Music and Memory

are stored and then retrieved as if they're fact. Memory is powerful, it's beautiful, it's dangerous at times, and it's essential to human culture and the human experience. In this episode, we're gonna be looking at some of the issues related to memory and music because the way we think about, store and recall music. I feel like this helps illuminate what's going on in the complexity of memory. And it's

also something that's that's that's highly relatable. We can we can all dip in on the this particular topic, and I look forward to hearing from listeners about it. But also we're dealing with something that's you know, slightly intangible. You know, you try and when you try and think and talk about how you remember music, how songs stick with you over the ages, and what songs mean to you. Uh, you know, you know, you get into a lot of

interesting territory. Sure. I mean, I think one of the most common things that we can all relate to is the way that music has, uh such a powerful ability to evoke by gone places and times that you know, to to just sort of like put you right back in the mindset of you know, that summer, the year that you were nineteen years old or whatever. Um. And it's kind of strange why sequences of sounds do that seemingly so much more than almost any other, uh stimulus

of any kind. Yeah, yeah, they you know, there's a lot of nostalgia tied up in music, and uh, you know, I I thought I might share a personal example of of how I sometimes feel like I'm haunted by music. Sharing this because I think it's a good example for our discussion, but also, deep down, I have this secret hope that somebody will will help me identify this or send me a maybe just you know, send me a

VHS tape that will answer my question. Uh. And I imagine people out there have had similar, many similar experiences. So as a child home one summer and watching lots of daytime television. I saw a commercial for a community college or state college. I'm not sure which, but it I seem to recall it was probably a regional advertisement. This might have been for it might have been a college in Tennessee, or it might have been a college in Kentucky. I'm not sure which, but it contained various

splashes of technology and humanities classes. It showed footage of people, you know, tinkering with some electronic equipment, uh, you know, doing some other stuff that looked vocational. And it also contained uh, footage of the stage performance featuring what I think was a Cyclops, like a large scale Cyclops costume that towered over people. It might have been a minotaur, but I think it was a Cyclops. You can respect their advertising department saying, okay, we got a bunch of

footage of the stage productions. What what what goes front and center in the commercial? It's got to be the monster? Yeah, yeah, I mean it made an impression on my mind. But what also made an impression was the music in this commercial, because at the at the time and as I look back on it, it felt like the music of the future. It was some sort of glistening retro sounding synth and I've never been able to find out exactly what it was.

I've I've never found like footage uploaded on YouTube of this particular advertisement, and as far as I know that, the commercials just lost to history. And again it was

likely very regional. But listening to Boards of Canada, the musical duo years later whose specializes and often very nostalgic, founding sounding retro synthies tracks, um, I did listen to a track titled M nine off of Old Tunes Volume one, and it either it reminds me a lot of what was the of the song that was in this advertisement. It reminds me so much that I'm tempted to wonder

if this was the track somehow. This is funny because to me, the Boards of Canada very much is the sound of like an a trium in a in an institutional building on a college campus that has like sort of futuristic looking staircases exagging around and like an orange carpet or something exactly. That's I mean, that's the complicating thing, right.

The kind of sounds that the Boards of Canada excels at crafting are are sounds that are reaching back towards the time period, like they're they're they're kind of reverse engineering the sort of sounds I would have heard in this advertisement. And I'm not sure exactly when I would

have listened to this advertisement. The tape in question, Old tun Tunes Volume one, came out, and I think, but I'm yeah, I'm not sure how the timelines add up here, And if they do add up, I'm not sure exactly how that track would have wound up on this commercial. And like I say, in Tennessee or Kentucky or something, um and and again, I'll likely never have the answer

to it. But every time I listen to that track M nine, it takes me back to that experience of watching this this advertisement and sort of glimpsing into this possibility of what the future was like, what college might be like, what adulthood might be like, what you know, a life of technology or art, what that might consist of.

I think it's interesting. I don't know if you're even aware you said this, but that your vision of the future necessarily includes consciously retro elements, like retro sounding synth. Is what you what you think of when you think

of the future. Yeah, it's it's weird. Yeah, And and and I'm still kind of tied to this where I see like there's certain building styles which are no longer modern, that are very much retro, but they still look like the future to me because they looked like in many cases, they look like you know these strange, you know, collegiate buildings that I saw when I was a child, you know, some of these buildings that were probably built in the nineteen seventies that we're you know, super reliant on air

conditioning and maybe didn't have as much natural life. Like the atrium and overdrawn at the Memory Bank, and it's both it is both of the past and of the future. Yeah that that I forget which atrium was used in that movie, but they made great use of an atrium there. Uh, there are various other sci fi films. I love it when it's clear that they're filming inside of a hotel or a mall and making him look like some sort

of like a futuristic building. Absolutely love it. And to that extent, I love just being in a large atrium. There is that. I mean, these are like cathedrals, they're just the god at the center of it is just the hotel chain. They give you a brutal hanker in for some cinemas. Sorry, the overdrawn of the memory bank jokes can can stop right now. Well, you know everything that I've talked about so far, We've been talking about

the boards of Canada. We've been talking about music that had that is that is completely um instrumental, it has no lyrics because once you start talking about lyrics, Uh, this, this adds an entirely different dimension to everything. Yeah, So this is something that I wanted to talk about because I came across a paper that I thought was pretty interesting. Um, So I guess here's the best way to introduce it.

