My
interest in neurological facets of music is nascent. My familiarity with the
subject is negligible. My first serious
look at it was occasioned by a chance exposure to an eminently readable paper by
Alasdair Wilkins, titled “Music and Neuroscience” which came to my
attention on Facebook.
Before making
observations on the report with specific reference to Hindustani music, I present
below a selective summary of its relevant indications.
SUMMARY
1. From the perspective of neuroscience, listening
to music is one of the most complex things you can do. Many parts of your brain
have to work together to comprehend even the simplest tune. The act of
processing music is so diffuse and decentralized throughout the brain that
describing it as being centered in the right side of the brain is an
oversimplification.
2. An intriguing side-effect of listening to music
is the activation of the visual cortex, found in the back of the brain in the
occipital lobe. Research indicates that some music can provoke a response in this
part of the brain, as the engaged listener tries to conjure up appropriate
imagery to match the changes and progression in the music.
3. There is no real objective measure of what
counts as “musical” and what doesn’t. Memory is one of the most obvious
influences here – you are most likely to like a particular of piece of music if
it carries positive associations with it.
4. If there is one constant in this, it is that
songs carry as tremendous ability to provoke emotional responses – indeed, it
can even seem our brain’s primary concern, when it comes, to music. In fact,
the brain hangs onto the ability to understand the emotional impact of music,
even if the finer points are lost. Brain imaging studies have shown that
“happy” music stimulates the reward centers of the brain, causing the
production of the chemical dopamine – the same chemical produced from eating
great food, having sex, and taking drugs.
5. Brigham Young University researchers report that
infants as young as five months are able to discern when a happy song is
playing, and by nine months, they have added comprehension of sad music to
their repertoire. They observed that all the happy songs were in major keys
with fairly short phrases or motifs that were repeated. Their tempo and melodic
rhythms were faster than any of the sad selections and the melodies had a
general upward direction. Four of the sad songs were in minor keys and all had
a slower beat and long melodic rhythms.
6. We actually can have physiological reactions to
music – happy music with a fast tempo and major key can make is breathe faster,
while sad music and minor key can slow down our pulse and cause blood pressure
to rise.
OBSERVATIONS
The significance of music
1. Prof. Daniel Neuman, amongst the most respected
ethno-musicologists today, has studied the social organization of Hindustani
music for over four decades. In his recent book – Studying India’s Musicians (Manohar books, 2015) – makes the following observations:
“Music
is a special instance of human behavior. The fact that it is universal – no peoples are known not to
have music – and species-specific to homo sapiens, suggests and adaptive basis
for music in the evolution of our species. In other words, music has been
important in the evolution of our species, although it is not clear in what way
this is the case. But, the fact that societies such as India spend so much
energy in the training of musical specialists, raises for me questions of why
this is so.
These
observations are well supported by the neurological finding that listening to
music is a far more complex neurological process, involving many more part of
the brain, than has for long been believed. Music may therefore be considered
an integral part of human evolution, and justify the massive amount of energy
that societies like India have invested in the cultivation of music
professionals.
Music elicits an emotional response
2. Indian musicological thought is consistent with
the neurological finding that songs (which are pre-composed rather than largely
improvised like Raga-based music) carry a tremendous ability to provoke
emotional responses – indeed, it can even seem our brain’s primary concern,
when it comes, to music. In fact, the brain hangs onto the ability to understand
the emotional impact of music, even if the finer points are lost. This finding would validate the phenomenon of
a maestro’s music bypassing the intellectual discernment of its contents, and
enabling the enjoyment of its emotional content.
In my
first book – “Hindustani Music – a tradition in transition” (2005) – I have
observed as follows:
The
word “Raga” does not have a musical or melodic meaning at all; it has only an
emotional meaning. The notion of the “Raga” deals with the totality of the
communication process – generation of the stimulus as well as the elicitation
of the response. In common usage, the word has come to describe a melodic
structure, the stimulus, because the music world has accepted a correspondence
between the stimulus and the response, and feels comfortable in using the word
“Raga” to describe the former. This leads to the proposition that the “Raga”,
as commonly understood, is a melodic representation of an emotional statement,
and a vehicle for its communication.
In the second edition of the
book (2015), I have developed the idea that a Raga is, in reality, a psycho-acoustic
hypothesis. Each Raga shapes a distinct
pattern of melody by its unique selection, sequencing, and treatment of the
swara-s. Because of the distinct
pattern, each Raga suggests a different emotional idea to the listener. But,
the swara-s of the scale have no musical meaning in isolation. So, when a Raga
organizes them in a specific manner with the intention of communicating an
emotional idea, there is a tacit assumption of a cause-and-effect relationship
– something akin to a theory. But, a
theory requires a substantial predictability of effect from a given cause.
Since the Raga is a “formless
form”, its impact depends on the quality of the communicable form which
interprets it for the audience, and the receptivity of the audience. In
addition, the impact may depend on a host of non-musical factors associated
with the performance. Because we are in the region of “known possibility”
rather than “predictability”, the cause-and-effect assumptions of the Raga may therefore
be called a psycho-acoustic hypothesis, which is tested uniquely at every
performance for its effectiveness in producing the desired emotional response.
Familiarity is the basis of "musicality"
The phenomenon of the Raga in Hindustani music
is supported by the neurological finding that there is no real objective
measure of what counts as “musical” and what doesn’t. Memory and familiarity
are the most obvious influences here – you are most likely to like a particular
of piece of music if it carries positive associations with it. In my first book
– “Hindustani Music – a tradition in transition” (2005) – I have observed as
follows:
The
phenomenon of the Raga, as the foundation of music making in the Hindustani
tradition, ensures that the aesthetic experience of every performance enjoys the
benefits of familiarity along with novelty. But, the tradition accepts that, in
time, everything changes. Each generation of musicians and audiences is free to
choose the parameters of continuity/ discipline/ conformity / familiarity, and
impose on them their own parameters of change/ creativity/ individuality/
novelty. Raga-s have thus evolved as ever-growing and ever-changing
repositories of aesthetically coherent melodic ideas.
