Author:Daniel J. Levitin
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Charles Darwin meets the Beatles in this attempt to blend neuroscience and evolutionary biology to explain why music is such a powerful force. In this rewarding though often repetitious study by bestselling author Levitin (This Is Your Brain on Music), a rock musician turned neuroscientist, argues that music is a core element of human identity, paving the way for language, cooperative work projects and the recording of our lives and history. Through his studies, Levitin has identified six kinds of songs that help us achieve these goals: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love. He cites lyrics ranging from the songs of Johnny Cash to work songs, which, he says, promote feelings of togetherness. According to Levitin, evolution may have selected individuals who were able to use nonviolent means like dance and music to settle disputes. Songs also serve as memory-aids, as records of our lives and legends. Some may find Levitin's evolutionary explanations reductionist, but he lightens the science with personal anecdotes and chats with Sting and others, offering an intriguing explanation for the power of music in our lives as individuals and as a society. (Aug.)
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Review
%26#x93;Music seems to have an almost willful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know, leaving its power and mystery intact, however much we may dig and delve.Daniel%26#x92;s book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox. There may be no simple answer or end in sight, but the ride is nonetheless a thrilling one, especially in the company of a writer who is an accomplished musician, a poet, a hard-nosed scientist, and someone who can still look upon the universe with a sense of wonder.%26#x94;
--Sting
%26#x93;Without music, we would be little more than animals, and Daniel Levitin explains it beautifully.%26#x94;
--Sir George Martin, CBE, producer of The Beatles
%26#x93;Why can a song make you cry in a matter of seconds? Six Songs is the only book that explains why.With original and awe-inspiring insights into the nature of human artistry, it%26#x92;s irresistibly entertaining.Anyone who loves music should read it.%26#x94;
--Bobby McFerrin, vocalist and guest conductor, London Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic
%26#x93;Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.%26#x94;
--Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon
%26#x93;Daniel Levitin writes about music with all the exuberance of a die-hard fan, and all the insight of a natural-born scientist. This is a fascinating, entertaining book, and some of its most inventive themes may stay stick in your head forever, something like a well-loved song.%26#x94;
--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
%26#x93;To try to cover the meaning of music throughout the history of mankind to how we still use it everyday is extraordinarily ambitious.Combining musical expertise, psychology, anthropology and evolutionary science, Daniel Levitin%26#x92;s Six Songs has accomplished this astonishing task.%26#x94;
--Jon Appleton, Composer and Professor of Music, Dartmouth College and Stanford University
%26#x93;I was skeptical when I began reading. The stated goal seemed outlandish. But by the time I was about one-third the way into The World in Six Songs, I realized just how powerful it is. It really is a tour de force. It is exquisitely written, and brings together a vast array of knowledge, tying things together in creative ways, while always remaining accessible. This promises to be not only another widely read hit, but also an important document for the field of music cognition.%26#x94;
--Jamshed Bharucha, Provost and Professor of Psychology, Tufts University
%26#x93;Passionate and insightful.Daniel Levitin has written a delightfully personal epic poem proposing a central role for music in the evolution of human emotion and behavior.Now, musicians and neuroscientists have a common vocabulary with which to argue our human origins.%26#x94;
--Julie R. Korenberg, M.D. Ph.D., The Brain Institute, University of Utah
%26#x93;In a brilliantly novel approach to human evolution, Levitin has sought to encapsulate diverse cultures in a set of six songs representative of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love.That he is able to achieve so much with this small set of songs says something truly important about our common humanity.%26#x94;
--Michael I. Posner, Professor of Psychology, University of Oregon
%26#x93;This wonderful, lucid book takes on one of the great eternal questions: Why is there music?What does music do for humanity%26#x97;for individual development and for a culture--that in turn accounts for its existence in every known society? Daniel Levitin is not only the preeminent expert in answering such questions, but one of those unique writers about science who understands his field so profoundly that he can make the complex straightforward.This is an exciting, revelatory book.%26#x94;
--Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent and Ordinary Heroes
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