I'm gonna start with a couple of questions for anybody who ever did school theater as a kid, If you were in plays when you're in you know, elementary school or whatever. If you ever had a speaking part in a play, can you still now remember any of your lines? And if so, how much can you remember? And then the second part is uh, same time of your life, If you ever had a singing part the musical, can you still remember the lyrics to any of the songs?

If you are anything like me, you probably find that you don't really remember many spoken lines from childhood plays. Most of the ones that stick in my head are I think they're memorable because something like maybe something funny or otherwise memorable happened during practice of the scene they're in, so they sort of become a part of an episodic memory. But but even examples like that are are pretty rare

in my memory. But I I can quite easily and immediately remember all kinds of lyrics from songs that I sang many years ago and haven't practiced since, songs from the Pirates of Penzance or or like a musical adaptation of god knows what kind of weird stuff I was in as as a child, But like the lyrics have stayed in my brain for twenty plus years. Yeah, my

my experience is much the same. Um. You know. I think back on plays that I was in and and and in some cases I had like pretty major roles, had a lot of lines to remember, Like I believe I was in a community production of other people's money, and I remember nothing. I had nothing at all that I said from that play, uh, which which on one hand I understand because I didn't like love that play. I mean, it was an enjoyable experience at the time.

But it's not like my favorite play or anything, So it makes sense that I would maybe make room for other things in my memory and sort of flush that information. Um. But then, and but then. I also think back on musical community theater musicals I was in, and in some cases I had pretty major roles there. I was in a production of seventeen seventy six, and I don't remember any of the music from that. I don't remember. I remember the costumes and sort of the experience, but I

remember no words that came out of my mouth. Well, for me, I don't know how much it has to do. I mean, I don't think I have any particular love for like the Pirates of pens Ants, but I could still rather. You know, I am the very model of a modern major general. All the you know, the from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical And this is interesting to me because in both cases the lines I spoke in the lyrics I sang are collections of verbal text.

In both cases, I would have made a conscious effort to memorize them, and I would have practiced them by repeating them out loud over and over. But for the most part, the spoken lines for me completely fade away, and a lot of the song lyrics have remained. They have way more staying power overall. Obviously I don't remember all of them, So what's making the difference? Yeah? This, this, This is interesting because I also think back on things

that I liked. For instance, um, I had to learn the Dagger monologue from Macbeth Forum, just a Shakespearean acting class I took once and I love I love that monologue, a great monologue, And there have been times since then where I kind of wish I could just belt that monologue in its entirety, but I cannot. It's it's mostly gone just with you know, a few lines remain, and if I read it, you know, it comes sort of

comes back to me a little bit. But then there are things like Don McClain's American Pie, a song that I have never performed. It's not like community theater or something where I had to get up and actually performed this stuff in front of people and work through memorize and work through stage fright. But with with American Pie, I could probably recite all of that right now. I haven't listened to it in a in a in a

long time. But like that, is a that is a song where like the entire um uh, you know, the entirety of the lyrics, you know, they're just stuck in my head and they're not going anywhere. Uh. And it's because of the power of the music. I guess, well, maybe maybe not. I mean, I guess it's hard to say why exactly it is that these lyrics seem to

stick with us for so long. Now. Another thing, just from personal experience to sort of inform this question, is that I have also, definitely in my life, back when I was in school, uh, tried to use melody as a mnemonic device when trying to memorize things for a test. I don't know if you ever did this, but I remember, like trying to create songs or set things. I was

trying to remember to the melodies of existing songs. And I don't know if it worked for me, but I at least I thought it might work enough that I tried to do it. Well. Yeah, I don't have a lot of personal experience with this, but I've I've you know, I've heard that it works for some people, like some people and and in general I'm talking about Western um sinologists sometimes memorize the dynasties of China by using a particular song. I forget which a song. Idea is that

it's like some Western song and then American. It's not, but you can you can look it up. I remember finding a video of like a couple of old sinologists, Western sinologists setting around singing this little childhood tune because it's how they both learned the order of the dynasty's. So it definitely works for people. But I don't think I ever really leaned on it myself. Okay, well I would like to hear that. Maybe have to look that up later. But so I was wondering a couple of things.

So first of all, is this preference for at least the perceived ability to memorize song lyrics over other verbal content. Is this just me? And second, is there any evidence that this actually works, that this is actually true? So the first thing is it seems based on what we've been talking about, it may not be universal, but it's

definitely not just me. I found plenty of articles in the mainstream press about using music as a mnemonic device or a learning tool, and some researchers thinking that that music or setting verbal information to music might help people remember it better. But the second question would be is

there evidence that it actually works? And there I think the evidence might not be a firm yes or no. It's actually quite complicated, but complicated in in ways that seem pretty interesting and might reveal some things about our experience of music and about the way memory works. So there are actually a ton of studies on the role of music and the effects of music on memorization and verbal learning. Um, so I I can't do do that

whole slate of literature. Instead, I wanted to start by focusing on one study that I found interesting and then maybe comment a little more broadly. So this study was published in two thousand seven in the journal Memory and Cognition. It is by Omilie Rossett and Isabelle Perettes, and it's

called learning Lyrics to Sing or Not to Sing. And they begin by talking about this existing popular belief that we've already been discussing, as well as some empirical evidence that music can possibly aid in memory, especially learning of verbal information, learning of words. And so they cite a few examples, such as previous studies one by Dixon and Grant in two thousand three that investigated trying to learned the laws of physics through karaoke that sounds both sweet

and really cringe inducing. And then secondly, they mentioned to study my Medina from nineteen three that looked into learning English as a second language via songs, with the idea that songs might provide an advantage over just normal verbal content.

