Learn & Tell

Set the Gearshift: Phish as Catalyst to Ecstasy

Table of Contents

How does music move us to ecstasy? The answer is: Nobody knows. (And do we really need to know?) But, for the thinkers out there, here’s a possibility…

[Throughout this essay, titles of songs will be capitalized and in quotes (ie. “My Soul”). However, unless obviously intended as a reference to a song, these are meant to be read simply as words in the sentence.]

4. The Evolution of Music in Humans

According to Darwin, we evolve attributes or physical characteristics that help us to survive. How does enjoying Phish help me to survive? Of course, it is not as necessary as food or sleep, but it sure helps make life easier. Three ways that Phish serves an evolutionary purpose are: pleasure, communication, and social interaction. There are other theories out there, but these seem to me to be the most prevalent and most reasonable.

In regards to pleasure, one can argue that pleasure is not essential to evolution. Or, in terms of music, the pleasure serves no direct purpose, as it does in sexual reproduction. We derive pleasure from sex, but there is also a direct relation to survival of the species through reproduction. What does the pleaasure in music lead to? Simply put, pleasure offers a nice break from the troubling parts of life. Aristotle said that “innocent pleasures are not only in harmony with the perfect end of life, but they also provide relaxation” (44). If we relax, we can regain our energy to fight again. In this sense, pleasure most definitely serves a purpose — an escape.

Aristotle said that music “beyond question…inspries enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is an emotion of the ethical part of the soul,…[that] the habit of feeling pleasure or pain as mere representations is not far removed from the same feeling about realities” (45). Here, Aristotle is moving toward the communication theory, that music can teach us on an emotional level. I learn about myself when I go to concerts, similar to the vicarious living Oscar Wilde describes in “The Critic as Artist”:

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears. I can fancy a man who had led a perfectly commonplace life, hearing by chance some curious piece of music, and suddently discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and known fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations” (Jourdain 322).

As Serafine points out, “there are several variants of the music-as-communication theory, but nearly all agree that the message is an emotional one…that it is this emotional communication…that is the principal purpose of the artform” (12). Listening to Phish, according to these theorists, teaches me by tweaking my emotions, as music evidently does for Oscar Wilde. Aaron Copeland believes that “we respond to music from a primal and almost brutish level–dumbly as it were, for on that level we are firmly grounded” (Aronson 58). Music serves to communicate to us at our base level, our emotions rather than our intellect. The sharp music in the “Psycho” shower scene makes us feel the tension at a gut level, much more than if we were watching the scene without the musical background. In this sense, music is the most direct and powerful communicator, yet still the least concrete.

A third proposal, a recent one, is that music serves to promote social interaction, cementing bonds and forming groups that make it easier to survive in the world. Anyone who has ever been to a parking lot before the show can verify this profundity, that “We’re all in this together” (”Bathtub Gin” Phish). Jourdain ponders why we have evolved such a large cerebrum, saying that “where once scholars emphasized the value of a large brain in building tools, now they extol the virtues of cooperation in hunting, fighting, food sharing, and…in child rearing” (307). I would add that social interaction is a pleasure in itself, a stimulation from which humans benefit. Music first evolved, according to many anthropologists, not only to act as a teaching too, but “to strengthen community bonds and resolve conflicts…If music arose to strengthen social bonds and settle conflicts, it owes its existence to the emotions. For it is by exercising or assuaging emotions that we establish rapport with other human beings” (Jourdain 308).

Phish gives me pleasure (which is a nice escape), teaches me by unearthing emotions within, and is fantastic for social interaction. All of these ways that my love for Phish helps my life revolve around the emotions. Music has survived evolution and continues to thrive because of its direct and strong relation to our emotions. So then, to progress on our exploration of music, we must define an emotion. And how does music convey emotion?

NEXT: Part V - Emotion