There is a significant difference between what we can recall with our natural memories and what we can do with a memory trained using mnemonic technologies – none of which require a computer. One of those invaluable technologies is music.
Every culture in every part of the world, literate, oral and those who are somewhere between, fill their worlds with music.
Response to rhythm starts with newborn babies, according to this report in PLOS Biology (2026). Human newborns form musical predictions based on rhythmic but not melodic structure.
Not surprisingly, Oliver Sacks considers our musicality to be an innate. According to his fascinating book Musicophilia (2011), Sacks considers that it is discrete tones and rhythm which are indispensable to music. He asks if the potential that music offers is universal.1 As Indigenous peoples have shown us, cultures without writing depend on song to record the prodigious collection of information in their communal knowledge base.
There is a small minority of people in every population whose musicality is even worse than mine. People with congenital amusia cannot tell which is the higher musical note when two notes played are close in tone to each other. They have true ‘tone deafness’. Most of those with amusia also struggle with rhythm, sometimes called ‘beat deafness’. Research by Isabelle Peretz and Dominique Vuvan showed that the prevalence of congenital amusia is only 1.5 per cent.2 However, the vast majority of us are predisposed by our genome to participate with music to some degree, often extensively.
I devote an entire chapter of The Knowledge Gene to the archaeology which shows that musical expertise dates back tens of thousands of years. Because music gave humans an evolutionary advantage and so innate musicality was favoured. And it’s not only memory. Tthe impact of music on our emotions is vital for us as social animals, bonding us to those with whom we share the rhythms and song.
Palaeoanthropologist, Iain Morley, analysed the music within four different groups of First Nations peoples across three continents and in very different environments. Describing the songs, he noted that: ‘the greater proportion relates stories, descriptions of events, environments, journeys and subsistence sources, and so constitutes an important repository of knowledge’.3
Rhythm makes music much more memorable so it is not surprising that percussion is a universal in musical performances. Hands are clapped, sticks are struck on hollow logs, gourds are rattled and people stomp. What astounds me is that in Africa, drum poetry is used to convey information through tropical forests. These messages are sent using only drums. No performance, no words and no prearranged code.4
Performance enhances music-encoded knowledge
Add performance to the music and what may seem to be dull information becomes enthralling. I was mesmerised when watching the famous Buffalo Dance at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Buffalo Dance at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM. Photo: Lynne Kelly.
Aboriginal Australian dancers replicate the behaviour of kangaroos to indicate whether they have detected the presence of a hunter. There is a change the way they scratch and the movement of their ears. These are the nuances it would be close to impossible to describe accurately in writing and yet they are conveyed in moments in performance. Dances are used to reinforce hunt strategies and ensure the hunters are able to recognise those nuances in behaviour to optimise the chance of a successful hunt.5
First Nations communities the world over maintain their melodious encyclopaedias. They repeat valuable songs, compose for new information and gradually lose those that are no longer relevant. The human genome has granted all of us this innately human trick of the knowledge trade.
A great deal of modern education relies on sitting still and writing notes. I am not advocating against any contemporary practice but asking you whether there is a lot more we can do by learning from our First Nations colleagues. Performance is at the heart of Indigenous education from tiny dancers copying the older members of their ensemble and then eventually becoming those Elders. It is the addition of rhythm and rhyme that makes repetition a pleasure, not a chore.6
Hopi women’s dance, Oraibi, Arizon. 1879. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain)
Psychologist David C. Rubin describes the impact of performing knowledge as ‘staggering’, increasing recall by 165 per cent.7 This ‘staggering’ impact more than justifies Professor Howard Morphy’s description of some Australian First Nations gatherings as requiring a huge amount of effort to create the complex ritual performances, operatic in the scale and spectacle.8
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A fascinating book on the evolution of music, which was a huge influence on me, is Alan Harvey’s Music, Evolution and the Harmony of Souls
Below is a link to the first of a series of interviews on the ABC by the wonderful science journalist, Robyn Williams.
All human cultures and social groups participate in and respond to music and dance. Music is a mode of communication which has played a critical role in enhancing trust, pro-social behaviour and cooperation. Recently music has been shown to be an affective therapeutic tool for conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. But too often music is given little more significance than an ephemeral pleasure, a harmless indulgence, rather than a necessity. Neuroscientist and musician Alan Harvey considers these issues in his book, Music, Evolution and the Harmony of Souls. Today he presents the first in a series of talks addressing the place of music in human evolution and society today.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/the-role-of-music-in-human-evolution-and-society-today/9047914
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1 O. Sacks, Musicophilia, Picador, London, 2011, pp. 105–28.
2 I. Peretz & D. Vuvan, ‘Prevalence of congenital amusia’, European Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 25, 2017, p. 625.
3 I. Morley, ‘Hunter-gatherer music and its implications for identifying intentionality in the use of acoustic space’, in C. Scarre & G. Lawson (eds), Archaeoacoustics, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, 2006, p. 103.
4 R.H. Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its nature, significance and social context, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977, pp. 98, 119–21; W.J. Ong, ‘African talking drums and oral noetics’, New Literary History, vol. 8, no. 3, 1977, pp. 411–29.
5 Two excellent resources to watch Australian Aboriginal dances are: P. Cameron (writer), Dance on Your Land, Woomera Aboriginal Corporation, Ronin Films, Civic Square, 1993; and T. Graham (writer), Ceremony: The Djungguwan of Northeast Arnhem Land, Film Australia, Lindfield, 2006.
6 L. Kelly, Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, memory and the transmission of culture, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015, pp. xv–xviii.
7 D.C. Rubin, Memory in Oral Traditions: The cognitive psychology of epic, ballads, and counting-out rhymes, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p. 112.
8 H. Morphy, Aboriginal Art, Phaidon Press, London, 1998, pp. 183–84.