But the authors point out that if it's true that singing and music help with learning verbal information, it's not obvious why that should be the case, because, after all, when you learn a song, there's literally more information that you have to encode and retrieve than when just learning, say that the text of a song, just the lyrics, because you're you're adding music on top of it. It seems like that would be more to remember, might be distracting,

and thus would uh, you know, would make things harder. Yeah,

I mean, if if memory serves uh. Some actors use the technique of learning their lines flat without any kind of motion added to them, and then that come then they build on that later, you know, So they start without any additional information aside from the words, and you know, of course you know the meaning behind the words, right, And though uh, though I guess we we should always remember that acting techniques are not necessarily informed by the

latest memory and cognition. Yeah, like then all these things, there's also a certain amount of tradition and different views on performance that you know that that may not be scientifically verified, right, But that's another thing like we've like we were talking about that, you know, at least it grows out of personal experience. So you have to wonder if there's something there that could be plumbed by empirical research.

So the authors here are Stt and Parretts. They note that in previous studies, the results looking into this question on whether music aids in in verbal learning and memory formation and retrieval, the results have been kind of mixed. But while they're this is not the universal finding, there have been a number of studies that show people have an easier time recalling sung words over spoken words. Now, in their introductory section they talk about a few reasons

they're hypothesized for why this might be. Why might if people do remember words from songs better than the same words spoken, what what would be going on there? And so they say, well, maybe, uh, speed actually plays a role, because when you take a text and you sing it, generally you will spend a longer time pronouncing the words in the text, then if you just read it or recite it out loud, and thus it the text is

sort of less compressed. They also say that the characteristics of the melody seem to be important because a simple melody that has a very sort of repeated line seems to be easier to memorize than complex melodies like you might find and say, an opera or something. But then also that they offer another reason that saw lyrics might be easier to memorize, which are structural characteristics of the

text that make it easier to recall. So to read from their introduction quote, for instance, the metrical structure of music and the number of musical notes in a line can queue word recall. Similarly, song lyrics are usually constrained by both semantics, meaning meaning that there is like a meaning constraint on what can be said in a song. So they say a story underlies the words, generally through a schema or script. Uh. And then so you you've

got the semantic constraints. You know, the song sort of has to tell a story that makes sense. That certainly not true of all songs, especially these days. Um. But then the other thing would be sound patterns, and this would be things like rhymes or alliteration, which they also say, megan limit possibilities of what types of words could come next. You know, these offer you some schema of of you know, predicting what the rest of the line would be. That

that's interesting because makes me think of American Pie. It also makes me think of Warren's Van's Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, both long songs that I easily remember, but both of them are are very narrative songs. The lyrics tell a story, especially with Roland. You know, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end to it. There's a climax, and they've both got very regular rhythm in the delivery

and uh and a rhyme scheme. And so those things can help you remember because they limit the possibilities of what could be coming up next in the song. If you know the say the rhyme sound at the end of the last line, that helps give you a clue as to what the next line is. Whereas you know,

you might have trouble recalling otherwise. Yeah, And the authors here note and interesting thing they say when errors occur in song recall, they say quote, the changes usually preserve the rhyme and the number of syllables in the line. So if you were say, singing American Pie, and you couldn't remember drove my chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry, you might at least be able to say, took my chevy from the levy and I looked at the sky. You know, it would be something that preserved

the rhyme and preserved the meter the number of syllables. Yeah, yeah, a misheard and misconstrued lyrics are still going to They're still going to meet the basic framework that was presented in the song. So anyway, in this study, the authors did a couple of experiments to see if learning verbal materials through song actually did provide a memory advantage over

learning the same verbal materials just recited or spoken. And so there were three different conditions as people were trying to learn the lyrics of an unfamiliar song, and there're three different conditions here. So first is the sung sung condition, and in this condition, the subject would have the song sung to them and then they would try to sing

it back. Second is the sung spoken condition, and year they would have the song sung to them, but then they would try to speak the lyrics back and then the next condition. I thought this was interesting. They tried something called the divided spoken condition, and this is where they would be presented with the lyrics but not sung,

though they would be hearing the accompanying background music. And I guess this was to try this was sort of a control to try to rule out Wait a minute, could it just be that having the music going on while you're learning the words is what contributes to learning and not the fact that the lyrics themselves are being sung.

M Now, that's interesting. That makes me think of of of songs like the Moody Blues Knights and White Satin, which has of course traditional lyrics, but then also has that spoken words segment, and thinking back on it, like I can, I can remember a lot of that spoken words segment from Knights and White Satin, despite the fact that it's not like, you know, a piece that I'm particularly attached to, but that the words will come. Well.

