Science, Music and Regulating Emotions with Hauke Egermann

What can people and organisations learn from science and music? Why should we care? Are there universal mechanisms that are valid all over the world to all human species? Or is everything an individual experience? 

Today, we talk with Hauke Egermann, Professor of Systematical Musicology at the University of Cologne.

We speak about universal mechanisms that are valid all over the world; we learn from research with an isolated culture in Congo, the Pygmies from Mebenzélé, that refuse to practise negative music and have different songs to regulate their emotions. Songs against fear, anger, or, among others, music to protect hunters in the rainforest.

How do they respond to music they have never heard or connected with? What does it evoke, and how does this relate to Canadian Indigenous people and the listening patterns in the Western world? 

Hauke also shares the Music Date concert with us, where the audience's emotional reaction is tracked in the first tutti part of a concert to then separate and assign them to eight different mini-concerts around one emotion based on their responses.

 

Show notes

• Connect with Hauke: https://musikwissenschaft.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/en/mitarbeiter-innen/professoren-innen/hauke-egermann 
• Mentioned paper about universal emotion-related psychophysiological responses: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01341/full
• Google scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=de&user=aSSMPDoAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate 

 

Related podcasts: 

• A love letter to sound with Nina Kraus: https://musicthinking.com/a-love-letter-to-sound-with-nina-kraus/

Standing still with Alexander Refsum Jensenius: https://musicthinking.com/standing-still-with-alexander-refsum-jensenius/