Songs have the power to move us in mysterious ways. Why is that? Because music with words provides a missing link between reason and emotion. Singing takes language and pulls the most possible feeling out of it. Yet the kind of emotion it presents is so deep precisely because it can be hard to pin down. Is Amazing Grace a happy or sad song? What about Bob Dylan's Not Dark Yet?
Some people say song is just another form of language. Psychologist Diana Deutsch has noted that if we repeat the same phrase over and over again, after a while we start to sing it rather than speak it. Repetition of words leads us to focus on the sounds, and not the sense. Melody and rhythm help us remember the lyrics, and the words help us carry a tune. Does this mean language preceded music, and is this how song evolved? Steven Pinker, in his book The Language Instinct, doesn't take music very seriously at all. He considers it a byproduct of evolution, with very little practical significance.
I believe music to be much more primal than language. The communication of animals provides a useful insight: aside from the dance of the honeybee, no examples of symbolic communication, where a string of sounds stands for something that can be decoded or translated, have been found. Instead, most complex animal vocalisations, from the chants of humpback whales to the quips of nightingales, are intricate performances with rhythm, form, melody and shape. Their function, whether to attract mates or defend territories, says little about their depth and beauty. They are pieces of music that can be performed correctly or incorrectly. Get it right and the job is done. Get it wrong and no one pays attention to you.
The ability to learn to make new sounds as adults is rare in the animal kingdom. Besides humans, no other primates can do it. As far as we know, only songbirds, whales, dolphins, walruses and mice possess a "vocal learning" ability. The brains of these creatures are of particular interest to neuroscientists; through a study of canary brains, scientists have discovered that when an adult bird learns a song, new neurons are formed in the brain, suggesting that singing new songs might even make you smarter.
Archaeologist Steven Mithen, in his book The Singing Neanderthal, argues that these close relatives of ours had no language, but instead used patterned phrases like whales and birds, where sound is structured and also emotional. Lacking language, he says, neanderthals must have placed tremendous weight on singing. If this is true, then music must have meant far more to them than it could ever mean to us. Does that then mean that song for us is simply a form of luxury or entertainment, the kind of theory Steven Pinker might subscribe to?
Of course not. Singing is as essential for humans as it is for our fellow musical creatures. Birds, whales and humans all sing because we must, because it is of our very essence. The Mekranoti Indians of Brazil sing in unison each night to make potential foes think they are great in number, while Maori warriors sing chants to unify team spirit and ward off enemies. Chants of war and the music of marching armies help to synchronise human movement in large groups. And no football match goes on without terrace chants unifying fans and players. An underlying song holds crowds of people together. In Estonia, nearly one-quarter of the entire population - some 300,000 people - gathered together at the end of the 1980s to sing national songs of freedom, which were strictly forbidden during the Soviet occupation. This Singing Revolution, as it has come to be known, eventually led to Estonia regaining its independence without bloodshed.
So song can be used as a tool for peace. But singing can reach deeper still. The chants of Tibetan monks move beyond words to what are known as oms, where the singer aims to channel the tones at the root of the universe, stretching the vocal cords and the vocal cavity so a single singer can produce several resonant tones at the same time. And singing can turn hardship into beauty: from the suffering of American slaves to the eternal reach of the blues.
It is easy in this age when everyone can carry their music collection around in their pocket to forget that the true power of song does not emerge if all we do is consume it. So take those buds out of your ears, forget about those MP3s, and remember that singing is a powerful thing, capable of expressing every possible human emotion.
In his book The Time of Our Singing, Richard Powers says: "[Make your voice] the instrument of your peace. Tap in to the pure, voluptuous power of indifference, the sound of how good all sounds will sound to us once we're past them." Take his advice. The voice is never more emotional than when raised in song, as the meaning of words is heightened, becoming something larger than what we want to say; the melody and form at the pinnacle of what humans are capable of, tuning in to beauty itself. And music is greater than however we may feel at the moment we sing it, as words are lifted up into the power of pure sound.