I guess so in one of the conditions, that's what they're going to test here, that does that does the spoken words section actually have a memory advantage over just something being spoken without any music? Um? So in keeping with sort of the conventional wisdom and with what a number of studies had found before, they predicted that the sung sung condition would create the best word recall. So when people heard heard a song sung to them and they tried to sing it back, they would do the best.

But here's where I thought this got interesting. They found no in this test. The hypothesis was not confirmed. They predicted that the sung sung condition would be best, but they write quote. However, fewer words were recalled when singing than when speaking. Furthermore, the mode of presentation, whether sung or spoken, had no influence on lyric recall, either short or long term recall. But anyway, at the end of

their abstract they right quote altogether. The results into kate that the text and the melody of a song have separate representations in memory, making singing a dual task to perform, at least in the first steps of learning. Interestingly, musical training had little impact on performance, suggesting that vocal learning is a basic and widespread skill. So, first of all, I just like to say, you know, I like this study because it's a great example of a negative finding

that can still be really interesting. The hypothesis is not confirmed. Yet we can still learn a lot from from what's going on here, and the authors had some interesting thoughts in their conclusion section about about what might be happening with music and verbal memory. So I want to read a section from their discussion in their conclusion that that I thought was interesting here. So they say, Nevertheless, one important cue for auditory vocal remembering that is common to

both music and poems is rhythm. The regular organization of stresses, mostly alternating between strong and weak beats or still doables, is supposed to limit the words that are compatible with it, and thereby constrains words selection, at least in English. The rhythmic similarity between the prosodic accent structure of spoken words and the metric structure of the melody is striking and

has long been noted by linguists and music theorists. Moreover, Palmer and Kelly in nineteen two have shown that linguistic accent structure and musical meter are generally aligned in Western songs. Hence, rhythmic structure, as determined by the number of syllables or notes and the location of primary stress, may serve as

a compatible format for setting words to tones. By this account, Recalling a particular stress pattern in a melody or spoken text activates a metrical grid that constrains the type of text or melody that is compatible with it. A common metrical grid is typically used throughout a song. Therefore, metric structure provides a means by which lines of an entire song are organized in a common hierarchical structure, thereby relating

non adjacent song components and helping memory. So I think what they're arguing here is that maybe in these cases where we have found that music aids in verbal memory, it's because the words in the music are set to a sort of poetic rhythmic structure, and it's that structure that makes things easier to memorize, not so much the

setting it to the melody part. Uh. They also note some interesting things like one thing that uh they mentioned is that advantages of lyrical recall might actually depend upon language. Uh So, just for example, it might be easier to recall words with the help of lyrical structures in English versus French. That's not clear, that's just a possibility they mentioned. Um. But then they also say something that I think might tie into something you're going to discuss in a bit. Uh,

so they argue in the end quote. This conclusion raises the question of why music is believed to be so important for verbal memory, not only in oral tradition, but also in everyday life. We believe this is due to a misunderstanding of the utility of music. Music is not at the service of language in songs. Music contributes to the creation of a general mood that is shared with others. And then they quote an author named Booth from that teen eighty one who writes that a singer tells people

quote nothing they need to decode or learn. He evokes in them ways of seeing life that they already have. And then they go on to say that quote. In fact, oral transmission of text is rarely word for word or verbatim in singing. Althose singers believe that they sing the text exactly as heard, They never do so. Uh. And then side studies by Reuben Reuben famous research into recounting of like long oral poems, things like the Iliad and

the Odyssey, that people supposedly do from memory. But a lot of these studies find that that actually, while people think they are performing the same poem or song over and over, in fact, they're making major changes to it as they do. And in fact, maybe the role of music is to sort of create the illusion that what you are recreating is the same thing, rather than making it the same thing. So the structure is still the same, the words are still rhyming. Uh, therefore, surely nothing has changed.

But there is of course room for stuff to have changed, right, So details may change, but something about the fact that it is the same song creates the feeling that you are recreating the same work, even though the details are actually different. So anyway, I thought the study was really interesting,

though it is older. This is from two thousand seven, So I was trying to look through a more recent studies on this subject the effects of music on verbal memory and recall, and trying to see if I could find anything, you know, if any newer conclusions had emerged. And it looks to me like the the landscape of findings on this is still somewhat mixed, like it is not consistent, and that this may just indicate that there are different features of different kinds of music and verbal

encoding tasks that that that provide different results in the end. So, for example, I was looking at one study from Frontiers in Psychology published in by Lehman and Seifert called can music foster learning? Effects of different text modalities on learning

and information retrieval. So they have different ways of having people try to learn text through written exposure, through spoken exposure, and through sung exposure, and they found that the actually was through exposure to written text that people signal recalled the most detail in the verbal text. However, they say,

and and this one really surprised me. But at least within this study, they say, quote comprehension after learning with the sung modality was significantly superior compared to in learning with the written learning modality. Comprehension so like comprehension of the of the text being presented. So they say that reading helps people focus more on details, which may help them answer sort of specific recall questions that would come

down to a single word or detail later on. But listening to the verbal content as a song leads to higher levels of comprehension of the entire text. So one last thing I came across the I found an article in the Wall Street Journal from two thousand thirteen by

