Why Do People Sing?
The Physiological and Psychological Roots of Singing
The singing voice can be used to express emotion, unite communities and pledge allegiance. People sing in the shower, as part of a choir or even in the stands of a sporting arena, it is one of the universal characteristics of being human and a feature shared by all societies. But how did it evolve and is it physically and psychologically beneficial?
The Duckworth Laboratory
Historian Stephen Meyer says, “The past is silent.” Physical artifacts are plentiful and lend a rich insight in past cultures and civilisations but to understand the human voice he says you need to study the anatomy.
The Duckworth Laboratory is housed at Cambridge University in the UK and is devoted to the study of human evolution and variation. At the heart of the laboratory are its collections, home to skeletal remains of over 18,000 human, primate and biological materials.
Learning how to breathe is the basis of singing and the development of homo erectus had a profound effect on the ability to sing. Dr Iain Morley of Cambridge University states standing upright and walking are integral to the evolution of the singing voice. The larynx was placed much higher in ancestors and as it lowered following humans becoming upright, it became more conducive to the development of a singing voice.
The ability to walk showed the socially cohesive power of rhythm. Dr Ian Cross, also of Cambridge University, says there is an experiment that can be undertaken which highlights this. Try having a conversation with somebody when one person is walking out of step and note how it becomes stilted, whereas a comfortable bond will arise if the couple stay in rhythm.
The Early Human Singing Voice
What form did the early human singing voice take?
“Not that different from a modern chimp, capable of sounds signifying pleasure or warning,” says Dr Cross.
He says the evolution of the singing voice was a tool for servicing relationships in larger groups, promoting calmness and understanding and perhaps not dissimilar to the purring of a cat.
As language evolved the singing voice lost its reliance on nuance, words becoming dominant for the expression of feelings. Consider how subtle the singing voice of modern humankind would need to be if it were without language.
The World in Six Songs
In his book The Musical World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, Daniel Levitin suggests that all of music can be grouped into six types of song.
Friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge and love are his six founding fathers. He sees these basic themes as indicators of the adaptive role of music and song. As an example, he sees a song of joy as a “reliable indicator of a person’s mental and physical health.”
He notes how it affects human biology by means of hormone production as well as influencing thought and feeling, concurring with Dr Cross that the early human used song to ease group tensions and act as a bonding mechanism.
The Power of Singing
Professor Graham Welch of the University of London has studied developmental and medical aspects of singing for 30 years and says.
“The health benefits of singing are both physiological and psychological. Its physical benefits include increasing oxygenation of the blood stream and working major muscle groups in the upper body.
Psychologically it has the positive effect of reducing stress levels through the action of the endocrine system which is linked to the sense of emotional well-being.”
From the bonding of early humans to the classical recital, the song has played a vital role in humankind’s history and evidence would seem to suggest that singing is good on a communal and personal level.
Sources
The World in Six Songs – Daniel Levitin (Penguin 2008)
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