Original subtitles

This programme contains some strong language.

MUSIC: Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

My name is Stewart Copeland.

I make noise for a living.

I hit things with sticks.

But I also compose, listen to and have pretty much built a life

on this strange phenomenon that we call music.

My first recollection of being captivated by music,

enslaved by music, was sitting in a darkened room aged seven

listening to Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

MUSIC: Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

Something powerful took hold.

Some seriously strong mojo, which never let me go.

It led me through a career in bands, including The Police, and beyond.

What was going on was that the heart of a seven-year-old

was being lit up like a bonfire of emotion.

But why? How did music ignite this flame?

# Girl, you really got me going. #

What exactly is this stuff that has ruled my life

for more than 60 years...

..and that makes everyone else jump and shout, laugh and cry?

Shakespeare doesn't do that. Spielberg doesn't do that.

Rembrandt doesn't do that.

Music dispenses with the thinking stuff

and goes straight to direct your feelings.

So I want to find out why.

How does music help us tell stories that make sense of our lives?

Yeah, that's a great cue.

How does it transport us to a higher plane...

..and help us escape this cruel world?

# See, don't ever set me free

# I always want to be by your side. #

And in this episode, perhaps the most important question of all.

How is it that us humans are so connected by music?

We resonate as human beings, all of us.

And that's music.

How does it build community...

Give it up for Mr Bobby McFerrin and Mr Stewart Copeland.

..as the glue that binds us together?

It's football season in the United States of America.

And at a typical Friday night NFL game....

..67,000 people will come together to exhort their teams unto battle.

Fans and players united as one to, as an anthropologist might say,

kick some butt.

And an essential soundtrack to this is music.

Which is why most every American football team,

just like most every army, needs a band.

Go, Tigers!

BAND PLAYS

The Mighty Sound of the South at the University of Memphis

has a simple mission.

To unite musicians from all kinds of backgrounds in one common goal -

to bond a team with the supporters as one tribe

on the warpath to victory.

BAND PLAYS

Excellent. Thank you.

I saw you improvising over there.

Why do you think adding music to what is already

a very exciting event, why is it that music ramps it up?

It reaches a part of the brain that nothing else can, you know.

When you hear music you can feel it.

There's an emotional tie to music that we all have.

I think that brings people together, just for that simple fact.

And the game is exciting and they want to win the game,

but the music makes them feel the emotional part, that's the charge.

Do you ever get a little excited yourself or wound up

by the feeling of "Oh, my gosh, this is all so exciting!"

Always. I can act like I know, but it's always there, yeah.

It's a really great give-and-take between the elements.

Sometimes you'll feel the crowd riding the energy of the band.

Sometimes the crowd gets going and the band feeds off that.

And sometimes it all happens at once and those are the really good ones.

The war chant. That's kind of what it is, isn't it? Exactly. Like a tribal war chant.

A lot marching bands, it's based in military tradition, so there is a lot of that.

The uniforms and everything. Absolutely.

Have you got a spare drum over there? We do.

Do you think an out-of-towner can come and join in there? I think we should do it.

Now, I'm a proud American and known for hitting a drum or two.

But I've never played as part of a marching band until this day...

..in this rousing rendition of their signature tune - The 300.

Let's rock!

BAND PLAYS

Music lights up any human gathering,

quickly creating a shared experience and a kindred spirit.

And it's been doing this for thousands of years.

Why?

Because music might just be part of the reason us homo sapiens

originally chased off our evolutionary competition.

Thank you, guys! That was fantastic!

This is the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany.

It's a hole in the ground...

..but also a gateway to another time.

40,000 years ago to be exact.

We learned how to make music even before we learned how to grow food.

A case of beauty before beans.

And long before they mastered the plough,

our ancestors were digging sounds like these.

MUSIC

This is an exact replica of the oldest instrument ever discovered.

An ancient bone flute found on this very spot.

SHE PLAYS INSTRUMENT

Amazing.

Amazing that so early in the human experience,

beauty was a thing that induced them to create this instrument,

which looks simple but is actually very complex,

what it does and what you can do with it.

Every society we know anywhere in the world has music

and life without music is pretty much inconceivable.

And the earliest time where we can prove that music existed

was with the discovery of all these flutes.

Dr Nicholas Conard led the team that discovered several of them,

just like this one, in a cave where both Neanderthals

and humans, or homo sapiens, both lived.

And we all know how that turned out.

It was the homo sapiens that won the cave.

It's a great cave for studying human evolution

because in this lair that represents the first occupation of this cave by modern humans

we found this flute here close to all sorts of things

that suggest an incredible amount of symbolic complexity,

of which music, many people would consider, is the high point.

And it seems that this capability allowed modern humans like ourselves

to displace the archaic humans.

But why?

What advantage did music give homo sapiens over Neanderthals?