Heidie Mitchell called does music aid in Memorization? And this was interesting because it just uh, it consulted the opinion of a of a leading American psychologist who does research on memory, and this psychologist is Henry L. Rodiger the third, who is a professor of psychology at the Memory Lab at Washington University in St. Louis. And what he's as is, there's wide agreement that information set to music is easier

to remember. Now why would this be, well, Roddiger actually uh cites something that the authors of that earlier paper mentioned, So he says that music aids in memory because it helps in the retrieval process. So of course we know memory involves not only storage but the act of retrieval. And this can be clearly evidenced by the tip of

the tongue effect. You think about how you can know the word you want to use, but for some reason you can't locate that word in your memory at the moment, and then suddenly something clicks and then you have the words. It was in there. It was retrievable in your brain, but you couldn't put it together. And likewise, you can fail to recall a memorized string of words, a memorized sentence, until maybe you get the first word in the string and then it all comes rushing up out of the

DP your memory. Uh and so. So Roddeger claims that music is helpful at retrieval of verbal information be cause it provides structure through things like rhythm and rhyme, like we were talking about earlier that the the other authors discussed in their conclusion, And it's this structure, the rhythm and the rhyme, that acts as a queue that makes it easier to retrieve the stored information of the next line. So Roddiger claims that it is the structure, not the melody,

that aids in the retrieval process. When it is the case that it's easier to remember lyrics, he thinks at least that it's probably due to the fact that lyrics are encoded in these rhythmic structures, things that have meter and they have rhyme that make them easier to recall

than just unstructured strings of text. And you know, I can kind of say that it is similarly easier to recall lines of poems, even though they're not sung out loud, just poems that have uh say, meter and rhyme, than it is to recall just lines of unstructured prose from stories that I like or or famous speeches I feel like. Um, like perhaps at some point I had I was asked to memorize the Gettysburg Address or something like that, and

like that really doesn't stick with me. Some of Macbeth sticks with me because there is very much a cadence in a in a rhythm to to all of that. Uh, and also things like a rhyme of the ancient mariner. You know. Um, I certainly don't have it all memorized, but there's some some bits of it that are stuck in my memory. So yeah, I could. I can see

what they're getting at in this this paper. And then that might also explain cases where like, so if you take song lyrics and you're just trying to say, do people learn song lyrics better if they hear them spoken out loud or if they hear them sung? And this is on initial exposure. Things might change if you know you're you're exposed to these words either spoken or sung,

day after day for a long time. But on initial exposure, Uh, the authors of that study from two thousand seven didn't really find a difference, Like you you did not do better if you heard them sung. I wonder if that could just be as well their song lyrics anyway, So even if they're spoken out loud, they would still have

the same structure. They'd still have the rhythm and the rhyme. Yeah. Yeah, Like even if you're if you're not hearing the song rolland the headless Thompson gunner, there's still Roland was a gunner from the Land of the Midnight Sun. You know, it has it has that cadence, and it has that rhyme. Oh and in case in point, I actually got the lyrics wrong there, it's Roland was a warrior from the Land of the Midnight Sun. But I got the important

parts right. Well. It sounds like that that's what happens with songs, right Like we keep the structure and you get things about the gist. But but yeah, the details seemed us shift all over the place anyway, though. I Mean, it seems to me like this is the kind of thing that we could probably return to in the future, because I bet that there is still a lot more to learn about the relationship between uh, verbal memory and music.

It seems that the studies we've looked at here established some things, but it's still it still seems to be a messy picture where sometimes music does aid in memory and sometimes it doesn't, and figuring out exactly what what

all the variables are there would probably continue to be interesting. Yeah, So I'd like to come back to um to some of the ideas we're talking about earlier, and then some of the ideas that came up in uh in your discussion of of the work with lyrics and and that concerns sort of this broader picture of of memory and music. Because memories involving music, they of course, can be highly individual.

We've already shared a few different examples of that. We we also have any number of examples where a particular track or particular work of music becomes linked to a particular idea of a particular book, a particular movie, a memory, a hope, or a dream, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a in a bad way, or perhaps a

slightly annoying way. Perhaps you've had a had a co worker with a with a particular ring tone that that that kind of jabbed at you, and and now that song is forever linked with just random outbursts from this person's phone. There there is a David Bowie song where I can no longer hear the opening guitar riff without thinking that the next thing is is going to be

like hearing a voice saying, hey, what's up? Uh. But anyway, the direction I wanted to go in though at this point of the episode is to is to get into the the idea of the connection between music and and not only individual memory, but collective memory. Okay, Now you're probably wondering, if some of you may be wanting, okay,

what is collective memory to tell us or or remind us? Well? Uh. French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Hubbox born eighteen seventy seven died developed the concept of collective memory and has been explored by various other thinkers since then. The basic idea is that while individuals remember things, groups of people also remember things together. Now, I was also reading a paper

titled Collective Memory What is It? By Getty and Elam from volume of History and Memory, And here the authors make a connection between the modern concept of collective memory and you know, much older traditions of myth and legend, because this is this is arguably how we used to understand some of these concepts in terms of national myths local legends and so forth, but as well discuss modernity affects some of the apparent mechanisms and flows involved here

