Quote:
Originally Posted by mr dave
Much in the same way that I believe in both evolution and creationism, I think music evolved to serve both a biological and communicative function, I also disagree with the idea that music is a spandrel of language and actually believe the opposite. I have no qualms accepting song (especially modern song) as a spandrel of language, but music comes first. Consider a baby singing its heart out to the world before they're even able to say "Mama or Dada" it serves as a means to communicate base ideas and feelings in ways where the complexity of spoken language often fail.
Music came first.
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When reading your post and thoughts like these, I can't help think again that music needs to be properly defined in order to facilitate this discussion in a proper way, even if that definition isn't like the standard one. The standard definition, according to this thread, is that sound is organized sound. That makes music incredibly hard to differentiate from language which is, basically, organized sound. (Side note : also biologically, it makes sense that the part of our brain that deals with language (organized sound) will help us understand music (organized sound).)
Generally speaking, I would like to disagree with you and say that newborn babies don't make music. The problem doing so is again the definition which I feel makes stuff like crying a grey area. I don't like to think of it as music. Although children certainly learn to manipulate adults with crying, the first time it happens, it is a purely instinctual act with no intentional design behind it. When they're not crying, the sounds they make may be trying to learn how to talk. All healthy humans are capable of spoken language. Not all humans are very musical. For example, all healthy adult humans can retell a simple sentence that they've heard, but not all can hum a tune they just heard. Language is a much better way to communicate, a more generally human skill and is more crucial to our survival.
I think for the purposes of such discussion, music could be defined as a deliberate, artistic act using sound for example. It's not necessarily much better, but it helps separate music and language I think.