The video above entertainingly asks—and maybe answers—what seem like obvious questions until you think about it: What’s the function of music? Why is it so important to so many people, and how does it work? Filmmaker Mac Premo talks to Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad to get to the bottom of music.
So, yes, Abumrad decides, music is organized sound—and according to some experts, he says, it may have pre-dated speech as an emergent “emotional communication system.” But what’s its function?
Because of music’s unique nature, Abumrad says, it may be the wrong question to ask. Maybe music just is. He points out that speech is an agreed-upon system of codes—“apple,” for example, means that sweet red fruit on that tree—and there’s nothing innate about it.
Music, on the other hand, gets to the areas of our minds that aren’t necessarily trained to respond in one specific way. “It just gets around your rational defenses,” says Abumrad, “and just … moves you.”