with individual and collective memories of events and uh in histories. Now, there are two distinct areas of collective memory. They're small scale collective memory and this is in small scale groups among the members of small scale groups. And then there are large scale collective memories in large scale groups. And

this later category is also known as memory boom. Uh. There's there's also literature about the connections between the two because anytime we're talking about these memories like individual memory, small all scale collective memory, large scale collective memory. Uh, they're not you know, distinct things separated by walls. They are they influence each other, and so there's there's very much the individual experience of all of this. But even if you have a group of just two people, you

see this interesting thing emerging. We've talked about this before on the show, and there are some actually some studies about this about how couples, uh, you know, any kind of to any two people who have kind of like a long term close relationship, they'll often do this thing where they share the task of remembering certain things, and this can be a point of you know, slight irritation at times, like why am I the one that remembers uh, you know, Uncle Karen's birthday or or whatever the thing

might be. And we end up doing this thing where we, uh, we allow the other person to be the the the remember of that particular fact, and then perhaps we end up remembering other things, and then you engage in this kind of collective remembering of things. Uh. And this is this is of course one of the great great pleasures in life. Right. You get together with either you're you're talking with a significant other, perhaps as a close friend or a relative, and what do you do together? You

share stories? But you remember things together. Yeah remember when. Yeah. Though, it's great to point out the idea of sharing stories as as being crucial to this this collective memorization, because that's sort of like it. It puts emphasis on the fact that the the retrieval of these memories often in itself is a type of performance. It's like a creative act in a way. And uh, and I think that's one reason you ever get in the situation where, uh, you are together with a group of people and say,

your spouse says I, Oh, here's you know. They bring up the concept of a story, but then they want you to tell it, you know, and so that you can kind of something sometimes doesn't quite feel right there because it's a story that you could tell, but somehow I don't know, like you don't feel like up to performing it at that moment. It's not like you can't remember the details as they're supposed to be told, but something about being put on the spot is like I

was not ready to perform. So it's almost like you can't remember. But I think a lot of times we we kind of stow away the idea that well, this person either they have the better telling of the story, they have the beats down, they can tell it in a funny way. Or sometimes it's more that person's story to tell, right, like it's it's their experience. So it's even maybe you don't feel is right being the bearer of that story, like like you need to tell it,

Please tell that story. It's such a good one. So so basically in all of this, a kind of emergent memory can emerge from a small group of people or a large group of people. Um oh, and of course we have to remember we're talking about. When we're talking about memory retrieval, we have to recall that the mere act of retrieving a memory can alter the memory. UH. And in fact, the memories that we retrieve the most, or perhaps the ones we can trust the least, right, um.

But in either case it's important to drive home. We're talking about ecological and historical concepts here, and UH it's it's a different beast from objective history, but rather a view of the past that involves specific views and values of a given group, Right, I mean, I think that's something that should come through. It's not that humans never

recall details accurately. Sometimes they do, but broadly, I think it is better to think about your memory as a sort of UH, a mythology based on facts about history, rather than an objective recording of events. Yes, yes, that the link between mythology and UH and even individual memory, but also collective memory. I think it's strong, and you can also tie in I think various connections to the idea of collective unconscious and the power of various symbols

and tropes. Um. But the basic concept here of collective memory sometimes described as social memory, and UH it is also sometimes criticized for being very monolithic and its approach because everyone in a particular group is not actually going to have the exact same memory of something, and while their various memories might contribute to a collective memory, they are still not going to have the same specific memories

of the event. Also very true of mythology. I mean, there's rarely just one version of a myth, right, you know, right, right, and get all these different variations on where did Medusa come from or whatever? But then often you will have somebody come along and attempt to codify it and say, this is the version that we are adhering to. And sometimes this is merely and sometimes it's accidental, like a great storyteller comes along and retells the story and now

this is the one. Other times, you know, there there are potentially nefarious attitudes involved, you know, particularly if you have someone who is looking to to lead people or manipulate people, and in doing so they might say, well, this this is our collective memory. Surely you remember it this way. This is the way that that I would like for you to think of it. But you know, we might think of this. We might take this concept and apply it to something like let's say the nineties

sixties in America. Uh, there are and we're individual memories of this time period. But there also are and we're collective memories of that decade. And depending on who you were and where you were, there was likely a fair amount of drift concerning the exact flavor of that time period. Was it a time of liberation, a time of struggle, a time of great danger, a time of laughable fashions? Uh? You know, I'm simplifying here, but hopefully you get the idea.

And on top of that, media plays a role in all of this as well, again, as do certain manipulations of recollections of tough times by people who have a particular agenda in all of it. And of course music plays a part as well. And in this I come to the paper that I was reading about all of this, um titled record and Hold Popular Music between personal and collective memory. I wonder if that might have been an illusion or a play on sample and hold from Neil Young.

