Paper
Music in meetings? Is there possibly time for this in the world of work? - after all, we “play” music or “make” music, we don’t “work” music!
All over the world, musicians and music educators complain that at government and policy levels and even from the side of Education Departments in particular, music is regarded as a “frill”/a nice to have, but not a necessary to have; even as nothing more than auditory cheesecake and “the making of plinking noises”, according to Pinker in his 1997 book – How the Mind Works (p. 528). So why within the context of meetings, where there are well-known accusations that they can be extremely inefficient and take an inordinate amount of simultaneous time from high-level personnel – why on earth should one even consider adding the time-consuming use of music? But the use of music can be very practical – just for one example consider Haydn’s Surprise symphony, to wake participants in a meeting up if they might be feeling sleepy or alternatively not yet feeling ready for the day!
Of course, if you try and justify music’s use and importance by quoting well known music people, the counterclaim can be made of: Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they. So let us turn for justification to non-musicians, noting that since the time of the early cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (born 1901), claims have been made that the appreciation of music is a universal feature of humankind: music-making is found in all societies and it is normal for everyone to participate in some manner. Let us also turn in particular for extensive back-up to the wonderful 2005 book The Singing Neanderthals by Steven Mithen, Professor of Early Prehistory and Head of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences at the University of Reading. Mithen (2005:1) notes that “the modern-day West is quite unusual in having significant numbers of people who do not actively participate and may even claim to be unmusical. Rather than looking at sociological or historical factors, we can only explain the human propensity to make and listen to music by recognising that it has been encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species.”
Musics in the modern world are ubiquitous – especially what is now commonly known as muzak . The world-renowned anthropologist John Blacking (1973), whose fame is largely based on research done among the Venda people of South Africa, remarked that “society claims that only a limited number of people are musical, and yet it behaves as if all possessed the basic capacity without which no musical tradition can exist – the capacity to listen and distinguish patterns of sound”.
( Tradename of a system for playing background music in such public places as shops, restaurants, haridressers, doctors’ waiting rooks, etc. The name was based on KODAK and music, Kodak being a short and successful tradename. (Brewer’s Dictionary of 20th-century phrase and fable, which also quotes The Times of 29 November 1968: “If muzak be the food of love, no wonder it is commonly to be found … among the frozen mint-flavoured peas and the crinkle-cut chips”). Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable has a slightly different description for muzak: “The proprietary name of a system of recorded light background music played through speakers in public places such as supermarkets, restaurants, factories and the like. It is objected to by some, but providers of the service claim it relaxes people and so encourages the customer to buy more, the diner to order more and the worker to produce more. The name, based on ‘music’, was registered as a trademark by Rediffusion Ltd in 1938”. They then quote The Listenerof 16 June 1965: “We shall have muzak wherever we go”.)
Mithen describes our “propensity to make music (as) the most mysterious, wonderful and neglected feature of humankind”. He goes on (2005:vii) to say that he began writing his book to explain his theory as to why people should be so compelled to make and listen to music. He draws together and explains connections between the evidence to have emerged from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and, of course, musicology, in addition to other disciplines, and then notes: “I came to appreciate that it was not only music I was addressing but also language: it is impossible to explain one without the other”. Of course meetings par excellence make use of language. But whereas language has a self-evident function … what is the point of music? Well, for starters, “If all meanings could be adequately expressed by words, the arts of painting and music would not exist. There are values and meanings that can be expressed only by immediately visible and audible qualities” (Reimer 2003:42). Yet, in modern Western society, and probably in those of all modern humans, music is often not used to express our emotions, and manipulate the emotions and behaviour of others, other than for entertainment, because we have a far more powerful means of telling someone what we are feeling: language (Mithen 2005:101).
A further question is, of course, and especially in our globalized world: what IS music?
