There are different kinds of memory, including explicit and implicit memory. "I'm as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer" was described by one critic as the ‘worst lyric of all time’ and yet it evokes profound feelings. There is a link then between music and memory, but why, when we hear a particular song, do we feel strong emotions rather than just being able to recite the lyrics? If I listen to Rhythm Is a Dancer, I recall the amazing feeling of travelling without my parents for the first time and all the fun I had as much as the lines of the song, which I might add wasn’t one I cared for particularly − the lyrics are banal or just plain bad. Try and remember anything set to a tune and your powers of recall will be stronger: “Now I’ve sung my ABC.” Just think of one of the first songs you could well have sung: “A,B,C,D,E,F,G, come along and sing with me.” Text learnt to music is better remembered when it is heard as a song rather than speech. Neuroscientists have analysed the brain mechanisms related to memory, finding that words set to music are the easiest to remember. It is the structure of the song that helps us to remember it, as well as the melody and the images the words provoke. Music helps because it provides a rhythm and rhyme and sometimes alliteration which helps to unlock that information with cues. It doesn’t simply come when you ask it to. The hippocampus and the frontal cortex are two large areas in the brain associated with memory and they take in a great deal of information every minute. Before the narratives could be written down, they were chanted or sung. David C Rubin is a specialist in autobiographical memory and oral traditions and in his ground-breaking book Memory in Oral Traditions he explains how epic stories like Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey were passed down verbally using poetic devices. Music has been an important mnemonic device for thousands of years. It is already used to help dementia patients, the elderly, and for those suffering from depression. The relationship between music and memory is powerful, and new research is hoping to discover how these memories work for therapeutic effect.
You can feel everything as if you were actually there.
This is an experience shared by everyone: hear a piece of music from decades later and you are transported back to that particular moment, like stepping into a time machine. But were I deliberately to try and remember something particular from that holiday, without the music, I would recall nothing as immediate or emotional. I hear just one refrain from it – “It's a soul companion/ You can feel it everywhere” – and the late nights and sandy beaches come immediately to mind. It’s a tune by the German Eurodance group Snap!, that was played a lot one summer as I travelled across Europe. Rhythm Is a Dancer’ is the song that does it for me.
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