Fascinating piece on music and propaganda, Jodi. Maybe that's why oral forms of propaganda are so powerful. The oral medium is not only about the delivery of content/ideas but also about the musicality of voice and that's what draws us in and holds us: the rhythms of language and the tonal qualities and range of voice.
Makes good sense to me, Margaret, and I've heard that timbre and tone are the predominant part that people attend to -- voice before language or meaning.
Much appreciate your further application of the article. Your comment goes in the same direction as the (excellent) 2017 Trimble and Hesdorffer article linked above.
Read the Trimble and Hesdorffer article with interest. It seems that the expansion of our brain was tied to the parts of our brain that involve auditory processing. So creating and responding to sound, whether rhythms, vocalizations, or emotional tones, was central to not only our emotional development but also our ability to make meanings, which preceded our ability to make meaning through language.
I’m thinking about the tie between your substack on lies and this one. The bullshitting lie interests me in particular. With bullshitting, everything is thrown into the mix, then stirred around like a big pot of soup. Everything is conflated with everything else. Meaning is nonsensical from a logical point of view. Only sound bites survive. And that’s the point because the speaker’s main function is to emote. To provide meaning through the emotional timbre of their voice – fear, hope, ridicule – our oldest way of knowing.
Maybe I can think of the bullshit lie in this way. To know when we’re in the presence of political propaganda and not news gathering: the power of voice to create meaning without “saying” anything that makes sense.
Yes, isn't that element of the article cool? I always felt music going straight to my bloodstream with whatever emotional associations it conveyed. This article helped me understand what I'd so often felt myself.
On bullshit, I had see it as less systematic and coordinated than propaganda. Like semi-spontaneous stand-up comedy as opposed to a scripted film. Certainly, though, voice/sound evoking emotions would be part of both.
Fascinating piece on music and propaganda, Jodi. Maybe that's why oral forms of propaganda are so powerful. The oral medium is not only about the delivery of content/ideas but also about the musicality of voice and that's what draws us in and holds us: the rhythms of language and the tonal qualities and range of voice.
Makes good sense to me, Margaret, and I've heard that timbre and tone are the predominant part that people attend to -- voice before language or meaning.
Much appreciate your further application of the article. Your comment goes in the same direction as the (excellent) 2017 Trimble and Hesdorffer article linked above.
Read the Trimble and Hesdorffer article with interest. It seems that the expansion of our brain was tied to the parts of our brain that involve auditory processing. So creating and responding to sound, whether rhythms, vocalizations, or emotional tones, was central to not only our emotional development but also our ability to make meanings, which preceded our ability to make meaning through language.
I’m thinking about the tie between your substack on lies and this one. The bullshitting lie interests me in particular. With bullshitting, everything is thrown into the mix, then stirred around like a big pot of soup. Everything is conflated with everything else. Meaning is nonsensical from a logical point of view. Only sound bites survive. And that’s the point because the speaker’s main function is to emote. To provide meaning through the emotional timbre of their voice – fear, hope, ridicule – our oldest way of knowing.
Maybe I can think of the bullshit lie in this way. To know when we’re in the presence of political propaganda and not news gathering: the power of voice to create meaning without “saying” anything that makes sense.
Yes, isn't that element of the article cool? I always felt music going straight to my bloodstream with whatever emotional associations it conveyed. This article helped me understand what I'd so often felt myself.
On bullshit, I had see it as less systematic and coordinated than propaganda. Like semi-spontaneous stand-up comedy as opposed to a scripted film. Certainly, though, voice/sound evoking emotions would be part of both.