Free The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature by Daniel J. Levitin Page B

utilitarian cooperative activities. Those individuals who were better able to predict the behavior of others because they could “read their minds” would have had a competitive advantage within the group.
    But understanding why it is music and not something else that causes these strong feelings of social bonding remains partly a mystery. Dunbar (and others who followed, including Dean Falk) made the case for why aural bonding would be more efficient than one-on-one physical bonding through grooming behaviors (or through sexual activity as is done by bonobos to promote bonding). Recall that evolution doesn’t invent new features from scratch; it doesn’t design from whole cloth. Rather, evolution uses structures already in place. Communicative calls and signals were already ubiquitous among the repertoires of nonhuman primates—certain sounds indicated particular types of dangers, the presence of food, and so on. Making such sounds in synchrony would be a clear indication that the group members were paying attention to each other and had a common interest. Among such group vocalizers, those that happened upon a way to induce feelings of happiness, safety, and security in their group mates would have an advantage—these early politicians could cause others to cooperate more with them because they were the source of good feelings.
    In a larger context, individuals with social skills would receive many benefits—they would know how and when to get help from others, whom to fight with, whom to trust, and whom to avoid. This emotional intelligence would have given them power over others. Today, in contemporary society, we regard music as a form of emotional communication—perhaps the best one we know. There is no reason to suspect that music functioned differently—although the music itself may have been very different—thousands of years ago. Early humans may have used music to broadcast their own emotional states to others, as well as for the (political) purposes of calming, energizing, organizing, and inspiring.
    An important aspect of group cohesion as induced by music-dance is that with larger and larger human living groups, smaller subgroups may form of individuals who feel that their interests are not aligned with those of the larger, dominant group. They may feel as though they lack the power or resources to break out on their own, but that the larger group is not serving their needs. At the dawn of human culture, such a group may have been the elderly, who felt that the social alliances of the young were displacing their own; or a small group of individuals who did not like the current leader and felt mistreated by him. Music has historically been one of the strongest forces binding together the disenfranchised, the alienated.
    The high school smokers mentioned at the beginning of this chapter are just one of many such assemblies. In high schools across America there are cliques of “in” students and of “out” students—students who feel marginalized, taunted, or tormented by the stronger, richer, or more popular kids. A common musical interest can provide solidarity for these smaller splinter groups, just as “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room” does for the smokers. Gay students may turn to gay anthems such as Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” The “we” that music binds together can refer to liberals (Nine Inch Nails’ “March of the Pigs”), conservatives (Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”), the young (the Who’s “My Generation”), the average guy (Primus’s “Poetry and Prose”), or the working man (Springsteen’s “Working on the Highway”). The free love and sex philosophy of the late sixties and early seventies was celebrated in songs such as Stephen Stills’s “Love the One You’re With,” and those who rejected such notions might have turned to Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” and today might be galvanized by Whitney Houston (“Saving All My