The Essence of Music

I’m reading a fascinating book called This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitin, a neuropsych guy who studies how the brain interacts with musical stimuli. The book goes pretty in depth into topics like why we like the music we like, how our brain reacts to certain types of music, and what – at the very core – makes up music.

One passage, regarding the entity of a song, really caught my eye:
“music is quite robust in the face of transformations and distortions of its basic features. We can change all of the pitches used in the song (transposition), the tempo, and the instrumentation, and the song is still recognized as the same song. We can change the intervals, the scales, even the tonality from major to minor or vice versa. We can change the arrangement – say from bluegrass to rock or heavy metal to classical – and, as the Led Zeppelin lyric goes, the song remains the same.”

It’s really pretty incredible, when you think about it. What else can you alter so radically without losing the very essence of its core?

This got me thinking about dramatically different takes of the same song. Coincidentally and simultaneously, I stumbled upon a fantastic version of the song “Ol’ Georgie Buck” played by Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate. It reminded me of the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ tune “Georgie Buck,” another variation on the same traditional song. The mood is different, the instrumentation is different, the tempo is different, and very lyrics are often different. And yet, wonderfully, it’s the same song.

Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate – Ol’ Georgie Buck (YSI) (filesavr)

Carolina Chocolate Drops – Georgie Buck (YSI) (filesavr)