“Both music and language are known to exist in all extant human societies and all those that have been historically documented … While the concept of music may vary, all cultures have song and dance, and make some form of internal repetition and variation in their musical utterances; they use rhythmic structures based on distinctions between note lengths and dynamic stresses” (Mithen 2005:12). Much has been written about what are described as cultural and musical “universals” – and are there such beasts, because this is exceedingly important to ascertain, in the context of ever-increasing cross- and multi-culturalism, including in meetings around the world? The renowned ethnomusicologist (that is a comparative musicologist or a cultural anthropologist or ethnologist, in so far as it bears on music) Alan P. Merriam (1964) lists ten major functions of music:
*emotional expression
*aesthetic enjoyment
*entertainment
*communication
*symbolic representation
*physical response
*enforcing community and social norms
*validation of social institutions and religious rituals
*contribution to the continuity and stability of culture, and
*contribution to the integration of society.
According to a second ethnomusicologist, David McAllester (1971), “one of the most important of the universals, or near-universals, in music is that music transforms experience. Music is always out of the ordinary and by its presence creates the atmosphere of the special. Experience is transformed from the humdrum, the everyday, into something else. Music may heighten excitement or it may soothe tensions, but in either case it takes one away into another state of being … Music is used in theater, it is used in movies, it is used to ratify revolutions. In all the ways it is used it seems to heighten experience. You might even say it is an actualization of the mystical experience for everybody. We are not all practicing mystics and most of us do not experience God easily. But when we hear music, something like that is happening to us ... Other experiences transform our lives, but none so ‘universally.’ A few years ago I heard Abraham Maslow describing his research in what he called the ‘peak experiences ’ in human lives. In the course of many hundreds of case histories the two kinds of experience cited far more than any others were sex and music. It takes no temerity, then, to assert that we are studying one of the most important of man’s activities and one gauge of its importance is the universality, or near-universality of its effect on the human mind.”
( Czicksenmihalyi (1990) writes about “flow” experiences.)
Dr Bruce Copley (2003) notes that “Dr Angeles Arrien, a world renowned social anthropologist has, after exhaustive research identified 4 cross cultural and universally accepted ‘healing salves’ or practices which are necessary for holistic wellness. These are dancing, singing, storytelling and silence. In our modern society these activities are rarely combined and integrated and are mostly restricted to a very small minority of professionals who perform while the large majority passively observe … It is not surprising that 2 of these healing salves involve music and sound. There is evidence that the first humans used sounds and music in sacred and ritualistic ways to aid birth, accept death, promote fertility, prepare for a hunt, treat disease and for many other occasions” – so why not in the meetings that occupy so much time in modern life?
Yet another well-known ethnomusicologist, Bruno Nettl (1983), summarizes the global situation: “Evidently humanity has decided not only to make music but, despite the vast amount of variation among the musics of the world, to make it in a particular way”. Mithen (2005:13) adds to this discussion: “Another form of universality is that found at the level of the individual rather than of the society or culture: with the exception of those who suffer from a cognitive deficit, all individuals have a capacity to acquire language and are born with an inherent appreciation of music.”
Copley (2003), who has pioneered and developed a holistic method of education and training known as Cogmotics, draws on “Cymatics which is the science of the effect of sound on matter”, the founding father of which was the Swiss medical doctor and natural scientist Hans Jenny (1904-1972). Copley notes that “In the myths of many cultures … sound is regarded as the primary creative force in the … vibrating universe with everything in a perpetual state of resonance from the planets to the electrons in this paper. Everything has a resonant frequency whether or not we can audibly perceive it. The human body is significantly influenced by sound and vibration because it is comprised largely of water and sound travels almost 5 times faster through water than it does through air.”
In this paper focus is placed on 5 aspects and uses of music:
*Emotion and mood (constituting by far the most important, or at anyrate documented, aspect)
*Cognition, sequencing and memory
*Tribal glue and teamwork
*Movement and stress release
*Humour.
