Awe

Swiss emotion scientist Klaus Scherer: Banse, Rainer, and Klaus R. Scherer. “Acoustic Profiles in Vocal Emotion Expression.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70 (1996): 614–36. Scherer, Klaus R. “Vocal Affect Expression: A Review and a Model for Future Research.” Psychological Bulletin 99 (1986): 143–65.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

These bodily changes alter

: In studies in this literature, scientists focus on different parameters of sound. This includes the pitch, or frequency, of the sound wave, which is perceived as notes in a piece of music; joyful music, for example, has higher pitches, while sad music has lower ones. Rhythm refers to the duration of the notes and how they group into units of sound. Tempo is the speed of the piece of music; is it fast like the Ramones or a high-spirited polka, or slow like Brian Eno’s ambient music? Contour refers to the shape of the sound; does it rise toward the end of notes, in moments of exhilaration, or fall in acoustic movements of despair? Timbre refers to the particular sounds of different instruments or singers’ voices. Great singers—Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Drake, David Byrne, and Nicki Minaj—have timbres that you can detect within a note or two. Loudness

refers to the amplitude, or energy, of the sound waves, and how much sound one perceives. Beat is where the song places percussive emphasis, and is registered in where you are inclined to tap your foot, sway your body, bump, or, if you are a teenager and the chaperones aren’t looking, twerk.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

when in an anxious state: Cowen, Alan S., Petri Laukka, Hillary A. Elfenbein, Runjing Liu, and Dacher Keltner. “The Primacy of Categories in the Recognition of 12 Emotions in Speech Prosody across Two Cultures.” Nature Human Behaviour 3 (2019): 369–82.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

The musical expression of joy: Historians have likewise noted how the sounds of music convey the life patterns of the times. During the era of slavery, African Americans transformed Christian psalms and hymns into songs about the conditions of slavery and their hope for freedom. Many songs were deep and slow in their pitch and rhythm, symbolizing the disempowerment and suffering of slavery. The contours of these songs lifted upward, stirring hope, inspiration, empowerment, and awe in imagining a new Black collective identity. This chapter in African American music represented the life patterns of subjugation, resolve, protest, and transformation of identity at the very heart of U.S. history. See: Barker, Thomas P. “Spatial Dialectics: Intimations of Freedom in Antebellum Slave Song.” Journal of Black Studies 46, no. 4 (2015): 363–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934715574499. See also: Southern, Eileen. The Music of Black Americans: A History. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Michael Eric Dyson has charted how rap emerged in the 1980s in urban areas like Philadelphia and the South Bronx, expressing a pattern of social life. Rap originated out of the rhythms, beats, pitches, and contours of the street corner banter of young African American men, known as “playing the dozens,” which allowed young men to cultivate a toughness and a voice of protest in a racist culture. Rap transformed the sounds of this life pattern into an art form that billions of people around the world turn to in order to understand their own sense of oppression, freedom, identity, and power. Dyson, Michael E. Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip Hop. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

how music expresses awe: Cowen, Alan, Xia Fang, Disa Sauter, and Dacher Keltner. “What Music Makes Us Feel: At Least 13 Dimensions Organize Subjective Experiences Associated with Music across Different Cultures.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 4 (2020): 1924–34. See also: Schindler, Ines, Georg Hosoya, Winfried Menninghaus, Ursula Beermann, Valentin Wagner, Michael Eid, and Klaus R. Scherer. “Measuring Aesthetic Emotions: A Review of the Literature and a New Assessment Tool.” PLoS ONE 12, no. 6 (2017): e0178899. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178899.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT