we can all make music

better than sex

A still to be completed commentary by Jon Hawkes, 11/2/07

This essay is prompted by having recently read yet another article in the mainstream media about the profoundly wonderful benefits of listening to music.

As usual, no mention was made of the fact that, whatever those beneficial effects are, they are marginal in comparison with the levels that can be achieved through making music, which in turn pale in comparison with those arising from making music with others.

It cannot be that the advocates of the life enhancing effects of music listening are unaware of this hierarchy of intensity. The scientific research that has identified the first has just as comprehensively demonstrated the others.

One cannot help but wonder if there is some sort of conspiracy going on. Whatever, it made me so angry that I said to my colleague that the article read like a promo blurb for a sex film. She responded dismissively: 'You can't seriously be suggesting that going to a concert is the same as watching a porn movie.'

'Well, at least I think it's a comparison worth tossing around', I replied.

So, here's my attempt to tease out the parallels between making whoopee and making music. I should say at the outset that my thoughts have also been inspired by Amanda Lohrey's essay, 'The clear voice suddenly singing' in which one of her interviewees opines that singing with others is 'better than sex'.

I'm not going to attempt to support this claim (but it does make a great suck-you-in title for the essay). Rather, I will examine why such a comparison would be made in the first place (why not better than a beer, or food, or chocolate, or a long hot bath ...?) and why in the case of sex, watching others doing it is regarded as unwholesome, while in the case of music, it's promoted as some sort of near religious experience.

The first thing I did after reading the 'better than sex' anecdote was to turn to Google. I found thousands of references, among which was one of those David Letterman type 'ten reasons why ...' lists. Most of these reasons were ones about the lack of repercussions (basically, singing is better than sex because it's physically and emotionally less messy).

It prompted me to compose another sort of ten reasons:

Singing is better than sex because nobody looks at me funny when I say that:

I really enjoy doing it alone
I enjoy watching others doing it
I love doing it in front of other people (often with people all of the same gender)
I regularly do it with groups of strangers (sometimes in living rooms but often in public)
I love doing it with children
I have hired a teacher who is helping me get better at it
I'm encouraging my children to do it professionally
I have many recordings of it that I play all the time
I've even recorded myself doing it
I'm a big advocate of it being taught in schools

What is obvious from this list is just how different, at least in a cultural context, singing and sex are. Just compare these columns:

singing in the shower	masturbation
concert going	voyeurism
performance	exhibitionism
community singing	orgies
cross-generational choirs	pedophilia
professional musician	pole dancer

Clearly, we value these activities entirely differently.

But if singing and sex are really so different, why are their effects so often compared?

Probably because we recognise the similarity of these effects. Both make us feel 'good'.

Neuroscientists tell us that this is because both activities result in the same biochemicals being released into the bloodstream. Different amounts, over different periods - but essentially the same feelgood stuff.

Evolutionary scientists tell us that the reason this happens is, in both cases, identical - a positive feedback loop designed to reinforce a particular behaviour.

We've never forgotten why this is so when it comes to sex - we are host to genes whose only purpose is to replicate themselves. An essential element of their strategy to achieve maximum replication is to encourage us to go at it like rabbits.

But to maintain a long and active sex life requires that the host organism survives (not only to keep at it, but also to raise the next generation).

This is, in all likelihood, where music fits. Scientists are still speculating about music's evolutionary function but increasingly the arguments appear to be weighing down on the side of music as the fundamental socialising tool of early humans.

Before language (and probably, even now, with language) we needed a practical activity that enhanced our collaborative expertise. Without that expertise, those early groups of hominids that ventured out on to the savanna would not have survived.

Making music together was (and should still be) nature's way of teaching us how to work together. But we appear, unlike with the sex drive, to have forgotten why nature has deigned to offer us so much pleasure from this activity.

And here's another thought: as far as I'm aware the bonobos are the only primates that regularly use sexual activity as social glue. In most primate societies sexuality (essential for procreation) is disruptive. Other means have to be used to counteract the unpleasantnesses caused (grooming, etc). Humans, who need to associate in quite large groups, need a lot of sexually counteractive tools - music is probably the most effective.

We've ended up living in a society that actively encourages most of its members NOT to make music together - ostensibly because a judge aesthete has ruled that they are no good at it (that is, their technique doesn't meet acceptable community standards). Can one imagine a society where the same process occurs around sex? There have been cultures that banned procreation by perceived inferiors, but as far as I know, no culture has disallowed sexual activity on the basis of inferior technique.

The other side of this coin is attempts to ban sexual activity except for procreation. A similar musical move has been attempts to ban music making except for the praise of supernatural beings

In both cases, we have overlaid the original biological purposes with almost impenetrable layers of cultural accretion. Much of this is aesthetic. Sexuality lies behind everything from love poems to nudes; music has become an artistic end in itself.