Well, instead of just interacting with one another

and a few people we've known our whole lives,

we're seeing much more complex social structures.

When you have more people coming together

you need ways of keeping the group cohesive,

making sure people function together and creating group identity

and shared interest, altruism,

all of these things are key factors if you're interacting

with maybe dozens or even hundreds of people as opposed to just a few.

And I would argue that music, simply put,

would be kind of a glue that holds people together and keeps people together.

So music specifically was an important factor

that made homo sapiens beat out all the other hominid competition.

They were bonded by the music, which gave them advantage. Right.

I would view that as something close to an empirical fact.

So music has strengthened group identity from our earliest days.

That's what all culture does,

even around the earliest campfires in caves just like these.

SHE PLAYS INSTRUMENT

Flautist Anna Potengowski is one of the few people in the world

who know how to play these ancient instruments.

So I wonder if one more knuckle-dragging caveman,

your humble servant,

can really help bond this gang of hominids right here today.

Anna, can you show me how to play this?

I mean, I'm your fellow cave dweller... I can try to.

Would I be able to... Hey, give me that thing. Let me take a solo!

OK, let me be your teacher.

Do you want to try the little one?

Can I try my favourite instrument, which is the easy one.

There is no easy one. None of them are easy ones!

You just have to hold it in one angle of your mouth

and play on the opposite side of the bone.

Blow across. Blow across, yes.

OK. There's five holes. I've got them all covered and I blow across.

WHISTLING SOUND

Wow.

OK. Stewart, you have talent.

Most people cannot get good tones from it.

Yes, but there's a difference between whistling and...

Oh, that's right. I was cheating!

It was whistling, I think!

I don't think that's going to be bonding, really, do you?

No. Try a different technique, maybe.

SAXOPHONE MUSIC

I'm convinced that music has always played a part

in forming communities of human beings.

It still does.

But does that mean music has been fundamental

to our evolution as a species?

That is less clear,

at least to one of the most distinguished minds in America.

Welcome to Harvard University,

the August academic home of Steven Pinker...

..a challenge to our confidence,

both in terms of our common sense of psychology.

..best selling author and professor of cognitive psychology.

..that if we conform to the opinion of experts

of how well we really do understand human behaviour.

His theories of how our brains function

have built his reputation as one of the world's pre-eminent thinkers.

So his ideas about why us humans love music

carry some pretty hefty weight.

And in Pinker's 1997 book, How The Mind Works,

he caused uproar when he described music

as merely auditory cheesecake, before expanding.

"Compared with language, vision, social reasoning

"and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species

"and the rest of our lifestyle would be completely unchanged."

But can that really be true? I'm not convinced.

Surely music means more than mere pudding for the ears.

This is a brain. I mean, this is a real... This used to be a person.

One of my graduate students gave it to me

and managed to purloin a brain.

Again, I didn't ask...

So can I convince Steven and his rather imposing brain

of music's great importance.

I am very envious of the outrage that has been caused

by your dismissal of music as cheesecake.

And I'm hurt to my core by this, of course.

I know that people get offended by this comparison

and it will probably follow me to my grave

and be listed in my obituary,

but cheesecake is just a human invention

that manages to press a number of pleasure buttons

that have evolved in the brain for other reasons.

What would you say that the purpose of music actually is?

The purpose of music is to give us pleasure.

That's the main reason we listen to music.

We enjoy it. It gives us joy, it gives us pleasure.

I find it odd that people consider that to be a dismissal.

What's so terrible about that?

Now, that is easy to confuse with the question

of what is the biological function of music?

Is it an adaptation in Darwin's strict sense of something

that led our ancestors to have more babies?

It's not clear that it has an adaptation

and it's none the worse for it.

There are some things that are definitely not Darwinian adaptations

that are among our most glorious accomplishments, like reading.

But thank heavens for reading.

But I would go a little further.

I would say that it has a profound effect on our behaviour.

It's very potent.

Do you have any explanation for why music is so deeply embedded

and why it has such a profound effect on us?

Yes. It's interesting that music has so many different functions.

In synchronised work or marching

it can rally people together prior to a battle.

It can be used by shamans to try and heal the sick.

It can be used to calm babies.

And it can just be used to give us pleasure.

All very convincing, in that way that famous academics often are.

But I want to show Professor Pinker something that I think proves

that music is for more than just fun.

How would you explain the fact that music, melody,

both rhythm contour and pitch come first, come before language?

I don't know if babies can carry a tune before they can speak.

They can. My grandson, who can't form a sentence,

but can sing 16 bars of the alphabet song.

# A, B, C, D, E, F, G. #

Rhythm.

# H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P. #

He knows where the gaps are. Yes. No, the beat, the...

Most of the pitch is right.

# W, X, Y, Z

# Now I know my ABC

# Next time won't you sing with me. #

Bravo. I think that's 16 bars.

