The Musical Ape
Origin Stories
Meredith Johnson
4.8 • 554 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2024
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Music is universal in all human cultures, but why? What gives us the ability to hear sound as music? Are we the only musical species–or was Darwin right when he said every animal with a backbone should be able to perceive, if not enjoy music? Professor Henkjan Honing is on a mission to find out.
Learn more
- Henkjan Honing's website
- Music Cognition Group Blog
- The Evolving Animal Orchestra - Henkjan Honing
- What makes us musical animals - Henkjan Honing lecture
- Henkjan Honing TedX Amsterdam
- Snowball dancing to the Backstreet Boys
- Ronan the sea lion
- Songs to make the forest happy
- It turns out we were born to groove - beat perception study
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Credits
This episode was written and produced by Ray Pang and Meredith Johnson. Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Ray Pang. Our editor is Audrey Quinn. Theme music by Henry Nagle, additional music by Blue Dot Sessions and Lee Roservere.
This episode uses many sounds from Freesound.org, including:
Neon Dreams: A Retro-Futuristic Synthwave Track - Instrument 02 by Robbnix - License: Attribution 4.0
Music Box, Happy Birthday.wav - by InspectorJ - License: Attribution 4.0
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast. I'm Meredith Johnson. Today on the show, |
| 0:11.7 | we're looking at how and why humans are the musical ape. But before we get started, I want to thank our new podcast owners, Stacey Love, Stephen, Mark, Michael, |
| 0:23.7 | and our other new supporters who wanted to stay anonymous. We're so grateful for your support |
| 0:29.2 | and your kind comments. If you'd like to support the show and get a shout out on our next |
| 0:34.7 | episode, please click the link in your show notes right now |
| 0:37.7 | or go to leakyfoundation.org slash origin stories. Your one-time or monthly tax-deductible |
| 0:44.0 | donation will be quadruple matched, so if you give $10, we'll get $40 to help us tell new stories |
| 0:50.7 | about what makes us human. Now, on with the episode. Music is universal in every culture |
| 0:58.7 | around the world. In fact, no human culture has yet been found that doesn't have music. Our |
| 1:06.3 | prehistoric ancestors made music, too. The oldest undisputed instruments in the archaeological record |
| 1:12.6 | are two 42,000-year-old flutes. |
| 1:15.6 | One is made of mammoth ivory, and the other was made of a bone from a swan's wing. |
| 1:22.6 | Today, music is all around us. |
| 1:26.6 | We use music to express our emotions and heal our broken hearts. |
| 1:31.6 | And it also gives us joy and pleasure. |
| 1:38.2 | But why? |
| 1:39.8 | What is it that makes us musical that allows us to hear sound and experience it as music? |
| 1:49.8 | We use music to enhance our moods or if we're sad, it helps us to sort of console our mood. |
| 1:57.5 | And if we're very enthusiastic and we put put on enthusiastic music, it releases the energy. |
| 2:02.9 | This is Henkejohn Honing. Henkjian is a professor of the cognitive science of music at the |
| 2:08.5 | University of Amsterdam. And he's on a quest to understand how humans are able to perceive rhythm |
| 2:15.3 | and pitch and tempo, how we have what's called musicality. |
... |
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