Is the Raga an archetypal entity?
4.
Neuroscience relates the responsiveness of
listeners to the association of melodic patterns to pleasant/ unpleasant
memories stored in the listener’s mind. Simultaneously, it also suggests that infants
as young as five and nine months – an age with hardly anything by way of an accumulated variety of musical/emotional
experience – can respond differentially to musical stimuli known to be either “happy”
or “sad”. These indications of neuroscience would suggest the possibility that specific melodic patterns are potent at least within a culture specific context -- if not universally potent -- as triggers of associated emotional responses , and this linkage is perhaps stored in something akin to a "collective unconscious" or a “racial memory” rather than a mere storage
of accumulated associations in the individual memory.
I have suggested this perspective in the second
edition of my first book – Hindustani Music – a tradition in transition
Several years ago, a Western
scholar, intrigued by the Raga phenomenon, had asked me a question: – “Does the
Raga exist? And, if so, where?” Having lived and worked with Raga-s for almost
six decades, I am attracted to the idea that a Raga is an archetypal entity in
the Jungian sense. Though this direction of speculation continues to engage my
mind, I prefer, for now, to use more familiar linguistic analogies.
A Raga, indeed, exists as
definitely as a language exists. By the same analogy, the Raga does not reside
either in treatises on Raga grammar or in any document that claims to be a
lexicon of Ragas. Like a language, the Raga exists in the collective memory of
the community, as a set of associations related to specific sound patterns. As
a cultural force – and like a language – it is shaped by usage, and in turn,
governs usage. We may say that the Raga resides in its performance, which, in
turn, shapes the Raga.
Since each performance is
shaped by the interaction between the musician and his audience, the repository
of Raga-ness in the collective memory is constantly shuffling and reshuffling
its inventory of melodic images to keep the aesthetic resources of the Raga
perennially relevant.
Music has a visual component
5. The relationship between melodic patterns and
visual imagery is well established in the Hindustani music tradition. Many Raga-s are named after deities, and the
mythological associations of these deities are expected to guide the musician
in their effective interpretation. There exists a considerable volume of
Raga-Dhyana poetry, which enables a musician to visualize a Raga to aid him in
the process of drawing a sound-picture of it. There also exists a substantial
body of paintings, popularly known as the Ragamala paintings, which represent
an artist’s attempt at portraying his interpretation of the Raga experience.
Namita Devidayal’s famous book titled The Music Room (Random House, 2007) opens with a quotation from Ustad Vilayat Khan – “A Raga should be performed
such that within a few minutes, both the performer and the audience should be
able to see it standing in front of them”. I had occasion to query Khansaheb on this
issue. In reply, he said – “You have not discovered it yet. But, there is
actually an eye hidden inside a musician’s ear, with which he can see the Raga.”
These notions prevalent in the Hindustani musical culture find
support in the neurological discovery -- listening to music results in the
activation of the visual cortex, found in the back of the brain in the optical
lobe. Research indicates that some music can provoke a response in this part of
the brain, as the engaged listener tries to conjure up appropriate imagery to
match the changes and progression in the music.
While neurological research
appears to focus on the listener’s visualization of a musical experience, the
implications are far greater in Hindustani music from the music maker’s
perspective. The musician’s task in performance is to explore a Raga, “formless
form” and interpret it in communicable form which enables the delivery of
emotional meaning to the listener.
“Form” itself is a visual idea, and visualization is inherent in the
process of manifesting the formless form of the Raga as a communicable and intelligible experience.
In shaping a manifest form which delivers emotional meaning, the musician also
goes through an auto-suggestive process which is, once again, aided by visualization.
Raga grammar and Rasa
6. I find it interesting that neurological research
relates the “key” of the music, the swara-density, tempo, and the directional
thrust of the music to its classification into “happy” and “sad” music. The major and minor keys in Western music come
closest to the Hindustani notion of a Raga. Its relevance to the
communication of emotional ideas validates the melodic wisdom of Hindustani
music.
Hindustani Raga-s are classified as “Aroha-pradhan”
(ascent-dominant) or “Avaroh-pradhan” (descent dominant) based on the
prescribed dominance of ascending/ descending melodic thrusts in their
performance. Likewise, they are also
classified as “Purvanga-vadi”, “Madhyanga-vadi” or “Uttaranga-vadi”, based on
the region of the melodic canvas in which they most effectively communicate
their emotional meaning. In fact, there are groups Raga-s in Hindustani music
(e.g. Marwa, Puriya, and Sohini), which feature identical swara-s, and are
differentiated largely by their differential emphasis on the directional
dominance in their melodic treatment, and the epicenter of the melodic action
in their rendition. This aspect of Raga grammar is also evidently validated by
neurological research.
Musical aesthetics of the Hindustani tradition also acknowledge that Raga-s deliver different emotional values in different tempii.
This is why exceptionally fastidious Hindustani musicians will not render
serious Raga-s in fast tempo compositions, and skip slow-tempo compositions in
some others, which are considered vivacious. There appears to be considerable
scientific support for this fastidiousness.
At a broader level of consideration, it appears that neuroscience
is so far classifying the emotional effects of music only on a bi-polar
continuum of “Sad-to-Happy”. The Indian
aesthetic tradition, with the highly evolved notion of Rasa prevalent since
Bharata’s Natya Shastra, would appear to have intuited a far more complex
spectrum. Neuroscience may probe this area further and, some day, help us
understand our aesthetic traditions better.
(c) Deepak S. Raja 2015