He can't form... A sentence. ..a sentence of two or three words.

He can't do that.

And yet he's able to articulate a complex... Well...

You know, hitting pitches, understanding the gaps to get the rhythm right,

as well as where it goes up and down.

Would you say his singing that song is the process of learning language,

which enables him to then form a sentence?

And would you not consider that to be pretty important?

I think it is. Beyond cheesecake even.

I don't see anything so terrible about cheesecake. It's better than gruel.

But you can take cheesecake out of humanity and we would be unchanged.

But it's hard to imagine that that very sophisticated ability

that that two-year-old has, it's pretty important.

Doesn't that indicate that it must have

some kind of purpose beyond the fact that we like it?

Maybe. But no-one has really put their finger on what it is,

which is why I'm still sceptical.

The honest answer is we don't know.

I think people have a strange kind of functional,

utilitarian approach to music.

It's got to be good for us for it to be truly worthy.

And I'm saying, why do you have to think of it that way?

What's so terrible about music being a creation of the human intellect,

the human creative spirit in order to uplift us,

to inspire us or even to give us pleasure?

What's so terrible about that?

Why, nothing of course. I'm a big fan of pleasure.

It's just that I think that music is for more

than simply triggering our brain's reward system.

It's essential equipment for being human

and deeply embedded in all of us.

Welcome to Philadelphia, city of brotherly love,

and special kind of sing-song with a very special kind of teacher.

Students and families, we have two very special guests for you today.

Please give it up for Mr Bobby McFerrin and Mr Stewart Copeland.

THE AUDIENCE CHEER AND APPLAUD

MUSIC: Don't Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin

Bobby McFerrin is the creator of this '80s classic.

# Here's a little song I wrote

# You might want to sing it note for note...

# Don't worry

# Be happy... #

But you might be less familiar with what he did next.

# When you're worried your face will frown

# And that will bring everybody down

# Don't worry, doo-doo-doo...

# Be happy. #

Since Don't Worry be Happy cheered us all up in 1988,

Bobby, a ten time Grammy winning Jazz vocalist,

has become an acclaimed conductor and advocate for the idea

of innate human musicality.

Let's stand up and get in a circle.

BOBBY SINGS TO HIMSELF

This is the dividing line, here.

So, I'm going to give each group a part to sing

and we're going to sing some harmonies together, OK?

This is an entirely improvised musical performance

that encourages the audience to bond over what Bobby believes

is there shared musicality.

SINGS: Don't be shy, dee-dee-dee.

THE AUDIENCE SING WITH HIM

SINGS: That's a really nice shirt you're wearing.

Got your frying pan with you?

Once we overcome the initial shyness,

singing in harmony in a room full of strangers

feels all tingly and nice.

SINGS: Sing a solo.

SHE SINGS IMPROVISED DOOS

SINGS: Doo-doo-doo, thank you, thank you, thank you, doo-doo-doo.

Stop.

SINGS: Do you have any questions you'd like to ask us?

How did you get to know that you can do this?

Cos we sort of suspect that music is doable by everybody

and there's more music in us than we know,

but how did you land on actually being able to make it happen?

I'm a graduate of MSU...

..which stands for "Making Stuff Up".

I learned that by just doing it on stage.

How did you know that little girl also has this gift?

And the little boy sitting next to her, too?

Because I just assume that everyone has an inner flame...

..that likes to express itself in some way, some creative way,

so I have all the confidence in the world

that not a single person will...

Fail. Fail, that's a good way to put it. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Bobby believes that a basic understanding of the language

of music is an instinctive human trait.

Sing this note.

And he's got a great method to prove it...

Baa!

AUDIENCE REPEATS NOTE

By demonstrating one of the deep mysteries of music,

the pentatonic scale.

MUSIC: Superstition

The pentatonic scale consists of five notes

that share a unique relationship.

They're in natural harmony with one another

and play nicely together in any order.

# Very superstitious

# The writing's on the wall

# Very superstitious

# The ladder's 'bout to fall... #

This riff by Stevie Wonder is all pentatonic.

Want to be a musician?

Just hit the black notes on a piano in any order.

# Seven years of bad luck... #

But this is the scale that this flute plays too.

What is so fascinating about the pentatonic scale

is how universal it is.

It's what links this refined performance

of traditional music from China...

..to Motown soul from Detroit.

MUSIC: My Girl by The Temptations.

And 50 years after The Temptations used the scale in My Girl,

so did Ed Sheeran in Shape Of You, number one single in 34 countries.

# I'm in love with the shape of you... #

It's a musical pattern that unites us all

because it just sounds right to pretty much everyone,

whatever your opinion of Ed Sheeran.

