hypnotic. Music and its rhythms enchant and entrap our souls, and this book offers a fascinating look at "Why" it has such impact. There are many books about music, but this is a fresh look by a skilled writer about why instead of merely the how, what, when and where of musical notes.

Unlike usual textbooks which are heavy on being textbooks and light on understanding, Levitin has experience enough to explain his subject. Humans are said to be the only species that laughs at itself, or needs to; likewise, we are the only species that creates original music, or has the ability to do so, or perhaps the need, and certainly the desire.

Levitin, a professional musician and successful record producer, now runs a laboratory for music perception, cognition and expertise at McGill University. He is a rare academic, solidly grounded in the everyday world of his specialty instead of mere bookish theory. He is a professional who relates to his fellow artists and thus knows how to express basic ideas and themes in words everyone can understand.

Six songs? I'd add a few, such as the Bears' drumline. Even though a drumline is not melodic, it has a powerful rhythmic appeal. It's an example of how music is more than notes on a scale, and how basic the appeal of rhythm and music is to our senses.

Levitin offers some very basic ideas to understand our need and appeal for music, using wit, charm and personal anecdotes. He's been there and walked the walk ... in his case played the notes professionally ... it gives his thoughts and ideas a perfect pitch.

Exquisitely written, it is really about ourselves because we are such a musical species. It makes me wonder: What if humans had never learned to talk, but merely communicate through music? It seems far more reasonable than merely talking without understanding -- at which we're all too expert.

What then the Bears' drumline? Their rhythms are among the most powerful ideas ever expressed. Like Irish step dancing, a powerful expression of unity without using a word, music can be a dynamic expression of human emotions, ideas and spirit.

Fortunately, Levitin is admirably skilled in his use of words; every bit as good as the Bears' drumline or Beethoven's Sixth.

unreadable exercise in ego
I keep trying to like this book, or even to get through another chapter but wading past the author's ego is just too hard. Is the best way to illustrate every point to mention that you just had lunch with Sting?

I'll grant the author's encyclopedic knowledge of songs but he insists on putting in the reader's face at every turn. Every point he makes reminds him of not one or two other songs but typically 10 or eleven other songs, which he lists, along with the fact that he's close personal friends with each of the authors.

You might think the premise of this book is the centrality of music to human evolution but the real point is to illustrate the centrality of the author's ego.