But, in the case of sex, the original function remains if not uppermost, at least unforgettable. While we might marvel at the beauty of Hindu sexual statuary, we don't get so caught up in it that we forget that the point of the work is the glorification of the act of sexual congress. Not so with music. The argument that the point of singing is singing, rather than the song, is one that doesn't get much of a run (despite its similarity to McLuhan's dictum 'the medium is the message').

Given the similarity of evolutionary purpose, and of neurological effect, how is it that we've come to think of them so differently? (an aside - not everyone does think of them differently - there are more than a few religious sects that see unregulated music-making as just as dangerous, and morally despicable, as unregulated sex).

Perhaps the primary reason is that, in the case of sex, the fundamental biological function remains obvious to us - procreation; the fundamental purpose of music - socialisation - has either been forgotten, replaced by other methods, or been (consciously or unconsciously) rejected for ideological, or commercial, reasons.

Furthermore, there has come into existence a vast and enormously powerful institutional base - religion - that has taken upon itself the mission of insisting that it is only the biological function of sex that should motivate the activity. The fact that it is fun is taken to be in the nature of temptation to sin.

Many others have eloquently demonstrated that a society that denies itself the enjoyment of unregulated (or at least significantly less regulated than the one we're in) sexual activity is unhealthy, so I'm not going to go down that well-trodden path.

For whatever reason, the institutional base associated with music has taken an almost opposite path. The 'music industry' is entirely based on promoting the 'virtues' of watching experts doing it.

Imagine the eminent sex researchers deciding that the focus of their study be porn videos and strip clubs. We would all recognise that while the results of such research might be interesting, it's not actually grasping the point (so to speak).

WAYS OF HAVING THE FUN AND AVOIDING THE (ONCE INEVITABLE) CONSEQUENCES.

Despite all the efforts of the church(es), this challenge has obsessed humanity for ever. We've come up with masturbation, abortion, contraception and homosexuality as ways of taking our pleasure without having to take on the responsibility of childbirth and child rearing. Which is, of course, why so many religions view these solutions as evil.

Is there a parallel process in relation to music? Are there consequences of music-making we (or at least, some of us) wish to avoid?

Perhaps. If the consequences are:

An appreciation of the necessity of co-operation and collaboration for survival
An appreciation of the capacity of all of us to actively contribute to the outcome
A pleasure in making our own music rather than having it made for us
An active desire to be a part of the determining processes of the world we live in
An openness to strange and new sounds and a desire to build these into new and dynamic forms.

Then, there are a wide variety of interests that would prefer us not to exhibit these characteristics. These include those able to commercially profit from ensuring that most of us remain passive consumers, those musicians that personally benefit from the riches of all kinds that are consequent to achieving significant fame, and those whose exercise of social power would inhibited in a society whose members were engaged and active.

WHAT ABOUT ECONOMIC IMPERATIVES?

If there's a profit to be made from an activity, our culture does all it can to facilitate (and legitimate) the activity.

In the case of sex this sets up a bunch of contradictions between religion and commerce. But in the case of music, the lack of an 'original function' proponent has left the field wide open for profiteers.

And, for better or worse, philosophy has been the eager handmaiden of commerce. In fact, it's reasonable to describe the relationship between the art and the commerce of music as an unholy alliance dedicated to ensuring that a small elite of music makers and their agents and employers is able to profitably distribute music product to a passive mass of consumers.

With sex, economics is no less intrusive. It's just that it isn't glorified in the way it is with music. Every aspect of sexual activity that can be commercialised has been.

The main activity that has supported the development of the internet (technological innovation, bandwidth extension, domestic takeup, etc, etc) has been pornography. Until very recently, it has been the distribution of sexually explicit materials that has overwhelmingly dominated the usage of the internet. Surprise, surprise, that dominance is now being challenged by music.

Why better? (rather than, eg, as good as). Perhaps because, for many, the anxiety (performance expectations, commitment presumptions, etc. etc) are much lower.

If it is possible to suspend cultural evaluation for a moment (including questions of taste, decorum, morality and aesthetics), let us consider these two scenarios:

A middle-aged man sits in the back row of an adult cinema and masturbates during the screening of a sexually explicit movie.

A young woman takes her CD player into the bathroom, puts on her favorite music, and sings along lustily while having a shower.

In a biological context, what is so different about these two activities?

I contend that there is very little.

In both cases the subject is enjoying the pleasure of the activity without engaging with its fundamental purpose. In neither case is it biologically dysfunctional.

Now I am not wishing to argue (at least in this essay) that these two activities should be afforded equal merit in our cultural spectrum.

What I am arguing for is the recognition that it is in making music together where the most powerful effects of music manifest themselves, and that a society that glorifies the consumption of music as the peak experience for most of its members is at as much health risk as one that promotes voyeurism as the peak sexual experience.

we can all make music

better than sex

making a sound world together