# Last night you were in my room

# And now my bed sheets smell like you

# Every day discovering something brand-new

# I'm in love with your body. #

HE SINGS A NOTE

AUDIENCE REPEATS NOTE

So if the pentatonic is a natural phenomenon,

then these ordinary folks should be able to find the other notes

of the scale without his help.

AUDIENCE SING SCALE

See?

LAUGHTER

HE SINGS NOTE

HE SINGS DEEPER NOTE

AUDIENCE REPEATS NOTE

AUDIENCE SINGS HIGHER NOTE

AUDIENCE SINGS SCALE

# Doo-la-la-la-la

# Doo-doo

# La-la-la-la

# Doo-doo

AUDIENCE SINGS SCALE RELATIVE TO HIS POSITION

INCREASINGLY DEEP NOTES

He didn't tell you those notes, but you know them.

Scales and rhythms are musical systems that allow musicians

who have never met before to get together

and play together in common understanding.

Well, more or less.

I only met this guy minutes ago,

and although we clearly need way more rehearsal time,

we CAN rock out in a basic, shared music language.

Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin is the bestselling author

of This Is Your Brain On Music.

Good jump!

DANIEL LAUGHS DRUMS CLATTER

Now what's the science behind all that shit?

People ask me, "Why do you study music?

"Aren't you afraid that you will...

"..take some of the mystery away from it?"

And in my life as a musician and as a scientist,

all I can say is that each time I think I'm on the verge

of uncovering the answer to one musical riddle,

five more pop up

and they're even more glorious than the last.

I have this overwhelming sense of the beauty and complexity of music

being far more interesting than I ever thought it was

before I started asking these questions.

And Daniel is sure of one thing -

musicality is innate,

it's not just a feeling or an instinct,

it's hard-wired into our body chemistry.

There's this interesting hormone

that has been called the love hormone, oxytocin.

When people play music together, or listen to music together,

oxytocin causes us to feel trust and bonding

towards those that we're with.

So if you've got a neurochemical system

that is supporting musicality...

Or that is lit up by music.

Yeah, it suggests to me some kind of ancient evolutionary basis for that.

ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC PLAYS CHEERING

Listening to music also releases dopamine,

a second chemical in the brain

associated with our most primal urges,

and the average nightclub is swimming in the stuff.

Modern electronic dance music has taken over the world

in recent times,

but it's part of a tradition that goes way back -

inducing people to dance together

by tapping into the hidden sexual power of music.

And I'm kind of curious about how that works.

But this is not exactly my natural habitat.

Yes, hard to believe when you see my moves,

but I don't spend a lot of time in nightclubs,

so I'm going to consult with an expert who does.

Mr Copeland! Welcome to Berlin. Well, hello.

Oh, my God, this is such a lovely surprise.

Honey Dijon is one of the world's top DJs.

Born in Chicago, resident in Berlin, she has a reputation

for channelling a carnal, hedonistic spirit in her sets.

A close friend of mine asked me what was the role of a DJ,

and I had to really think about that,

and I think, for me, it's bringing together people

through sound and vibration and sort of trying to channel

shamanic, ritualistic sexual energy in people,

and I try to do that through music.

Shamanic, ritual, sexual... Energy. Yes.

I am a facilitator of debauchery. Mm-hm.

I'm a facilitator of people's good time.

For me, the music is the star of the show

so I wanted to do a party where people dance with each other

and to celebrate and had a laugh and tried to get laid

and make out in a corner

and be in the dark where they can unleash all of their inhibitions,

and that to me is what a proper nightclub is like.

What is it about music that makes them release their inhibitions

and start thrusting their pudenda at each other?

Oh, you know, cos I think real life is complicated,

I think we all need dreams and fantasy

and release from the everyday,

and I think music brings people joy.

I think it helps you not only find your tribe of people

but it also helps you find yourself. Mm-hm.

What is any of this stuff? I recognise that, that's round...

That's a round table. Yep.

Is that what these are? These are...

MUSIC STARTS Oh! Oh, you just... Whoa, whoa!

Well, that was easy, I'm a DJ.

What did I touch that made that happen? You pressed a button.

Don't get too excited. No, no, it doesn't work like that.

Beats per minute. How fast is this record going?

This record is going 125 beats per minute.

125, that's fast. Well, not for the dance floor.

That's your heartbeat, that's your heart rate. I thought 120...

Well, it depends on what kind of heart you got.

SHE LAUGHS Mine is about 110.

110, that's a sexy tempo. OK.

That's after hours tempo.

That's the sultry grooving kind of tempo. Yeah, that's a groovy tempo.

Do you recognise this song?

# Voices... #

I recognise the lyric.

Believe it or not, this is a remix of Voices Inside My Head

by my old band The Police.

See, the first thing they do...

Maybe this is why I have not really delved... OK

Cos the first thing they do when they do a dance mix... Yes.

..they get rid of... The song.

