Psychomusicology: Music, Mind ¿s'Brain 2011, Vol. 21, No. l&No. 2 © 2012 by Psychomusicology DOI: 10.1037/h0094018 "The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature" by Daniel J. Levitin Reviewed by ELLEN DISSANAYAKE University of Washington "The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Cre- ated Human Nature", by Daniel J. Levitin. New York: Dutton, 2008. (ISBN: 9780525950738. Hard cover, 354 pp., $25.95.) Although the conventions of scientific writing demand detachment and objectivity, this require- ment is probably not a serious problem for chemists or anatomists. In music psychology, however, I suspect that most researchers came to their subject because as youngsters they were musically gifted and passionate about music. Years of graduate study and its requisite mastery of academic writing style neces- sarily take their toll on the expression of enthusiasm if not the feelings of enthusiasm themselves. Daniel J. Levitin has not suppressed his excite- ment about music or its neuroscientific substrates. In his best-seller of 2006, This is Your Brain on Music, Levitin spiritedly threw off the shackles of boiler- plate scientific writing and described for general readers in an easy conversational style the neurolog- ical basis for elements of music such as pitch, timbre, key, harmony, loudness, rhythm, meter and tempo and how these come together in the brain to become the music that we hear and are even obsessed by. In his recent best-seller. The World In Six Songs (2008), he uses the same colloquial style to ask Big Questions— How and why did music originate? What functions does it serve (today and ancestrally, during human evolution)? What motivates us to produce and consume music? How can we understand the often strong emotions that music creates? And indeed, this is what most non-professional music-lovers want to know—far more than the information that their DANIEL J. LEVITIN oongs the Musical Broin Created Human Natui attention to pitch sequences occurs in the dorsolateral pre- frontal cortex and Brodmann areas 44 and 47 (although he tells us that too). Rather than treat- ing music as a rare and mysterious hu- man capacity, Levitin regards it as com- mon—as would any ethnomusicologist who has lived in a traditional soci- ety where everyone participates unselfconsciously in musical events. As a former record producer and professional saxophonist as well as a cogni- tive neuroscientist of music, he is admirably (and probably, among his colleagues, uniquely) familiar with both the music and lyrics of recent recorded American popular songs. He can be commended for addressing this neglected ethnomusicological genre and at the same time attracting a new audi- ence for the findings of psychomusicology. As a device to describe the many contribu- tions of music to our species nature, he discusses six broad categories of songs—Friendship, Joy, Comfort, Knowledge, Religion, and Love. Whether composed by Sting or Schubert (or the poets whose words inspired them), songs of all times do seem to address these various states. Correspondence about this review should be addressed to Ellen Dissanayake, Affiliate Professor, School of Music, Box 353450, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195-3450. E-mail: edissana@seanet.com 252