Soothing the Savage Breast
Jun. 6th, 2007 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stickmakerI'm sure most of the people likely to be reading this have heard or read about malls, subway stations and other public locations which are using classical music to keep teenagers from hanging out. This is no urban legend; it has been used in several places around the world and seems to work every time.
I haven't read any definitive study as to _why_ this works, but I have a guess.
The human brain seems to be hardwired to accept certain rhythms, tone combinations and note sequences as pleasurable, or otherwise evoking an emotional, even visceral response. This may be associated with a holdover instinctive response to mating calls and such. It may also be associated with the brain's "math coprocessor," which is responsible for numerancy.
For whatever reason, we naturally respond to certain sounds in certain ways. So music does have charms to sooth the savage breast, as long as the music is close enough to the stimuli the brain is wired to respond to. That generally means simple, even primitive music. Anything else has to be learned, building on those basic responses by expanding the neural net associated with them. You don't start out with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. To someone with no experience of complicated symphonic music, it would be pure noise.
This is why I think playing classical music will drive most teenagers from an area: It's too unlike the music they're used to for them to "get" it. However, they do know some music, and so it's not pure noise. They can tell it's music, and even respond to parts of it. But it is different enough from what they're used to that they can't parse most of it. And this makes them feel uneasy, uncomfortable and distracted, on a deep, instinctive level. Of course they leave.
I have had several personal experiences which support this general concept, some from my own family. Someone will reject a piece of music which is unfamiliar to them, perhaps even denying that it is "real" music, simply because it doesn't fit what they're familiar with. They simply haven't learned how to hear it. As a rule, the more music someone listens to - and especially the wider the variety of the music they are familiar with - the more likely they are to accept music of an unfamiliar type.
My mother claims to be a music lover, but she only likes the sorts of music which were popular in the Thirties and Forties. Big band, George Gershwin, crooners and such. And what she knows are the more familiar pieces from that era. in regard to Gershwin, she knows and likes "An American in Paris," "Fascinating Rhythm," and so forth. A few weeks ago she was riding in my car when one of the less commonly played Gershwin pieces came up on the CD player. It might have been "Promenade" or "Cuban Overture;" I don't recall exactly. She frowned and asked what it was. I told her, and added that it was by Gershwin. She denied that it could be by Gershwin, and said she didn't like it.
Because she didn't know it.
I have a pretty wide-ranging musical taste, but have also had similar experiences. One of the most aggravating of these was listening to some very advanced modern jazz with a wild saxophone solo. It kept _almost_ coming into focus.
I haven't read any definitive study as to _why_ this works, but I have a guess.
The human brain seems to be hardwired to accept certain rhythms, tone combinations and note sequences as pleasurable, or otherwise evoking an emotional, even visceral response. This may be associated with a holdover instinctive response to mating calls and such. It may also be associated with the brain's "math coprocessor," which is responsible for numerancy.
For whatever reason, we naturally respond to certain sounds in certain ways. So music does have charms to sooth the savage breast, as long as the music is close enough to the stimuli the brain is wired to respond to. That generally means simple, even primitive music. Anything else has to be learned, building on those basic responses by expanding the neural net associated with them. You don't start out with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. To someone with no experience of complicated symphonic music, it would be pure noise.
This is why I think playing classical music will drive most teenagers from an area: It's too unlike the music they're used to for them to "get" it. However, they do know some music, and so it's not pure noise. They can tell it's music, and even respond to parts of it. But it is different enough from what they're used to that they can't parse most of it. And this makes them feel uneasy, uncomfortable and distracted, on a deep, instinctive level. Of course they leave.
I have had several personal experiences which support this general concept, some from my own family. Someone will reject a piece of music which is unfamiliar to them, perhaps even denying that it is "real" music, simply because it doesn't fit what they're familiar with. They simply haven't learned how to hear it. As a rule, the more music someone listens to - and especially the wider the variety of the music they are familiar with - the more likely they are to accept music of an unfamiliar type.
My mother claims to be a music lover, but she only likes the sorts of music which were popular in the Thirties and Forties. Big band, George Gershwin, crooners and such. And what she knows are the more familiar pieces from that era. in regard to Gershwin, she knows and likes "An American in Paris," "Fascinating Rhythm," and so forth. A few weeks ago she was riding in my car when one of the less commonly played Gershwin pieces came up on the CD player. It might have been "Promenade" or "Cuban Overture;" I don't recall exactly. She frowned and asked what it was. I told her, and added that it was by Gershwin. She denied that it could be by Gershwin, and said she didn't like it.
Because she didn't know it.
I have a pretty wide-ranging musical taste, but have also had similar experiences. One of the most aggravating of these was listening to some very advanced modern jazz with a wild saxophone solo. It kept _almost_ coming into focus.