No, they get rid of the drums.

Oh, right. They put new drums to it. It's OK, it's OK.

It's OK, it's fine. No, but, you know...

I had my fun with it. Oh, I think you're a little bit sensitive.

You discerned that, you're very discerning.

Well, we had to make that for the dance floor, you know?

Yeah, that's true. But we love your drums. Thank you.

They're legendary. Thank you. You're too kind. I know,

but your drums are legendary. I'm actually having a moment.

You're in my house and I'm playing a Police record

that was made for the club and... This ain't a Police record!

Ut-sy, ut-sy, ut-sy.

It's a fragment of one

repurposed with only one aim in mind -

making people dance.

Honey is an expert at inducing a communal shared experience

of build and release, using music

to trigger not just mental but physical hormonal responses.

So now I'm going to mix in another record.

So what I do a lot of times is I'll take a riff...

Oh, that's another element.

Bum-boom-ba-dum-bum. So I'll just...

And then I can make it an eight bar loop.

Oh, so you have a visual representation of it here. Yes.

And then if I want to just use that part...

OK, then it goes around. Yeah, and then I mix in another record.

She's the master of what scientists call the anticipation phase.

An exercise in delayed gratification that can really bond a dance floor

before unleashing what my kids call the drop.

So then you just build things up from there,

a lot of tension and anticipation.

OK, got the tension. OK, OK, what are you going to do?

What's the...argh! Well...

SHE LAUGHS Argh! Argh! Argh! Argh!

Well, you can't blow your load too quickly,

you've got to wait a little bit.

That's where we add effect. That whole relaxing thing,

I'm not very good at relaxing. You have to relax! No, I'm here, now.

Sometimes...

..yeah, you just add a bit of tension with some reverb.

Boy, you like that tension. Yeah, I love it.

Because people are waiting. Release the monster!

No! You need the tension!

Relax, relax, relax, relax, relax!

Strangely, it's this build-up and not the actual climax

that causes our brain to unleash the highest waves of dopamine.

TRACK BUILDS

Ready?

TRACK DROPS Oh!

That drop part, that's the part I like. Oh, you like the drop.

That is a skill, you have to know when exactly to do that,

otherwise it becomes cheesy.

There's always tension and release on the dance floor as a DJ...

Yes, very much so. ..just like a musician.

So there's a point when you build it up and you drop it,

you bring it down, you move it around... Yes.

..so there's actually... But how do you know?

I mean, are you sensing... Yeah. Cos it looks like you're not looking at the audience

but I know you're looking at the audience. So as a fellow musician, as an artist,

when you connect to the crowd, it's a mutual give and take,

so you just get into a groove and its symbiotic

and everything's moving together and everyone's flowing

and vibing together and so when you start to feel it yourself, you sort of...

..it just gives the audience and they go with you on a journey.

So I'm going to play one of my favourite records and its...

MUSIC: Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood

# Whoa-ho-oh... #

It doesn't get into it until almost nine minutes. OK.

It's amazing. How many minutes are we into the record now?

# Relax, don't do it

# When you want to go to it... # So sexy.

# Relax, don't do it

# When you want to come... #

You can still play this record now and people just lose their minds.

Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood has a slower beat

than Honey normally uses.

But the same rock-solid four-four rhythm

where less is apparently more.

Again.

THEY PLAY RELAX

Wow!

Release!

Ah! Ah-ah!

But the third time it does it, instead of going...

..it goes...

Oh. Cool.

Drummers! Here we go - two, three, four.

You might be better off playing the hi-hat.

CYMBALS CLATTER Yeah, that's it.

Primal music that speaks to our most basic instincts is big business.

Pop supremo Trevor Horn produced Relax

which sold a reported 2 million copies in the UK alone.

And his secret? Keep it simple.

But I, for one, am just not cut out for the simple thing.

A couple of single crashes. I'm going to do it!

I'm going to do it! I'm going to do it!

Do I have to play through that as well? Can't I do something...?

He gets to do something fancy.

Unfortunately, there's no snare drum on Relax.

You know, I too am a human.

Well, this is for the greater good of the record.

You have to stay simple.

For the greater good of the record.

Have I heard that before? THEY LAUGH

I think I have.

So we're here at the session,

this is a Trevor Horn recording session.

Whatever we do today is going to sell a gazillion records.

The minute this track comes on the dance floor,

immediately, all these nice, well-behaved humans

will be performing overt sexual display,

and I want to get in on this.

So guide...produce me here.

Well, for a kick-off, you know,

in order to get people into that sort of motion,

you need a very straightforward beat,

you know, like, for instance...

That won't do it? No, no, you need more of that sort of feeling.

Hang on a second.

Yeah, that's pretty close.

I love music.

Some beats are kind of sexier than others, I guess, really.

And it's all related to body movement. How so?

