Familiarity, music and memory

Following up on my recent post about familiarity, tradition and identity, I'd like to focus on music.

Let me start with a quote from the Polish classic cult comedy film, Rejs.

Inżynier Mamoń: "Proszę pana, ja jestem umysł ścisły, mnie się podobają melodie, które już raz słyszałem... po prostu. No, to poprzez, no, reminiscencje. No jakże mi się możne podobać piosenka, którą pierwszy raz słyszę?"

[Rough translation... Engineer Mamoń: "I have a scientific mind, Sir; I simply like melodies that I've once already heard, Well, it's through - reminiscences. Well, how could I like a song that I'm hearing for the first time?"]

How indeed. Out of interest, I looked up the UK singles charts for this week 50 years ago. Of the Top 30, I knew pretty well every single song. Familiar songs, familiar singers, bands - from Marmalade's Oh-Bla-Di Oh-Bla-Da (a Paul McCartney composition), number 1 in mid-January 1969, through the theme music to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Canned Heat's Up the Country, Stevie Wonder's For Once In My Life or Blackberry Way by the Move. My final year at primary school, the beginning of my last (full) year living in Hanwell, this for me was the soundtrack of Class 4I at Oaklands Road Primary School.

From 40 years ago this week similar blast of familiarity - Ian Dury, Funkadelic, Chic, the Clash, Third World, Rod Stewart. Songs that remind me of where I was and how I felt (I associate many of these songs, still in the charts from the Christmas break when I was working at a Tesco warehouse in Coventry).

Over this Christmas break I asked my son Eddie, 23, to name one song that was in the charts at any time in 2018. He could not. (Neither could I, but that's not surprising). Pop today is pap, driven by algorithms that take the diversity and risk out of the music business. A tiny number of artists churn out similar sounding songs with hooks created to stick in the memory - the 'earworm' phenomenon. Gone is the rich aural texture of the 1970s. I am talking about the mainstream, about what would be on in the background, played on radios everywhere.

Inżynier Mamoń's immortal words came back to me after our Christmas drive from London to see my brother and his family. Moni had brought along her smartphone which she linked to our rented Mini's stereo system via wi-fi; we then played music streamed from the internet via Spotify. [A short aside - in my lifetime, we have progressed from in-car entertainment as being none, then AM radio the FM radio, then music cassettes, then CDs, then MP3s and now internet streaming.] Anyway, there were a few songs in Moni's playlist which I knew from the original and Moni from the cover. After hearing the cover, I suggested we listen to the original; unsurprisingly, I preferred the original, and Moni the cover - which she'd come across first, before hearing the original.

We prefer that which we hear first, that with which we are more familiar. "Some people won't dance if they don't know who's singing," sang Shirley Bassey in the Propellerheads' History Repeating. Quite. If the DJ's playing something unfamiliar to me, I won't tap a foot.

Music and memory are inextricably linked and again linked to identity. From national anthems to dance-floor anthems, we are bound together in communities by tunes and beats. But is it just a matter of familiarity? Is there something that makes one piece of music intrinsically better than another? Or is it just a matter of taste? De gustibus non est disputandum - in matters of taste, there can be no disputes. Or can there? From any objective measure, a Chopin nocturne is far more sublime than a piece of Disco Polo, played using two keys on a pocket calculator. But how to settle arguments as to whether Pink Floyd were better before or after Dark Side of the Moon? I'd say before. Much better. in fact. The Wall is crap compared to Atom Heart Mother. But why?

Science is nearer to understanding how different aspects of music - timbre, tempo, musical internal, tone, beat - in particular, their complexity - is received by the human brain. Instinct will help you find the beat and move your feet. But how a piece of music is received by your consciousness, the nuance of mood, the pictures in your mind - is a different matter. Bach's music is mathematical and precise, I find it sterile; it does not create a klimat in my consciousness other than a generic early-18th century feel. Chopin, on the other hand, is far more evocative - moonlit nights in Mazowsze.

How do you react to the unfamiliar? Do you seek connections to something that you can relate to, something you've heard before? Something you cannot recall, something you have no memory of, something that Inżynier Mamoń could not possibly like, having not heard it before?

Try this. My brother sent me a link to this - Ethiopian jazz from the late 1960s/early 1970s. Give it a try - familiar?



My brother likens this to "walking into a cloud of ground Lebanese cardamom coffee". What do you think? I'd welcome your comments!

Final thought... Looking at that Top Thirty from 50 years ago, I came across a Herman's Hermits song, which has been giving me earworm. As I reach the hook in the chorus, I get the distinct memory of the smell of plastic cement (Airfix glue). I wonder what plastic model I was sticking together on a winter's day in January 1969 as I listened to Something's Happening?

This time two years ago:
On taxation and (national) defamation

This time six years ago:
Where's Britain going to be in Europe?

This time eight years ago:
Jeziorki under water

This time nine years ago:
In a nutshell - the best science book I've ever read

This time ten years ago:
Flashback to communist times

This time 11 years ago:
Pre-dawn Ursynów