I don't know, but it's by the the researcher yo Say Van Dunk, published in Critical Studies and Media Communication from two thousand six. Van Donk writes that quote people nourish emotional and tangible connections to songs before entrusting them to their personal, mental, and material reservoirs. But they also need to share musical preferences with others before songs become part of a collective repertoire that in turn provides new

resources for personal engagement with recorded music. So her main contention here is that that musical memories emerge and become codified at the intersection of personal memory, collective memory, and identity. Uh, you know, which leads to the question how do personal and collective memories intermingle here? And I think this is

really quite interesting to think about. For for for instance, think back to a song that came out when let's say you were in high school or perhaps college, or perhaps some other justformative time in your life, you know, think about a time when a lot of new music was entering your life and your life was changing and so forth. So, first of all, how did you think about the song then,

and how do you think about it now? How did your group, small or large think about the song, How have you come to reflect on it as a product of that time period? And how is the song packaged and sold to you at the time figuratively and perhaps literally, and then how has the media been packaged or repackaged since then? You know, I recall a kind of youthful arrogance about my taste in music when I was in high school, and a lot of the stuff I liked,

I'm sure I would now regard as quite horrible. Um, but I but I remember thinking at the time like, oh, finally music is good, you know about about like the kind of music that I liked then. I mean, I guess I grew out of that fairly quickly, but like there was a kind of a feeling of like, Okay, you know this new this new type of metal that I'm into now, which in my case was probably like

early two thousands metals, so you know, like real good stuff. Uh. I was like, finally, you know, we've we reached sort of the apex of music. This is what it's all been building up to. This is the new frontier here. There's a kind of pity for like previous generations who didn't have that, you know, they didn't really know what music was about because there wasn't disturbed yet. Yeah, it reminds me. I think it was a no fielding line

about how um. Uh, that's saying something about like adam ant having been having invented music and someone was like what about classical music? And he was like, well, it was just that was just warming up, you know, like like well, whatever came before the music that was pivotal for you, Like that was just the precursor, the necessary precursor to the real music that was that was actually speaking, which is is ridiculous, but also I think makes a lot of sense as we as we move on through

all of this. Uh so, um, you know, there's a lot to consider when thinking about it. But uh and in those questions here that I asked, the only scratched the surface. But as um As van Deynk points out, Number one, remembering as an active process of a mind in the world. So we are stirred to remember things by a multitude of stimuli. So it's you know, it's

you're not just a black box of memory. There's all this additional stuff coming in stirring memories, um, you know, and sometimes like stirring them up to into a into a storm, into a uh, you know, a new obsession or a re obsession. The second point is that that music is enabled through instruments and technology and quote enabling

apparatus becomes part of the recollecting experience. So this is I think this is perhaps worth remembering as we occasionally throw out old physical albums and playing devices like all of that stuff. And I'm not saying, hey, keep all of your your garbage, but but it's worth remembering that, Yeah, that that physical album is still a part of the experience of that album. And uh and uh, I guess some of us may be cling onto that idea more than others. Uh, pieces of my soul will always live

on unlabeled, burned c d s A right that. The next point that Vandang makes is that music emerges from a socio technological context and then also quote, remembrance is always embedded, so the social context within which we live stimulate memories of the past. For an example of this, she points to internet forums and and radio programs is things that don't merely stimulate such musical memories but also

helped construct collective memory. Oh yeah, I mean, so music is powerfully evocative, but to a great extent, we determine what it evokes by talking about it with each other. Yeah, yeah, there's I mean, there's because there's what the music means

to me. It's what the music means to us, you know, again, the collective memory of of what this song is or what it was, what it meant, you know, especially when songs become anthems, right when they become things that are attached to movements, to generations, or just a particular scenes and times. Now, I mentioned high school and college for a reason here. These are period of time, but not not the only periods of time during which we often build out our musical taste and in doing so, construct

our own identity. And it's kind of crazy to think about that, you know. These are these are largely sonic and linguistic chunks of technologically constructed media that are used to build out the cultural self. So I'm I'm taking this building block, you know, dripping in the cultural honey of the hive from which I have, I have yanked it, and now I'm I'm putting it inside myself. I'm implanting it in my body, altering the shape in the form of my own being. And so the music becomes me

and I become that music totally. Now she she points out that exactly how music gets stuck in our memories is kind of hard to nail down because different networks and functions of the brain are involved in music remembrance. There's cognitive, there's a there is a motive, there's a

a somato sensory. She cites some cognitive scholar Patrick Comb Hogan who says, quote, the tendency of working memory to cyclic repetition, combined with the exaggerated accessibility of a simple and frequently repeated tune, gives rise to a situation in which the song is likely to cycle repeatedly through working memory. And this touches on some of what we're talking about already, sure, on the basis that every time you recite a memory, you make that memory easier to access in the future.

Though not necessarily accurately, but you at least make it easier to access in the future. And songs, by their very nature, especially sort of catchy songs with easily repeatable melodies and and and lines, um, really are easy to recite in the heads, so you sort of like you implant them for very powerful ease of retrieval in the future. Yeah, and and when you start talking about repetition in these songs, um, one of the things that the Van Bank points out

is that technology aids in it immensely. Um, because the the advent of recorded music technology allowed us to engage in true repetition and to expose ourselves um cyclically to particular songs, both privately and collectively. UM. And I think we can all probably think of examples of this where we you know, we hit on that one song and nothing but that song is going to do it do it for us right now? So what do we do?

We put that baby on repeat. You'll listen to it, like, you know, five, six, ten times in a row even uh, just continuing to get that hit. And UM, I want I wonder like, Yeah, in the old days, I guess if you had a song in your head and you're in your heart, you could just continually sing it to yourself as you just went about your day. Um. But but without recorded media, you have the chance to change it in the process of doing that. That's right, That's right.