I think it is... Well, yeah, or something. Like a walking rhythm?

If Relax had been this fast...

HE SINGS FAST # Relax, don't do it

# When you want to go to it... # HE LAUGHS

..it wouldn't have been sexy, would it? No.

You know, I mean, maybe people make love that fast sometimes,

I have no idea. Teenagers.

THEY LAUGH

But it's mating, isn't it? I mean, music accompanies mating.

MUSIC: Let's Get It On by Marvin Gaye

To evolve, us humans must reproduce.

And for proof that music is the mojo that makes that happen,

just visit any nightclub.

Once that dopamine and oxytocin is triggered by the music,

our eyes dilate,

pulse and blood pressure rise,

and the cerebellum lights up,

giving us the urge to move our bodies and mate.

In the modern era, sex and music may be inextricably linked,

but as long ago as the mid-nineteenth century,

no less than Charles Darwin began to explore these very connections,

expanding his idea of natural selection

to look at sexual selection...

..by studying songbirds

and trying to understand the links between their calls

and the way in which they selected a mate from eligible suitors -

why is this mate preferable to that one?

And so this is what the governor himself says.

"The true songs of most birds are chiefly uttered

"during the breeding season

"and serve as a charm to the other sex.

"I conclude that musical notes and rhythm

"were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind

"for the sake of charming the opposite sex,

"thus musical tones became firmly associated

"with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable of feeling."

So music is human plumage,

it's like a human display of superiority,

and whoever can sing most beautifully

clearly has better genes. BIRDSONG

Shut up, bird. BIRDSONG STOPS

Daniel Levitin thinks that some of what Darwin had to say

about music was probably right on the money.

Darwin began the more modern scientific exploration

into why music, why do we have it,

and, you know, sexual selection is an interesting and intriguing idea.

You mean, there's something going on beneath the surface

of why I'm attracted to somebody else?

There are these hidden strings pulling our behaviours

that we're not aware of.

Now, in music,

I guess the story would go that those of our ancestors

who were musical by some random mutation -

maybe we're all musical but some were more musical, right -

were able to communicate their physical fitness better,

that you were neurologically intact, that you've got good genes,

that you've got enough resources

that you could actually devote a certain amount of time

to practising this otherwise useless thing

because you already have food, enough supply,

and you've got shelter and all of that.

It's this showy display that indicates physical fitness,

neurological intact-ness, creativity,

things you might want to pass on to kids.

MUSIC: Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix Experience

In other words,

musical virtuosity can be attractive to potential mates...

..as proven by Jimi Hendrix and countless others.

# Now, you know you are a cute little heartbreaker... #

Some of music's biggest attention-magnets have built

entire careers out of wanton complexity,

and the science seems to back it up.

# Sweet little love-maker. #

In 2014, British scientists wanted to test Darwin's theories

linking music to sexual selection.

In what sounds like a very strange test,

1,500 female volunteers were played compositions of varying complexity,

and the women in the most fertile phase of their cycle

were more drawn to the composers of the most complex music.

COMPLEX GUITAR SOLO

Perhaps nobody illustrates the phenomenon better

than this gentleman, Franz Liszt,

one of Charles Darwin's direct contemporaries

and arguably the first modern music superstar,

more than 100 years before Hendrix.

Liszt was born in Austria in 1811

and by the time he was a teenager, he was on tour

playing gigs all over Europe.

But then, on December 27, 1841,

he played this venue, the Sing-Akademie in Berlin,

and mass hysteria erupted known as Lisztomania.

Brought to life vividly by Ken Russell

in the movie of the same name,

this fevered fandom exploded

in a way more commonly seen with rock stars...

..which is why it was such an inspired idea to cast one,

Roger Daltrey, in the title role,

because in a way, Liszt was one too,

just way, way ahead of his time.

So what exactly did Liszt do

to bewitch a veritable army of potential mates?

Perhaps music historian Katy Hamilton can explain.

SHE PLAYS ETUDE NO. 3 UN SOSPIRO BY FRANZ LISZT

Beautiful.

Where is the part where it gets sexual?

That's the part I'm kind of interested in,

that it kind of goes beyond

just appreciation of the beauty of music

to the libido.

I think it's a combination of, firstly, Liszt was very...

..he was very handsome, he was very beautiful.

He had that X factor.

But the thing that is so special about what Liszt is doing

is that he basically completely takes to bits how you play the piano

and puts it back together again.

There's this kind of element of musical fireworks

that Liszt builds into the way that he plays.

Are you suggesting that it was technique

that inflamed the passions of those women

and made them desire his handkerchief?

I think the important thing is that because he's got the technique,

if you add the technique to the showmanship,

that's the winning combination, right?

It would be no good if Elvis was a rubbish singer -

he's got to be able to sing, as well as be the heart-throb.

