Music and Speech in Social Bonding

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Language and music tend to be thought of as distinct domains of human life. The one is necessary and purposeful, in that it allows us to refer and to organise joint action in pursuit of common goals; the other can at best elicit powerful emotional experiences, but is, on the whole, a rather superfluous means of entertainment. However, this view is misleading. Sometimes, language is not used to refer, while music may do much more than simply reflect emotion. Considered as interactive media, music, and language in at least one of its functional manifestations, are almost indissociable. When music takes the form of participatory interaction, it has the capacity to enhance a sense of mutual affiliation or bonding between participants. Similarly, language, or more properly, speech, in the phatic register —when the actual words used in dialogic interaction are less important than is th…