The Power of Rock & Roll:
Various statements have been made to the effect that oppressed people create the most powerful music, or, “when you’re poor, you have to sing loud.” So here’s the evolutionary mathematics behind it, and how they can be employed to benefit the evolution revolution solution.
In music all sounds fall somewhere on a continuum ranging from calm to threatening. The evolutionary logic behind humans’ perception of “calm” and “threatening” is quite simple. A threatening sound is an abrupt sound. That’s caused by a physical force displacing air very suddenly. Such a force would be a threat to humans’ survival. A calm sound is a sound that doesn’t change abruptly. In addition to not being a threatening sound in of itself, it’s the sound of forces displacing air gently without being interrupted by sudden displacements of air. That is, calm sounds are not only non-threatening, they also signal the absence of threat.
The calm or threatening nature of a sound has no relationship to the volume of air displaced. That is, it has nothing to do with the volume of the sound. Loud sounds can be calming by not displacing air abruptly, as in the case of a waterfall. Quiet sounds can be threatening, as in the case of a one-pound rock rolling down a mountainside.
The calmness or threat of a sound used in music will cause people who hear it to react emotionally to its calmness or threateningness. The degree by which they react emotionally to the sound depends on their evolutionary interpretation of the importance of the sound based on its volume.
When singers sing to music, they add another dimension of emotional communication. Song generally includes much more emotional communication than speech. There are two reasons for this. First, song turns the voice into a musical instrument, which causes it to be used for its sound-making properties more than it is in speech. Since emotional communication is caused by the sound properties of the voice, that alone makes song communicate more emotion than speech, even if only unintentionally. Second, singers realize this, and they use the greater emotional communication qualities of song to communicate a greater amount of emotion.
Singers can use their emotional communication to compliment or contrast the emotional communication of the music. This will determine the overall emotional effects of the music. (Other variables that will contribute to the overall effect of the music are technical aspects, like the acoustic quality of the performance space and the quality of the recording, but for the purposes of discussion I’m ignoring those and focusing on the performance of the music.)
My theory that emotional instincts create literal energy forces within a person’s brain (or at least, something that functions as an energy force) supports, and is supported by, the observation that oppressed people create the most powerful music. According to the Theory of Evolutionary Relativity, the listener’s emotional reaction to the music would create this spiritual/emotional energy, and the more spiritual/emotional energy is created, the more powerful the music will feel. Because oppressed people live in more stressful, more emotionally unhealthy conditions, they would naturally feel a much greater need to artificially alter their own emotional states than would non-oppressed people.
If you listen to gospel music sung by Whites, you will observe that it is made up primarily of calm sounds, and that that the singers always sing in positive beats. As a result, gospel music feels spiritually uplifting to congregations of White Christians.
If you listen to gospel music sung by Blacks, you will observe that it is made up primarily of calm sounds that are much louder than those in White gospel music, and you will observe that the singers sing entirely in positive beats much more loudly than do White singers of gospel music. As a result, Black gospel music feels much more spiritually uplifting than White gospel music. That only stands to reason, because traditionally Blacks have had a much greater need for spiritual uplifting than Whites have.
Heavy metal primarily is made up of loud threatening sounds. Other types of music focus on quiet threatening sounds. Depending on his choice of positive or negative beats, the singer creates two different effects for the music.
If he sings in positive beats, he exerts great amounts of physical force that displace great volumes of air, while using his vocal emotional communication to have a positive effect on his listeners directly, or on his intended receiver of the communication (if he’s addressing the song to a particular person). That will cause his audience to sympathize with him and identify with him.
Sweet Child of Mine by Guns and Roses is an example of a heavy metal song using positive beats.
If the singer sings in negative beats, he inflicts emotional damage on his audience. As heavy metal fans generally agree, that either helps prepare them to withstand the emotional damage they suffer elsewhere in life, or lets them identify with the singer as someone else who has suffered emotional damage. I think every Metallica song I’ve ever heard is made up entirely of negative beats, including their cover of the traditional Irish folk song, Whiskey in the Jar.
War Pigs, by Black Sabbath, is a ballad about something negative—greedy politicians starting a war and then sending poor people out to fight it, “treating people just like pawns in chess”— which makes it seem negative, but it’s sung in positive beats. That makes it seem like a contradiction, and that makes it sound like Ozzy Osborne was being particularly villainous by making war sound positive. That helps make the song memorable. But the goodguys—meaning the poor people—win in the end, and the badguys—the greedy politicians—get their asses kicked, so by the end of the song, Ozzy’s positive beats make a lot more sense.
It must be said that for cultural reasons, resulting from emotional attachments having been made to ideas, many heavy metal fans find heavy metal calming and gospel music threatening.
Other types of music fall somewhere between gospel and heavy metal in their emotional effects.
According to the Theory of Evolutionary Relativity, oppressed people create more powerful music because it directs more emotional energy in the direction of satisfying them with their lives. This is an example of cultural adaptation to available resources. Presumably, in general musicians don’t consciously decide how loud they should sing in order to trigger a certain amount of spiritual/emotional energy. Instead, they sing as loud as seems appropriate. To oppressed musicians who need to trigger greater amounts of spiritual/emotional energy, it seems appropriate to sing louder than it does to musicians who don’t need to trigger as much emotional energy.
Since successful musicians communicate so effectively at the most primal level of humanity—emotion—a lot of their fans look up to them. Many successful musicians realize this, they are well aware of the problems facing the world, and wish they had some answers to give their fans. Even with no specific conclusive answers to give their fans, they can try to find temporary answers to give their fans, and can keep creating their music, to help keep their fans’ hopes up until someone does find some conclusive answers. The benefits of an alliance between evolutionary scientists who work to find solutions to problems facing the world, and musical celebrities who try to give their fans solutions to the problems facing the world, is obvious. By using their great abilities in emotional communication to communicate evolutionarily sound ideas to their fans, musicians can help create a cultural background that values evolutionary solutions to the problems facing the world, thereby fulfilling the goals of themselves, their fans, and the scientists.
Like I said, ROCK ‘N’ ROLL IS HERE TO SAVE THE DAY!!!!