It's one of the slightly funny things about the way Liszt writes,

he breaks a lot of rules

that were previously thought to be the way you HAD to play the piano.

This particular piece, which is described as a concert study -

so it's a particular technique that you're using

but you're showing off -

every other note you play with your other hand,

so you're constantly crossing from one hand to the other.

And he starts by doing it one note at a time

so that you're just going one hand and then the other hand,

and then when it comes back the second time,

it's in octaves which makes it harder,

it means you've got to play two notes for each note of the tune.

So he then put in all of the stuff that's going on in the middle...

..which is this nice, rolling accompaniment,

what you end up with is this...

And as the piece goes on, it gets more and more complicated

and he sends you right to the very extremes of the piano

and back again, so it's about your whole body.

It's not just about your fingers,

it's about how you're moving your whole body,

and, of course, that's very compelling to watch

if you kind of make something of it.

But because it begins quietly -

and, again, this is all about crowd playing -

you start with something that's quiet and soft,

you build it up into something that's harder,

it gets harder and harder, louder and louder,

and then it comes back down again

so that you have this kind of fever pitch in the middle

and then you reduce it so that by the end you've reached

this lovely calm place that you were at the beginning.

Whip them up, calm them down.

Sounds familiar?

It's what all the world's greatest musicians do on stage,

and it's also what DJs do as well,

because we like to be manipulated by music,

especially when surrounded by other humans.

It's the foundation of a live music industry

worth more than £1 billion a year in the UK alone,

an industry that depends on musical shamanism.

I saw this first hand for years from behind a drum set with The Police -

the power of our front man to focus and unite a crowd

armed only with his music...

..and my drums.

# I feel it, I feel it, I feel it, I feel it, I feel it, I feel it... #

Stingo!

Oh, my gosh, Stew! Are you having a serene moment?

It's over.

We'll fix that. How are you, buddy? Great to see you.

Despite being friends and collaborators

since the early days of The Police,

this is probably the first time

Sting and I have ever really talked deeply about music...

# Oh, I've tried before to tell her

# Of the feelings I have for her in my heart... #

..or what Steven Pinker described as "cheesecake".

Cheesecake, it's much more than that.

Anyway, I like cheesecake, but...

No, it's a basic language that is important.

What do you think we have music for? What do we have language for?

Music is just a form of language,

and it's a common language that we all share -

all races, all creeds, everyone on the planet,

everyone is communicating through music,

which is powerful.

Very.

I love it when the audience joins in.

You know, like 100,000 people

singing the words that you might have written in your bedsit

in Bayswater in 1975,

they're resonating with me as a young man.

They're all singing it, that's a miracle.

I can't hear you, where are you?

CHEERING

# Message in a bottle

# Message in a bottle... #

This sense of a shared experience that music can create is

a part of its power,

as satisfying for performers like us as it is for the audience.

It's interesting, the best praise you can get as a songwriter is

when someone says, "Oh, I fell in love to that song you wrote"

or "We got married to that song" and "We buried Uncle Charlie..."

And you realise that by accident you've given these people a...

..a sort of touchstone for their emotional memory.

So, when they hear that song,

they remember something important in their lives,

and that's a huge praise.

It's a fantastic thing to hear.

You have the power of the shaman, you have made that connection.

Yeah. You have to resonate,

you have to be empathetic,

and that's music.

You know, when you're in harmony

with somebody's wishes or somebody's anger,

you can communicate better.

You know, we resonate as human beings, all of us -

we're resonating right now, you and I resonate.

In our way. Sometimes. THEY LAUGH

# Roxanne

# Roxanne

# Roxanne

# Roxanne... #

Music may have brought us together,

but we haven't always been in perfect synchronicity.

# Roxanne. #

I wrote that song...

..and it was originally a bossa nova.

Until somebody came along. So you messed it up.

PLAYS ROXANNE IN BOSSA NOVA STYLE

# Roxanne

# You don't have to put on the red light

# Those days are over

# You don't have to sell your body to the night

# Roxanne

# You don't have to wear that dress tonight

# Walked the street for money

# You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right

# Roxanne

# You don't have to put on the red light

# Roxanne

# You don't have to put on the red light. #

You're playing it fucking wrong!

STING LAUGHS

Ah, what are friends for?

Speaking of our long-standing friendship, you know,

when we would have one of our...

You know, I'm not talking out of school here,

it is known that we have had the occasional screaming match...

Dialectic. Dialectic, there you go.

And I come and I find you

and I'll find you, generally, with an instrument in your hand,

staring off into space

with just heartachingly beautiful something coming out,

and that isn't writing a song, that is music...

..that's music as a purpose for you.

It soothes me. Yeah.

If I'm upset about something or anxious about something,

if I just sit and play three notes over and over again,

it's kind of therapy, you know?

I often wonder where I would be without music.

