Montreal – If the music in Psycho sends a shiver down your spine, you are certainly not alone.
A study shows the eerie melody has the same effect, whether you hail from a Western city or a wild rainforest. In other words, music really is a universal language.
To find out if music cuts across cultures, researchers played a selection of tunes to groups of Canadians living in Montreal and pygmies from the Congo. The pygmies lived without TV, radio or electricity and were totally unfamiliar with Western music.
Excerpts used included the Psycho theme and pieces from Star Wars and Schindler’s List, as well as traditional tribal music played in hunting ceremonies or to comfort the bereaved.
The groups were asked how the music made them feel and also underwent a number of physical tests.
There were 40 people in each group – 22 men and 18 women.
The average age of the pygmies was 35 and it was 22 among the Canadians.
Both groups found the same pieces of Western music exciting or relaxing and their bodies reacted to them in similar ways.
Listening to the Psycho theme tune made both groups sweat – but only the Canadians said they found it upsetting. In fact, the pygmies were loath to say they found any of the music sad or frightening.
”Negative emotions are felt to disturb the harmony of the forest in pygmy culture and are therefore dangerous,” says researcher Nathalie Fernando.
“If the men are scared of going hunting, they will sing a happy song. In general, music is used in this culture to evacuate all negative emotions, so it is not really surprising that the Mbenzélé [pygmies] feel all the music they hear makes them feel good.”
Dr Hauke Egermann, who carried out the research while at Montreal’s McGill University, said the jagged pitch and tone of the 1960 Hitchcock thriller “signals alarm in listeners”.
“Our major discovery is listeners from very different groups both responded to how exciting or calming they felt the music to be in similar ways,” he added.
According to Stephen McAdams, a McGill University music researcher: “People have been trying to figure out for quite a while whether the way that we react to music is based on the culture that we come from or on some universal features of the music itself. Now we know that it is actually a bit of both.”
Daily Mail