Why do we sing?

If you’re reading this publication, the chances are that you sing. You may have been singing for as long as you can remember; you may have made a return to singing; or you may be new to it. Whatever your reason, you probably find that you generally feel better after you’ve been singing. The improvements to mood, energy levels and a general sense of well-being after singing have been noted for hundreds of years.

On one level, we don’t need to ask why – it’s obvious that there are social benefits that come with the shared goals of group singing. We happily join with others with whom we may have little else in common; we may also make unexpected lifelong friendships with soul mates. The music and words that we sing come from an abundant wealth of repertoire from numerous countries, cultures, periods of history, religions and political systems: it represents our human journey for hundreds of years. Health benefits are also plentiful; breathing together we express our emotions with one voice.

Why does singing make us feel better? It has been shown that singing has a considerable effect on raising both endorphin and oxytocin levels in the blood. Endorphins contribute to a general sense of well-being as well as giving us higher resistance to pain levels. Oxytocin, known as the love hormone, is not just limited to women in childbirth and breastfeeding. Higher levels are found in couples in the first six months of their relationship and in athletes engaged in synchronised team activity such as rowing. In rowing, the synchronicity of the team is essential to success. And in choral singers, not only do we all breathe together and sing together – we’re spreading harmony as well as empathy.

So now we know that the positive feelings are actually measurable, we can ask why this might happen? Why would singing in groups be such a beneficial activity?

When did singing begin? In order to answer this, we need to go back in time and look at early human species. Primates rely on social bonding in order to foster cooperation and trust. For this, monkeys and apes form intense bonds with physical grooming; this one-to-one touching produces raised levels of endorphins, as it does with humans, making the activity both pleasurable and important. Grooming is time-costly though, and so groups that rely on this have sizes limited to a maximum of 50 or 60 members. Why would early humans have benefited from larger groups, and how did they go about this? We know that brain size is related to group size. By looking at brain size in humans over time we have a good indication of when significant changes were made in the size of groups. The question is: how did they manage to do this? Physical grooming takes time: beyond a certain number of encounters per day, primates need to spend the majority of their waking time finding food. There must have been other ways to bring individuals together and to feel a sense of social cohesion.

There are three probable ways in which evolving humans managed to extend their group size. The earliest was laughter, which is shared with chimpanzees, possibly from about two million years ago. Laughter comes from a deeper part of the brain than other communications. Observing amusing behaviour and sharing a giggle about it can help to build empathy and trust. With the evolution of early humans there appear to be two significant leaps in brain and therefore group size. The first was about 500,000 years ago; the second came about 200,000 years ago. There are some clues among skeletal remains that indicate that, at the time of the first leap in brain size, early humans had a lower larynx, more control of breathing and a more sophisticated nerve supply to the tongue. These all point towards some sort of controlled vocal activity. At this time, there were no traces at all that would point towards the use of language (evidence of symbols). We can therefore surmise that these attributes allowed us to raise our voices together in wordless song: grooming at a distance.

Another benefit of chorusing is to appear larger and stronger as a group, which would have been a powerful advantage in the hours of darkness. The physical potential to sing, the need for an extended group activity, and the evidence of hormonal responses to group singing are all part of a compelling argument for the importance of singing to these hunter-gatherer communities. There must have been some evolutionary benefit for those individuals who not only sang together, but also produced feel-good hormones when they did. At the same time as the emergence of singing and probably dancing was the use of fire for cooking. This was the activity of Homo heidelbergensis, Homo ergaster and Homo neanderthalensis, predating the emergence of modern man. A shared meal with songs around the campfire has been important to us for half a million years.

About 200,000 years ago we have evidence of symbolism, religion and ritual, which is linked to speech and language. This next leap in brain size and therefore group size was thanks to storytelling, and this links in with the first identifiable remains of Homo sapiens. So singing follows on from laughing and predates speaking.

What is singing?

Looking deeper into the actual sounds that we recognise as singing, they all arise from emotive noises. Sighing, crying, yelling, whooping and giggling are non-linguistic vocal sounds that are fundamentally human. When we sing we take these sounds and assign pitch and duration to them; we also add percussive sounds from the tongue, lips and teeth. The fundamental quality of the sounds is still pure emotion.