It's actually unthinkable what it would be like without music,

like a fish without water, I suppose.

It's my...currency.

It's... You know, it's my environment.

SIREN WAILS

You know, I can't imagine a life without music either.

And I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way.

HONEY DIJON: Well, I will say music for me can do

what religions, governments can't do,

and that's bring people together from all different walks of life.

It doesn't matter how much money you make, what you do in life,

who you sleep with, what race you are,

what country you come from,

it is, to me, a place of really the driving force of love

and celebration and bringing people together.

From an evolutionary point of view,

the fact that all human groups have music,

every single group of living people have music in different forms,

sometimes multiple forms, suggests to me that it's something

that's been selected because it works and helps people coexist

and harmonise with one another.

We can't prove definitively why we make music

or why we just like it so much, especially when shared in a group,

but I believe it's helped us to become who we are now

and will continue to define us in the future.

In a world that is increasingly atomised,

and a city like New York,

it's all too easy to feel alone.

Thank goodness we can fall back on that stuff that has always joined us

since man first played flute made of bone - music.

An invitation to join in

and permission to be simple primates together

because that's what we all need once in awhile.

# Ah! #

So this is one of the learning videos.

We split the audience into 19 different parts.

Welcome to the Public Theatre in Manhattan

and a new performance by Choir! Choir! Choir!.

Does everyone have a lyric sheet?

Wave your lyric sheet if you've got it.

If you don't, you need it.

So this crowd is going to go like this.

# Ooh-ooh-ooh

# Ooh... #

First, they take a much-loved pop song,

break it down and then teach it to an audience like this

to turn them into a lean, mean, singing machine.

# Ooh-ooh-ooh. #

That sounds pretty good.

OK, let's try it again from the ahs. We want to hear the ahs.

One, two...

# Ah, ah, ah, aah

# Ah, ah, ah, aah

# Ah, ah, ah, aah... #

But there's a twist.

On special occasions, they're joined by a surprise guest

to lead the throne in a rousing life-affirming performance.

# Hallelujah... #

They've had Rufus Wainwright.

# Hallelujah. #

And David Byrne has dropped in, amongst others.

# And we can be heroes Aah-aah

# Just for one day Aah. #

But always at the helm are Daveed and Nobu,

the brains behind Choir! Choir! Choir!.

# Just for one day Aah. #

I think we have tried hard to blur the line

between what is an audience and what is a performer.

Music is, in its simplest form, is meant to be participated in.

# Oh, we can be heroes. #

I think that people, even if they seem closed and seem distant,

they really do want to connect.

I think music just, like, if you let yourself go with it,

whether you're by yourself or with hundreds of people,

it has the ability to really take you to a special place.

# Oh. #

The 250-strong choir has limbered up in anticipation of the arrival

of tonight's special guest, Patti Smith.

CHEERING Patti Smith, everybody.

CHEERING CONTINUES

With yours truly on frying pan.

Tonight's song is one of Patti's finest,

the rather appropriate People Have The Power.

I wrote this song with my late husband Fred Sonic Smith,

and this is exactly why he wrote it,

so that we could all sing it together, so it's awesome.

# Ooh-ooh

# Ooh-ooh

# I was dreaming in my dreaming

# Well, of an aspect bright and fair

# And my sleeping, it was broken

# But my dream, it lingered near

# In the form of shining valleys Ooh-ooh

# Where the pure air rarefied Ooh-ooh

# And my senses are newly opened Ooh-ooh

# I awakened to the cry Ooh-ooh

# That the people That the people

# Have the power Have the power

# To redeem To redeem

# The work of fools The work of fools

# Upon the meek Upon the meek

# The graces shower The graces shower

# It's decreed It's decreed

ALL: # The people rule

# People have the power

# People have the power

# People have the power

# People have the power

# Believe it

# Ooh-ooh... #

To me, this is a metropolitan return to the campfire...

..the singalong in the cave,

and I love it

because 40,000 years after we first started making music,

what performances like this remind me of is that for bonding a tribe,

there's no better glue than music.

# And the shepherds and the soldiers People have the power

# Well, they laid beneath the stars People have the power

# Exchanging visions and laying arms People have the power

# To waste in the dust People have the power

# In the form of In the form of

# Shining valleys Shining valleys... #

Yet I just can't believe that all this glorious sound is just for kicks.

It's our wavelength,

it's our song...

..it is us.

# People have the power

# To dream

# People have the power

# To vote

# People have the power

# To strike

# People have the power

# To love

# The power to dream People have the power

# To rule

# People have the power To wrestle the work from fools

# People have the power To dream

# People have the power To rule

# People have the power

# One, two, three, go!

# Aah! Don't forget it, use your voice! #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

You are the people!

CHEERING DROWNS SPEECH

One more time, guys! CHEERING