You could change it a little bit each time, even uh, you know, come up with your own lyrics. I guess and U and I guess you probably saw that of merge, especially with like work songs right where it's like people working collectively collectively sharing in a song and then perhaps contributing to it and building upon it as they went.

But but it makes me think of these various like especially like medieval style and fantasy setting, um shows where you'll have like a pub scene and there's a performer, there's a bard singing a song, and usually the bard will sing the song once. But in reality, would you have a situation where they're like, yeah, we love that, let's let's just keep doing it. No, that song over and over again? Uh, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. If you ever been to a

concert where the musician played the same song twice? Oh I don't. I have know that that occurs occasionally if yeah, if the audience demands it all right, Um, so we don't remember all the songs we hear, but we we do remember a lot of songs, especially if we can pair it up with a specific emotional, physical response, even stuff as simple as well, this song pumps me up, you know, And I think we can all think of

examples of that. Right. Maybe it's it's not even the song that you like really connect with in a lot of meaningful ways, but it gets your blood pumping and therefore it's easy to remember. But this alone can't account for the stickiness of music and memory. Uh S Van Dank also points to two complimentary theories. There's the neurocognitive theory,

and this is the feeling associated with the song. Uh is inscribed in our in our biographical meaning, and recalling them causes a flood of emotion and time, event relationship specifics. And then there's the cultural semiotic theory. The musical sign is not the key thing, but rather the emotions, feeling, and experiences attached to hearing a particular song. So the comparison that has been made here is that a tree is falling in a forest. The forest is the song,

and the waves emanating from the falling tree are the emotions. Okay, I don't know if that clarifies anything for anybody, but um but but but hopefully what these two theories both kind of work at is that yeah, there's the song, there's the lyrics, but then they are all of these um, you know, biographical elements, and it's the and and some of this is perhaps make them off as an overstatement

of the obvious. You know, like that time when you heard this song that time when you listen to this song six six times in a row, like, all of that becomes encoded in the memory of the thing and the nostalgia of the thing. Right. Well, another way to think about it is that there is no way to appreciate a song on its own terms. There actually is no you know, there is no way to just think about a song. You're always thinking about it with some

kind of biographical and cultural framing. So you will have, you know, independent personal emotions, feelings and biographical details that will become associated with that song, and you will probably keep reproducing in memory every time you hear the song or sing the song. But then there will also possibly be these broader sort of cultural associations. But it it fits into a time, a social context, to political context,

and it means something to you within that context. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, as as an example of of some of this um in her paper, Vannk goes into it looks at an example from a Dutch pop music survey. It's called the Dutch Top two thousand, and this is a radio event, and she argues that the Dutch Top two thousand is a great example of how quote unquote mediated memories are

shaped at the intersections of personal and collective memories. So this was a national radio event with generated user responses in narrative form like people uh, people sharing their connection with a particular song, what it means to them uh, a narrative form for those memories, and since it's a major media event, it also helps to shape cultural memories through the sharing of the the individual connection to the

song uh. So. So I found that that interest is trying to think, do we are there examples of out from you know, from my my own experience with music or I don't know if you have experiences with this, because oftentimes it's you know, music is presented to you and it's presented to you by a by a DJ or or a d J if you were watching uh MTV back in the day, and maybe they might add some sort of personal experience or some sort of priming

as to why this song is important, but maybe not. UM. I guess sometimes back in the old days, maybe they do this still. People would have requests on the radio and would like, you know, say this song goes out to so and so. I could see that being a form of this. So I hope this service as just

kind of a you know, introduction to some of these ideas. Um, the topic of music and collective memory plays into a number of interesting looking papers and books even that perhaps beyond the scope of this episode, but I thought I might mention a couple of them in passing in case people wanted to explore further. Uh. There's there's music Memory and Nostalgia, Collective Memories of Cultural Revolution songs and contemporary China. This one was by Bryant came out into that and

five and China Review. And there is also a book edited by edited by Um, bos Quasca and bomb Gardner titled Music, Collective Memory, Trauma and Nostalgia and European Cinema after the Second World War. And I was looking at that one a little bit, and it Uh, this, this is something that that is worth noting, like the way that we strongly forge these connections between music and cinema. Uh. And and it's and something and and and just sort

of visual media in general. And sometimes it can kind of co opt the original meaning of a song, uh, and that song becomes forever associated with with, say a particular period of time or or a conflict, et cetera.

All Right, well, we're gonna we're gonna go and close things out here, but obviously we'd love to hear from everybody out there, because again, everybody has some sort of connection to to what we've been talking about here, and you're gonna have specific examples that might be worth sharing from your own life and your own your your own musical history. I also want to throw in I did look it up real quick, the Dynasty's song that I'm thinking about, um the Way to Remember the Dynasties of China.

It's sung to the tune of Freda Shaka. So you can find examples of that online if you want. I am I'm not going to sing it now. In the meantime, if you like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed, available wherever you get your podcasts. We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have listener Mail on Monday's Artifact on Wednesdays as a short form episode, and on Friday's We Do Weird

How Cinema. That's our time to set most serious matters aside and just focus in on a weird film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.