It generates billions of dollars in revenues. It drives hit TV shows. It drives armies to battle. It moves partners to intimacy. Indeed it moves the world. But just what IS it…and WHY is it…and why do so few ask?

After vast vats of ink have been spilled over music theory, advertising and criticism, I’ve never found a satisfying answer to the question – why do we like music in the first place? After all, we can understand why we like to speak, why reading and writing are useful, why math has a place in the firmament of human capabilities. But what the heck good is music? You can’t eat it, you can’t touch it, you can’t hold it (Ipods excluded), and you can’t spend it. It gives you a “feeling” and “connects you with …well, that’s not a good enough answer for me.

So, after much thought and almost no research, I’ve come to the following conclusion which I believe but cannot prove:

We are imprinted with music in the womb. During gestation as our senses come alive, the first things experienced are rhythms – the rhythms of our mother’s heart, her breathing and hormone secretions. These rhythms are at a counterpoint to our own heartbeat, and these “hearings” are both auditory and tactile…we feel them directly – uncluttered by light and vision - as they permeate our bodies. They are the first patterns directly perceived by the emerging entity in the womb and thus the imprinting must be incredibly strong…so strong in fact that our bodies are driven to match the rhythms of our mothers in the womb – as we learn from the hormones the “meaning of the music”...which teaches the first lessons of emotion.

Now, layer on top of these observations the dynamic range of the experience. When the mother is in distress, her heart rate increases, her breathing speeds up – and very interestingly, she begins to secrete hormones that are shared with the fetus – ourselves – such that an indelible correlation is henceforth made that faster patterns are more exciting and perhaps dangerous … causing us to realize at a deep level “I’m ALIVE”. Conversely, when the mother is in a resting state, the slower more regular pattern of heart and breath associated with sleep hormones will forever after guide the new human to associate such patterns with peace, sleep and rest.

As these patterns become more strong with time, the infant begins to mimic the responses – and in fact becomes attuned to actual voices and music that can be heard from outside the womb…and the sympathetic responses that the infant’s body has learned from the mother’s interior music are now actualized by this disconnected external music.

From these fundamental defining experiences in the womb, the panoply of non-visual patterning, emotional responses, rhythms, life cadences, dancings and the general non-visual pattern and response interface with our world arise.

So, the next time you listen to the inspired contrapuntal of Beethoven’s Ninth, the acoustic fireworks of the 1812 Overture, the driving cadence of a Sousa march or the placid hope of John Lennon’s “Imagine” – think back to your time in the womb where it all started. Oh – and - Thanks Mom!

Now perhaps the above is old hat to some...or perhaps it's wrong...that's why I love Speculist - you can speculate!

P.S. I've been asked "So Ben, who are you?" Like the Unknown Comic from the Gong Show, I'm an anonymous writer who hopes what's presented is enjoyable and useful.