Lyz Liddell’s speech in the 2015 NYC Secular Solstice:

Let’s talk for a few minutes about songs. You know some songs, right? You and the 7 billion other people on this planet? Right! They’re everywhere!

But weirdly enough, there’s very little research into the evolutionary origins of music and song.

Psychologist and linguist Stephen Pinker allocated a mere 11 of the 660 pages of How the Mind Works to a discussion of music. In those pages, he posits that music just a byproduct of other evolutionary traits conducive to language – it’s biologically useless, solely entertainment, and a sort of “auditory cheesecake.”

I happen to think that perspective is bullshit. Music appears in one form or another in every culture of the world, and has for ages of history. AND, researchers have found that in some cases, musical ability exists and persists even in the absence or loss of lingual capacity.

I’m hearing a bit of a different tune than what Pinker must be listening to. (But I might be biased, having not only one but two degrees in music.)

But I’m not alone. Author Steven Mithen – who in fact possesses zero degrees in music but several in archaeology – proposes an alternate hypothesis in his book Singing Neanderthals. He posits that both music and language are now separate derivatives of a single, earlier form of communication, with a history dating back probably as far as bipedalism.

But as homo sapiens developed the need and the ability for a compositional, word-based language allowing for an infinite range of utterances, we abandoned this holistic, multi-modal, musical communication system. Our linguistic needs had moved beyond what this system could offer; we evolved.

So where did that leave music? Language as we know it took over the role of communicating – and indeed, even generating in our own minds – ideas and information. But we retain our deep ties to pitch and rhythm and movement. We have words, yes, but we still have emotions and we still need to express them, to come together as a group and cooperate and bond – and it is this need which music has come to serve. We sing.

Let me give some examples.

Envision a crew of sailors in the rigging of a massive ship facing a storm. How are they all working in such precise coordination? By singing sea chanties, day in, day out, reinforcing a shared sense of rhythm and teamwork.

Think of armies drilling their soldiers to march and chant in unison, creating not just a sense of well-being and euphoria, but inducing physiological changes to support group mentality.

Consider the tent revival, with music carefully chosen to synchronize to our pulse.

Messaien’s Quartet for the End of Time, written from within the horrors of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, first played upon broken instruments for an audience clad in rags.

We Shall Overcome – one of the great songs of the American Civil Rights movement.

John Lennon’s Imagine.

Verdi’s Requiem.

I owe my love of music to my father, who was himself a lifetime devotee of classical music and opera. He wrote commentary to Wagner’s “Ring” cycle of operas. He could name the symphony having heard only the bassoon part played by 15-year-old me in a practice room. We traded stories about college marching band,  and only once did we end up at odds over the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry – when I mentioned that my graduate school was known for having “the best damn band in the land” – and he replied gravely “Except for Michigan.”

His only request regarding his funeral was that we play Verdi’s Requiem.

There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body. But we continue to exist in our progeny and in the way that our lives have influenced others in our culture. Our ancestors live on in our genes; their stories and song live on in our language and our music. I carry echoes of my father in my DNA, my words, and my songs.

As we sing together tonight, let us come together as a new kind of tribe. Though we all come from different walks of life, different families, different groups, we share in our humanity. Let us come together tonight, to join voices in song as humans have done throughout the world and throughout the ages. Let us sing.