When you grow up in a musical family as I did,
it never occurs to you not to be a musician.
As part of family activities you sing and dance together.
No, really, that's what we do.
And as you grow older, you find your own path.
For me, it's the piano. It's become my musical voice.
At some point as you go deeper into this musical world,
you typically learn and become conversant
in the formal language of your preferred music.
This is true of classical musical systems worldwide.
You learn the symbol system of your preferred music.
These symbols convey musical concepts and practices of your preferred music.
They also make it possible
to preserve musical creations for the ages
and to transfer musical ideas to other musicians.
So as a result of this kind of process,
the musical score, that written document, has become extremely important.
And musicians who know how to "read" music are highly valued.
Whether it's the shakuhachi, tradition of Japan,
or the chromatic musical system of South India,
or Gregorian Chant, Beethoven,
movie music, patriotic songs,
the musical score makes it possible to recreate
a musical experience any time, anywhere.
As a result, most of our music arrives to us ready-made.
Ready-made for our consumption, our entertainment,
our enlightenment.
We are typically passive consumers of ready-made music,
delivered to us by musicians who are literate in that musical system.
But there is another world of music where the emphasis is on doing it.
Everyone, doing it.
Let's go there.
(Singing)
(Stamping and clapping) Come on.
Shh... (Softer stamping and clapping)
(Louder clapping)
(Clapping stopped)
(Singing)
(Audience singing together)
Okay, when did you get the music?
When did you get the score? When did you learn the music?
This is a fine example of the difference
between music as a product, meaning the musical score,
and the doing of it, the musical process.
And this little improvisation
was made possible because we're all born musical.
That's right. You are born musical. We're all born musical.
What does that mean?
You were born with certain musical capacities.
They're innate.
Let's think back on what we just did as an improvisation.
I sang out a melody to you
and your brain discerned that those were different pitches.
That's called pitch discrimination.
Then, I set a tempo and a rhythmic pattern.
You found the beat and used your body to join in.
That's called rhythmic entrainment.
Then, you remembered the melody that I sang. You sang it back to me.
That's called musical memory.
Pitch discrimination, rhythmic entrainment, musical memory.
These are things that you were born with.
You didn't have to learn it. You didn't have to buy it.
They're virtually yours for being a Homo sapiens.
We know this because new research has focused on infants and babies.
Let's stick right now with rhythmic entrainment.
(Music)
Here is a baby, just being balanced, listening to a drum track.
(Laughter)
She can't get enough with this.
(Laughter)
(Music stops)
What this kind of research has shown us
is that our brains are beautifully wired for music.
This is not a right-brain, left-brain world.
The music receptors in your brain are all over the brain.
Regardless of your preferred music.
So this raises a question:
if all of this in innate and we're all pre-wired for music,
what about other species?
Let's stick with rhythmic entrainment for the moment.
(Music)
Here is Snowball.
(Laughter)
(Music) (Laughter)
(End of music) (Applause)
He could do this all day.
(Laughter)
Okay, how about a sea lion? Here is Roland.
(Music)
(Same music, with faster tempo)
This is my research with our closest primate cousin: bonobo.
(Bonobo drumming)
(Voices of people talking to the bonobos)
Okay, that's rhythmic entrainment.
What about pitch discrimination and musical memory?
(Humpback whale calls)
Let me talk a little bit about humpback whale song.
All the males in a specific ocean sing the same seasonal song.
And they create this seasonal song as a collaborative effort.
It's done by one whale singing out phrase
and if it's sung back to him,
it's incorporated in this seasonal song.
And they spend six months creating this seasonal song together.
Then they go silent for six months, while they go to the feeding grounds.
When they resume singing six months later,
they start with last year's seasonal song.
Pitch discrimination, musical memory.
So what does all of this mean?
I work in a field called BioMusic,
which studies musical brains and musical capacities in all species.
Because your ability to interact with others and with your environment
is dependent on these musical capacities.
They also forecast your ability to survive and to get along.
Let's think about being together with our fellow human beings.
Where would marching, singing together, dancing,
team sports, even cheerleading be without rhythmic entrainment?
In a conversation with another person, all speech doesn't have to come
to a grinding halt of silence for the other person to begin speaking.
No. The uptake of that conversation by the other person
happens at that natural rhythmic moment that has just flowed from you.
This kind of conversational turn-taking is rhythmical
and your brain does it automatically.
Think about how you entrain with yourself.
When you're walking, your arms naturally rhythmically entrain to your walk.
And if you are gesturing while you speak,
your gestures automatically entrain to your stress,
and to the tempo of your speech.
Rhythmic entrainment.
As far as pitch discrimination is concerned,
in this whole room with cell phones,
you all know what your own ringtone sounds like.
(Laughter)
And we could all break out right now in the course of Happy Birthday
because of our musical memory.
All these scenarios are supported by a magnificent musical communication system
that resides within us and around us.
And what we're finding in this research is that we're not alone,
that these musical capacities are embedded deeply in the wild.
Furthermore, these musical capacities are primal.
This has really profound implications for our species
and for other species.
I'm engaged in soundmapping the Meso-American Reef.
We're dropping hydrophones at the second largest reef system in the world,
because vision is not the best tool in the ocean.
We're capturing the sounds of the animals
that live at the reef and migrate by the reef.
And we're learning, in a whole new way, how they interact with each other
and with their environment.
Returning to our species, new therapies are being developed
that use this magnificent musical system in our brain
to reprogram damaged brains.
So by using music-making, we can actually recapture lost abilities
due to stroke or traumatic brain injury.
And, when it comes to interventions, we have new interventions
that use music-making combination with hand-eye coordination
to stimulate an increased learning.
Going forward into the future,
we want to continue to expand our understanding
of this fabulous music communication system
and to learn better how to use it to our advantage.
So in the future, we will design sound environments that support wellness.
We will design sound environments that are prescriptive,
and individualized, that support healing.
We will manage the sound environments
that will preserve and protect other species.
Consider that new technology is now on the drawing board,
that is going to be able to record the sounds
of individual cells within your body.
That means that we can use patterns of sound
and time to listen to cells that are healthy
versus cells that are diseased.
This opens up the possibilities for us
to have a diagnostic tool that is not invasive,
that listens to the body and pinpoints diseased cells.
And it may be possible to write a code of sound waves
to neutralize those diseased cells.
You should also know that NASA
has already sent recordings of human music-making
and whale songs into intergalactic space,
with the possibility
that extraterrestrial intelligent life
will know us by these sounds,
creating the possibility that the first communication with an E.T.
may actually be a musical communication.
With all this said, perhaps we should reconsider
the importance of music-making in our lives
and the role that it plays with educating and mentoring our children.
Because they're going to need height into musical capacities
to be able to walk into these new careers and jobs.
Music is not just a literate activity.
It's a potent communication system
that is embedded in the wild and that connects all the life on the planet.
So, embrace your musicality.
Experience this world as a musical place.
And know that the future holds a robust and fast musical conversation.
Thank you.
(Applause)