Emotional expression is part of the autonomic nervous system, which is involuntary; we may be able to choose what we say but we can’t help what we are feeling. Emotions are now becoming better understood by neurologists: the mirror neuron system enables the listener to understand the meaning and intention of a communicative signal by neurologically ‘experiencing’ the mind of another. We are acutely sensitive to genuine emotions – a fake laugh is obvious. Is this because the fake laugh is using the same muscles as the true one but triggered by different parts of the brain?

Singing is an integral part of all our rituals and celebrations. The important points in our seasonal calendar, as well as occasions through our lifetime are all accompanied by song. Feast days have been absorbed into religious calendars such as Midwinter/Christmas or Harvest/ Thanksgiving, and they all have traditions of singing as central to the events. Births, weddings and funerals, as well as birthdays and anniversaries have their share of specified singing repertoire. These customs have existed for millennia and go across all cultures. They really are ubiquitous within human existence.

We also rely on song to unite us in times of conflict. This can be in war or it can be in sport. A football crowd made up of thousands of individuals can appear to behave as a single unit when, at any given moment they simultaneously select the song and the key. Crowd songs seem to be invented by the group. This reliance on singing as part of our ritual activity is the best way that we have with which to express our emotion as a group. Emotional stimulation is necessary for cooperation in society, and this extends to all members of our group, not just close family members in whom we have a genetic investment. Group singing is a powerful social leveller; community choirs in the workplace, schools, hospitals or prisons will give the same voice to all members. The temporary removal of hierarchical structures is hugely beneficial to all individuals.

Cradle song

One of the disadvantages of walking on two feet rather than four is the reduced size of the pelvis. Immaturity was the compromise for producing offspring with a head big enough for a larger brain, but through a smaller pelvis. Compared with other mammals, human babies are effectively born a year prematurely. In order to survive this year of helpless immobility, they need to be able to make their needs known with their voice, and they need to be able to form a strong bond with their caregiver and protector. Known as motherese, the vocal quality, pitch and style of infant directed speech is specific and universal. We can recognise it instantly – and we find it infuriating and patronising when it is misapplied. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: in other words, the development over time of the body from embryo to infant mirrors to some extent the evolutionary route of the human species. So, in parallel, the use of infant-directed speech or motherese perhaps echoes the singing sounds made by early humans.

If music be the food of love … music as a way to enhance sexual attraction

Darwin theorised that music evolved for this purpose. There are some strong indications that this could be so. Recent research with the boys of the Thomanerchor in Leipzig measured the upper frequencies in their sound. When there were females present in the room, the older teenagers increased the ‘ringing’ quality in their singing; they were showing off their individual prowess, while still maintaining choral cohesion. Looking at patterns of output of jazz musicians – these seem to grow during adolescence, peak in the twenties and then tail off during childrearing years. The same could be said for 19th-century classical composers and modern pop musicians: they were more productive with their musical output when they were looking for a mate. This is not the case with, for example, an interest in cooking, which tends to remain constant over the adult lifespan. When we look at interest specifically in group-singing, this is fairly consistent during childhood, tails off in boys during adolescence, is fairly low-level but consistent for men and women during child-rearing years and then emerges as a firm favourite from mid-life onwards. Group singing is definitely for social bonding rather than for exhibiting sexual prowess! So Darwin was right to an extent when looking at individuals and their music-making, but he didn’t take account of the power and influence of singing in a group. The last night of the Proms, whether you like it or not, is stirring and emotive.

Piecing together the puzzle

We will never be able to go back in time to find the answers to all of these questions, but when we look at the evidence, it seems extremely likely that singing evolved as a shared activity in order to facilitate group bonding. Singing together is fundamental and essential for our existence and survival as a species.

Jenevora Williams is the author of the bestselling book Teaching Singing to Children and Young Adults (Compton Publishing). As well as teaching singing, she delivers courses for singing teachers, choral leaders and musical directors through Voice Workshop. www.jenevorawilliams.com