1. Emotion and mood
Music is chiefly about expressing and inducing emotion. ‘Music has charms to soothe a savage breast/ To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak’ claimed the seventeenth-century poet William Congreve. Few would disagree: whatever our taste, music moves us, yet surprisingly the scientific study of the relationship between music and emotion to date has been limited.
Music “is a non-referential system of communication. Yet although a piece of music does not ‘tell’ us anything about the world, it can have a profound impact on our emotions … We can therefore describe music as ‘manipulative’ rather than referential in character”, as is language (Mithen 2005:22).
Both music and language have the quality of expressive phrasing (Mithen 2005:24). The cognitive demands of music may be fewer than those of language, as listeners do not have to infer performers’ or composers’ thoughts and intentions – although they may attempt this, and it may enhance their experience. Especially non-musicians can simply relax, allowing the music to ‘wash over’ them without having to concentrate or actively listen. Yet even such background music has both cognitive and physiological impacts: as we automatically infer speakers’ thoughts when listening to their spoken utterances, and to some extent come to share those thoughts, so we equally automatically have emotions aroused within ourselves while listening to music: music often manipulates our mood.
Apart from musical universals, it is now recognized that some emotions are universal to all members of our species, whereas emotions were once thought to be cultural constructs and thus specific to each particular society (Mithen 2005:86). Emotions guide action in what is known as ‘bounded rationality’ - situations of imperfect knowledge and multiple, conflicting goals. Emotions alter our brain states and make available action repertoires previously useful in similar circumstances. We set ourselves goals and sub-goals when undertaking any task, consciously or subconsciously. We feel happy to achieve such goals, and this acts as an emotional signal to continue with the task. If, however, we feel sad, this signals us to stop the task altogether, to search for a new plan, or to seek help. Anger signals that the task is being frustrated and that we should try harder, while fear signals us to stop the current task and attend vigilantly to the environment, to freeze or to escape. Our emotions are thus critical to ‘rational’ thought, and we would be entirely stymied without them in our interactions with the physical and social worlds (Mithen 2005:87). Doesn’t this make you think of meetings?
It is the social world which provides the greatest cognitive challenge to human beings: coping with the demands of living in large social groups in fact provides the most likely explanation for the origin of human intelligence. And so it is not surprising that our more complex emotions relate directly to our social relationships. Without such emotions we would be socially inept, unaware of the complexities and subtleties of the social world around us, and we would fail dismally in our social relationships (Mithen 2005: 87).
Humans have not only evolved emotions in order to enable intelligent action in the world, but also the propensity to express these emotions and the ability to interpret such expressions in others. A key means of such expression is the creation of music (Mithen 2005: 89). Music induces emotional states in both those who perform and those who merely listen. This widely held assumption is nevertheless difficult to test formally. One can simply ask people how they feel after listening to particular music, but when reporting subjectively, listeners are liable to confuse the emotions they recognize in the music with those that they themselves feel. Respiratory and cardiovascular systems can be monitored while people listen to music and immediately afterwards: significant physiological changes can be found to have occurred, and these differ according to the music, and hence the emotion, to which the subjects have been exposed. Subconsciously music might be appraised in the same way as visual stimuli – a snake or a spider, for example – are automatically appraised and provoke emotional responses. Music may also cue memories of past emotional experiences, or facilitate empathy for the performer, with four factors influencing the extent to which an emotional state will be induced by a piece of music: the music’s acoustic qualities – its melody, rhythm, tempo, loudness and other features; the manner in which it is performed; the listener’s state, in terms of their musical expertise, general disposition and current mood; the context in which the music is performed and heard – whether it is a formal occasion or not, whether it occurs without interruption, or any other factors influencing the acoustics and listening experience’s ambience (Mithen 2005: 94-95).
