Monday evening, I was watching the 50th anniversary of Pinkpop on Dutch tv. Once again, it struck me how fascinating music works on the human mind. As usual, I got emotional when hearing Cold Little Heart by Michael Kiwanuka (lyrics, video). In an interview with Eva Cleven, he said that his Love & Hate album is about self-acceptance and identity.
The importance of music has been food for thought for many people:
– Nautilus-2014: how music hijacks our perception of time;
– NRC-2018: where does our feeling for music come from?
– Wired-2019: how does music affect your brain? Every imaginable way.
Several years ago, I wrote several blogs about the origin of music (and languages): Blurred lines – the origin of languages (2015), the origin of languages 2 (2016), the sounds of silence (2016), and the origin of beliefs (2016). Yesterday, I had an epiphany: music mirrors the triangle of Love, Knowledge and Power. I will elaborate on that.
Music and its instruments have always been crucial in military or power conflicts, like Scottish bagpipes or the Middle Eastern ram’s horn or shofar. The ram’s horn was “used for signifying the start of a war” (Wiki). According to Joshua 6:1–27, the fortified walls of the city of Jericho fell flat after 7 priests used 7 ram’s horns on the 7th day (eg, source, Wiki).
In my March 2015 blog, I referred to the 1977 TV series Roots, in which (African) music and dance are/were used to transfer knowledge across generations (Roots Next Generations video). Much later, the Sumerians used clay tablets to transfer knowledge (eg, Epic of Gilgamesh).
Monday night, I watched young people singing the songs’ lyrics. These lyrics had been memorized line by line, word by word. I still remember listening over and over again, and writing down the lyrics on sheets of paper, following the 1976 release of the Hotel California album. Music remains powerful as it’s able to transfer insight.
Today, the remaining function of music is about transferring emotion, a separate scientific field that “seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music”. Most often contemporary music is about love – or its opposite: hate.
“The end of love looks like the beginning of war”. A quote from The Great Pearl of Wisdom by Bangambiki Habyarimana (bio).
Love & Hate (2016) by Michael Kiwanuka
artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Now I feel some days of trouble
I’m in the house of war
For the love of everybody
Look behind the wall
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise
0 Comments