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A lot of people ask me what it is I mean by "The World in Six Songs." The idea is that music is crucial to the human identity and that music set the stage for the evolution of complex behaviours such as language, the transmission of information between generations and large-scale cooperative undertakings.  Below I give a brief explanation of each kind of song, and why they are beneficial to human fitness.

Friendship: Friendship songs centre around group cohesion, whether it be for war, or the bonding of different cliques in high school. For example, in prehistoric warfare, attackers would sometimes ambush another tribe using loud instruments (especially drums) to surprise the targets while they were still sleeping. Countertactics employing the use of singing may also have been used as a signal that the group was awake.  These songs serve to protect a tribe/group or succeed in the takeover of another. In the context of social groups, they provide a sense of community and belonging, bringing people together.  Two songs from our era that can be considered "friendship" songs are:

"Know Your Enemy" - Green Day

"Volunteers" - Jefferson Airplane (or if you still want to keep it modern, you could use "Megalomaniac" by Incubus. It isn't as much of a war song as a political song, but it's in the same vein).

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I wrote This is Your Brain on Music (TIYBOM) because I wanted to share with others the exciting things I learned about how music affects the brain (chemically, electrically and structurally) and the mind (cognitively). It covered the basics of music and brain science, and combined the two to illustrate all the many processes involved that we take for granted when we listen to music. I strived for a style that was accessible to the educated layperson, but still true to the science.  My editor asked me to include personal anecdotes to illustrate the book, which I did reluctantly.  Some readers say those stories are their favorite parts, some readers hate them, expecting something more like a textbook I think. But overall, the level of the book was well-received by many hundreds of thousands of readers, and so I aimed for a similar approach while writing The World in Six Songs (TWISS).

TIYBOM was a logical stepping-stone for writing TWISS. After covering the basics of science (neuroscience and psychology) and music in TIYBOM, in its final chapter I introduced the role of music in evolution. In TWISS, I wanted to present evolutionary biology in the same way I presented neuroscience in TIYBOM. The basics covered in TIYBOM were incorporated into my argument for music's ability to increase evolutionary fitness, and its role in the evolution of human nature. TWISS took off from the technical and delved into the cultural ubiquity of music, and its importance on a more global scale. In TWISS, I presented six categories of songs (Friendship, Joy, Comfort, Knowledge, Religion, and Love) that I felt, based on my research, were crucial to human nature, and explained how music was an important element of human evolution. I looked at the role of music in settings such as war, religious ceremonies, bonding, the transmission of information, and love. For those who enjoyed TIYBOM, TWISS would be an enjoyable read and an extension of what I elucidated in TIYBOM.

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Daniel Levitin is our guest blogger during the week of July 27th If you have any questions Daniel Levitin, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information on The World in Six Songs:

The author of the New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music reveals music's role in the evolution of human culture-and "will leave you awestruck" (The New York Times)

Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut bestseller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted readers as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times bestseller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history.

Dr. Levitin identifies six fundamental song functions or types-friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love-then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. He shows, in effect, how these "six songs" work in our brains to preserve the emotional history of our lives and species.

Dr. Levitin combines cutting-edge scientific research from his music cognition lab at McGill University and work in an array of related fields; his own sometimes hilarious experiences in the music business; and illuminating interviews with musicians such as Sting and David Byrne, as well as conductors, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The World in Six Songs is, ultimately, a revolution in our understanding of how human nature evolved-right up to the iPod.