A mood is, of course, different from an emotion, with the former being a prolonged feeling while the latter may be very short-lived. Specific types of music can induce specific types of mood, with soft, romantic music to induce sexual love, uplifting, optimistic music at weddings, and dirges at funerals. Enlightened factory managers play music to improve the morale of employees who have to undertake simple repetitive jobs; dentists and surgeons use music to soothe and relax their patients, sometimes to the point that anaesthetics become redundant. Psychologists use music when they wish to induce particular moods in their subjects prior to setting them an experimental task to complete (Mithen 2005: 90). Train services can make use of “aural policing … pump(ing) out Haydn and Mozart to deter vandals and loiterers” (The Economist 2005). We can use music for a whole range of purposes.
Mood has also been shown to influence our perceptions and judgements of others. Our evaluations of ourselves are also influenced by our moods and our emotional states influence the way we think and behave. Happy people tend to be helpful and cooperative; they evaluate themselves and others more positively, and think more creatively. How good it would be if one were always surrounded by happy people – and if they were not happy on their own account, how nice it would be to induce a little happiness into their lives, perhaps by singing them a happy song! Experimental demonstration is also available that music can increase cooperation and helpfulness by inducing good moods (Mithen 2005: 99) – why not try singing an appropriate song at a tricky point in a meeting?
The success of music therapy demonstrates further how music can be used to both arouse and express a wide range of emotions, also leading to substantial improvements in mental and physical health. (Music therapy as an explicit set of practices first developed in the West during the twentieth century – especially during World War I, when doctors and nurses witnessed the effect that music had on the psychological, physiological, cognitive and emotional states of the wounded.) Music therapy certainly provides the best rebuttal of the claim of Steven Pinker, referred to earlier, that music is biologically useless (Mithen 2005: 96).
Music therapy may be used to stimulate rather than to sedate participants – to enhance self-esteem or to facilitate personal relationships. But perhaps music therapy’s most valuable aspect is that it can be a self-help system – one does not need a therapist at all, just a piano to play, a bath to sing in, or a collection of CDs to put on to manipulate one’s own mood. The role of music as a healing force is the theme of several anthropological studies, yet one of the unfortunate features of music therapy literature is that it ignores the anthropological literature, and vice versa (Mithen 2005: 97).
2. Cognition, sequencing and memory
“The popular characterization of music as the ‘language of emotion’ is one reason why many modern commentators have been unwilling to accord music itself much significance. Traditionally, the emotions have been thought of as the antithesis of human rationality, our most valued cognitive ability” (Mithen 2005:85). Yet “emotion lies at the root of intelligent action in the world” (Mithen 2005:86). Fortunately it is widely acknowledged these days that music is critical to the cognitive development of the child (see, for but one reference, Cross 1999).
Music’s cognitive impact, achieved by inducing particular emotional moods, is the likely explanation of the so-called ‘Mozart effect’. The belief that listening to Mozart can make children, babies and even the unborn ‘smarter’ is widely espoused. Listening to Mozart has indeed been shown to improve performance in short-term reasoning tasks, but the claims for general enhancements of intelligence are quite unfounded. The short-term impact should not be at all surprising: Mozart’s music is often selected to induce calm and happy moods, and such moods can improve creative thinking. There is a Mozart effect, one that works by manipulating moods, and it is likely that it has been exploited by manipulative musicians throughout history (Mithen 2005: 100).
Mithen also notes (2005: 272) that after language had evolved as the principal communication system of modern humans, people were left with the question of who to communicate with through music. He then notes that music can also be a “cognitive anchor” and an extension of the mind; a community can share, by all making the same music.
3. Tribal glue/teamwork
“The theme tunes for soap operas illustrate how some pieces of music can have a shared meaning within a single community” (Mithen 2005:18). Of course, especially at the beginning of meetings, where there is a desire and a need to get everyone ‘singing from the same songsheet’ (and note that metaphor), one can well consider the use of a musical ‘logo’, etc.
