Musica fix: Is music the universal language?

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music-universal-language

Music and language have, certainly, a connection and not just in an explicit form, also in neuroscience. A study carried on last year with jazz musicians at the University of Baltimore has shown that the parts of the brain related to linguistic activities lighted up when improvising music. In other words, creativity, as you may know, is a form of expression and thus a way of communicating although when it comes to process sound the experience in the brain becomes intense.

Professor, and musician, Nina Kraus claimed in this line some days ago at the Falling Walls Conference in Berlin that “sound processing in the brain really is a measure of brain health” being “one of the most computationally complex tasks we ask our brains to do”.

But is music the universal language? Opinions to this respect are diverse. For some there are cultural aspects in music that are not shared universally; others believe, as Bobby McFerrin (composer of one of the most well-known songs worldwide “Don’t worry be happy“) states in the following video at the World Science Festival in 2011, that everyone despite of their culture has inside the need to “jump on it”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds92DOPdZHo

 

Written by Ana Escaso Moreno
Communication
Trainee at TermCoord
Journalist & Social Media manager