Music is in Your Genes

William Cromie of the Harvard University Gazette writes, “Babies come into the world with musical preferences. At the age of 4 months, dissonant notes at the end of a melody will cause them to squirm and turn away. If they like a tune, they may coo.”

"All humans come into the world with an innate capability for music," writes Kay Shelemay, professor of music at Harvard. "At a very early age, this capability is shaped by the music system of the culture in which a child is raised.”

Just a few weeks ago I listened to the amazing original music of American composer and pianist Emily Bear. Her extraordinary gift for playing piano was recognized when she was 2. Emily is now 13 years old and she made her Carnegie Hall debut at age 9.

"Music is in our genes," says Mark Jude Tramo, a musician and neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School. "Many researchers like myself, are trying to understand melody, harmony, rhythm, and the feelings they produce, at the level of individual brain cells.”

Tramo believes that music and dancing preceded language. Archaeologists have discovered flutes made from animal bones by Neanderthals living in Eastern Europe more than 50,000 years ago. No human culture is known that does not have music.

Music, therefore, is wired within your brain. If you were raised in a home where music was ever present, you probably have an appreciation and love of music that plays an important part in your life today.

I was raised in a musical home. My father was a jazz pianist who played in smoky clubs in Chicago. As a child I heard the pleasing sounds of a baby grand piano just about every single day of my life. My dad had his own music room where his piano prominently sat. Not only did I have the pleasure of listening to him play, I could watch his strong hands and fingers move up and down the keyboard with aplomb.

Musician and composer Ray Charles wrote, “I was born with music inside me.  It was a part of me like my ribs, kidneys, liver, and heart. Music was like my blood; it was a force within me like food and water.”

Rapper and song writer will.i.am wrote, “If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it's not good cooking for yourself;  the joy is in cooking for others - it's the same with music.”

Because of my musical background, I typically have music playing when I am home because music is fantastic company. There is a time for silence and a time for music.  “After silence,” wrote Aldous Huxley, “that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music”

For me, music is an absolute necessity in life.  I cannot imagine life without love and I cannot imagine life without music. They are both expressions of the soul. Always bring music into your life. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche may have expressed it best when he wrote, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”