In all known societies music-making is frequently a group activity: music facilitates cooperative activities, with people getting into music together described by musical anthropologist Charles Keil as “the groove” (Keil and Feld 1994). But why do people like making music together? What can we learn about this from so-called “Group Theory”? After all, “group musical experience can be exclusive as well as inclusive, alienating as well as bonding, wonderful as well as dreadful” (Pavlicevic 2003: 23). Whether we are talking of choirs, orchestras, football crowds, children in the playground or church congregations, the members of all such groups sing and dance together. This practice is at the core of some groups; for others it is supplementary; for some the music they make is carefully rehearsed, for others it is spontaneous and may be entirely improvised. Other pleasurable activities, such as eating and sex, have obvious pay-offs, but why would music-making by individuals have evolved as a pleasurable activity? Yes, it can be used to manipulate others, to transmit information about the natural world, to advertise one’s availability to potential mating partners, and to facilitate the cognitive and emotional development of one’s child. But none of these factors explains why music-making in modern human society is predominantly a group activity (Mithen 2005: 205).
On p. 273 of his book Mithen notes that music has evolved to meet many diverse functions and to show immense cultural diversity … “because information transmission is much better achieved by language, societies have come to use music in many different ways. Hence we find immense cultural diversity in how music is made and the role it plays, both within and between different human societies” He again repeats the issue of music as entertainment, very similar to food and sex., and goes on to remark that “Those of us living in the affluent West eat more food and have more sex than we biologically require. We have evolved to enjoy both types of behaviours and often engage in them for entertainment value alone, although their roles in social bonding continue. Music is the same: in certain circumstances it still provides some … adaptive value … especially in forging group identities; but we also enjoy making music and pursue it at will”.
Music-making is cheap: an easy form of interaction that can demonstrate a willingness to cooperate and hence may promote future cooperation when substantial gains can be made When people join together for any group activity – a family meal, a meeting with work colleagues, a football team assembling for a match – they typically arrive from quite different immediate experiences. “I might arrive late at a meeting for work because a previous meeting overran; some of those waiting for me are frustrated by my absence, others are pleased; some are feeling happy because they have had a good day, others are feeling gloomy. In such a situation we have a very profound sense of self, and rapidly put our minds into action to assess the feelings of others before deciding what to say – at least, we do if the meeting is going to be a success” (Mithen 2005: 214).
We know that trying to achieve consensus and widespread cooperation with everyone in different moods is difficult. Especially if group norms have been clearly negotiated (see Benson 1987), making music together can help in such situations, as it will lead to the diminution of strong feelings of self - what is known as ‘boundary loss’. This is the process in which football crowds, church choirs and children in the playground all engage. This can be by mutual consent and understanding, or it can be a question of people being manipulated. Those making music together mould their own minds and bodies into a shared emotional state, and with that comes a loss of self-identity and a concomitant increase in the ability to cooperate with others. In fact, ‘cooperate’ is not completely accurate, because as identities merge there is no ‘other’ with whom to cooperate, just one group making decisions about how to behave. “Indeed, when psychologists have examined the results of experiments in which people are placed in prisoner’s dilemma-type situations, they have concluded that cooperation is fostered by the ‘extent to which players come to see themselves as a collective or joint unit, to feel a sense of ‘we-ness’, of being together in the same situation facing the same problems’ … more formally known … as an ‘in-group biasing effect’” (Mithen 2005: 215).
We need to be on the look-out for cues prompting group feeling. Listening, rather than merely looking, is also useful, because music making together is the key method for the creation of group identity: “Music is a medium through which individual brains are coupled together in shared activity” (Mithen 2005: 216).
In group music-making the hormone oxytocin may be released into the basal forebrain and by loosening the synaptic connections in which prior knowledge is held, this clears the way for acquiring new understanding through shared behavioural actions. This is a view of music as the ‘biotechnology of group formation’. Regardless of the specific role of oxytocin, many of us have experienced personally that music offers us a social rather than a merely individual identity (Mithen 2005: 216-217).
On the website of the well-known Drumcafe they note the possibilities of using their sessions
For the opening and closing of conferences,
for teambuilding and training,
for awards ceremonies,
for staff parties and incentive groups. Why not for meetings, too?
4. Music, movement and stress release
When we “automatically begin tapping our fingers and toes while listening to music … even when we sit still, the motor areas of our brain are activated by music” (Mithen 2005:25). Body movement appears to be as crucial to language as it is to music.
The Cape Argus of 16 Aug 2006 contained a Reuters article on “Stressed bankers learn to sing their blues away”: – “Stressed bankers in London are being offered a new way to unwind – singing lessons. Professionally trained singer Karin Hochapfel runs stress-busting classes for city high-flyers that use a mixture of yoga, Alexander Technique and breathing exercises to relieve tension – all used by singers to warm up before they perform … Hochapfel said she sensed people’s fear, which she put down to anxiety about doing well in their jobs … ‘All your ligaments are connected to the voice, so the way you hold even your wrists can affect how your voice sounds’”.
5. Humour
This is such an important aspect of the use of music that it is surprising that even less has been written about this, academically, than about the scientific study of the relationship between music and emotion. A great deal of this humorous aspect uses words – so we are mostly talking about songs, and ways in which we can modify existing lyrics, writing new ones for specific purposes, or tunes with referential significance, such as if you know that the title of a certain piece of jazz by Glenn Miller is “In the Mood”. Mithen (2005: 273-274) especially notes the importance of song, and not only for humorous purposes – “the combination of music and language … song benefits from a superior means of information transmission, compositional language in the form of lyrics … combined with a degree of emotional expression, from music, that cannot be found in compositional language alone. Moreover, that music is often produced by instruments which, as an extension of the human body in material form, are themselves a product of cognitive fluidity”.
Conclusion
In summary, therefore – inasmuch as graphs are prepared for meetings and presentations, backgrounds are selected for powerpoint slides, appropriate cartoons and quotations are sought to use, enhancing messages: what about music – what can be characterised, according to Mithen (2005:197) as a ‘multimedia package,’ in which many aspects such as facial expression, gesture and body language are equal in importance with vocal utterances and instrumental sounds? Just try doing a presentation with music, and then go back to doing one again without!
References
Ayto, J. and Crofton, I. 2006. (2nd edition) Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Benson, J. 1987. Working More Creatively with Groups. London: Routledge.
Blacking, J. 1973. How Musical Is Man? Seattle: Univ of Washington Press.
Cape Argus. 16 Aug 2006. Reuters article on “Stressed bankers learn to sing their blues away”. Cape Town, South Africa.
Copley, B. 2003. The sounds of healing: part 1. South African Journal of Natural Medicine, Issue 9, March 2003, pp. 14-16.
Cross, I.1999. Is music the most important thing we ever did? Music, development and evolution. In Music, Mind and Science (ed. Suk Won Yi), pp. 10-39. Seoul: Seoul National Univ Press.
Czicksenmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row.
Economist, The. 8 January 2005. “Twilight of the yobs”. The Economist p.36.
Isaacs, A. and Law, J. 1996.Brewer’s Dictionary of 20th-century Phrase and Fable. London: Cassell.
Keil, C. and Feld, S. (eds.) 1994. Music Grooves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McAllester, D.P. 1971. Some Thoughts on “Universals” in World Music. Ethnomusicology vol 15 no 3 (Sept 1971) pp. 379-380.
Merriam, A.P. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ Press.
Mithen, S. 2005. The Singing Neanderthals. London: Phoenix.
Nettl, B.1983. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Twenty-Nine Issues and Concepts. Urbana, IL.: Univ of Illinois Press.
Pavlicevic, M. 2003. Groups in Music: Strategies from Music Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Pinker, 1997. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton.
Reimer, B. 2003. A Philosophy of music education: advancing the vision. 3rd Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
|