---
product_id: 8198070
title: "Music, Language, and the Brain"
brand: "aniruddh d. patel"
price: "Rp3115494"
currency: IDR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 9
url: https://www.desertcart.id/products/8198070-music-language-and-the-brain
store_origin: ID
region: Indonesia
---

# Music, Language, and the Brain

**Brand:** aniruddh d. patel
**Price:** Rp3115494
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Music, Language, and the Brain by aniruddh d. patel
- **How much does it cost?** Rp3115494 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.id](https://www.desertcart.id/products/8198070-music-language-and-the-brain)

## Best For

- aniruddh d. patel enthusiasts

## Why This Product

- Trusted aniruddh d. patel brand quality
- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
- 15-day hassle-free returns

## Description

Full description not available

## Images

![Music, Language, and the Brain - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71XQa7YtF9L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Similarities and Differences, Language and Music
  

*by E***N on Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2008*

This is the best book so far on language, the brain, and music.  It is highly technical, especially the first five chapters.  Nonspecialists with a serious interest can get through the last two ("Meaning" and "Evolution") but the first five are hard going unless you are fairly advanced.  Patel reviews an enormous, and almost entirely very new, literature on similarities and differences at the micro level between language and music.  Overall, music is clearly related to language in many ways, but equally clearly a separate realm--a different communicative modality.  He also points out that music and its meanings are learned.  We are not born knowing that minor key is "sad"; that's a recent west-European idea, unknown to the rest of the universe. We have to learn about the pastorality of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and so on.  On the other hand, lullabyes sound like mothers shushing their babies, and I would add that laments in every culture sound like ordinary weeping.  Still,  most musical meanings appear to be culturally learned.  This is an excellent book, and I am duly impressed with all of it, but I do have some modest points to raise.  First, I would find music and language somewhat closer than he does.  He rules out of consideration a number of intermediate forms--chant, rhythmic speech (like African-American sermons), incantation, word-music poetry (like Russian romantic lyrics), children's play-games, and a great deal more. It seems that a huge percentage of human communication, including much of the most important religious material in every culture, is in that neglected border zone. Something very important is here and is being missed.  Second, he concludes language definitely evolved, but music is a rather recent invention--not an evolved part of communication.  I am usually highly allergic to "genes as destiny," and this is surely the first time I ever argued for a genetic explanation against a learning-based one!  But I can't separate music and language enough to see music as a recent invention.  It depends on some of the same recursive hierarchic-nesting systems of planning as language does; it is universal among humans; it is deeply important; it seems a physical need for a lot of people.  Of course I cannot be sure if this means there really is an evolved mechanism, and the question remains open.  Third, he rather misses the relevance of bird song. He is aware of, but strangely downplays, recent work showing that many (most?) songbirds learn their songs and use them to recognize their mates, neighbors, local dialect sharers, and so on.  Birds also use song to keep in touch with their families, show their levels of health (as pointed out by Marlene Zuk), show their reproductive status, find each other, and much else.  They also use song to communicate their mood states:  level of arousal, type of arousal, and more.  This is important, as will appear below.  Many songbirds are quite brilliant composers; mockingbirds and many others incorporate all sorts of learned noises into their songs, change the noises to fit their song patterns, work them into original phrases, and so on.  Of course no bird comes close to composing even a simple song in the human sense (i.e. a single hierarchically-nested composition using phrases to carry out an overall plan).  Bird song has mere "phrase structure grammar," to be technical; they don't do sentences.  (No nonhuman animal is known to.)  But they are doing something more than just marking territory and finding a mate.  Actually, many of the best singers mate for life and don't need to find a mate in most years.  Yet they and their mates often sing to each other.  Also, many birds sing all year round, not just in the breeding season.  We don't know what they are saying, but obviously a lot.  Very simple calls do fine for territory-and-mating.  Song is incredibly dangerous (hawks and cats home in on it) and expensive (it takes a lot of brain tissue, enough to be a real cost in flying).  If the simple and humble songs of birds are this complex and demanding, human music must be a really major enterprise, far more important than social scientists have allowed till now.  Bird songs are important because no nonhuman primates and very few other mammals are known to have complex learned songs.  Bird songs are about our only models.  (Whales sing too, but don't make great lab animals.)  I think music evolved, and did so to handle the management, manipulation, and communication of broad, general, but intense mood-states.  Language handles the specific cognitive information; music handles the powerful but unsayable moods. Partly, the moods are directly represented in the music (as in lullabyes and laments); partly we learn our cultures' rules about communicating.  There is a great deal more to say about this, especially when one folds religious chants into the mix.  We need more dialogue and better cross-cultural and cross-species knowledge.  Is there a group out there working on this?

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    A great reference book
  

*by A***M on Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2011*

I bought this book because I had seen it mentioned in a few other books I had read on the topic of music and the brain. Oliver Sacks and Daniel Levitin have both referenced this work at some time. I am, as a music teacher in public schools, always looking for ways to strengthen the argument for keeping music instruction alive in the public schools, and have always believed that the links between learning language and learning music might be one of the building blocks of this argument. I have only just started reading this dense volume, but it is chock full of rigorous research and is very accessible even to regular people. It has been written to be accessible either to musicians -which I am- or neurologists-which I am not, and in the reading I have done so far, this seems to be the case. It is a book also which is meant to be read over time, and not necessarily in the order as it is presented. Each of the sections can stand alone, and I have found even that I can dip into it for a particular bit of information and come away with something new to add to my understanding of how music, language and the brain all work together.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Am I that smart?
  

*by J***K on Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2012*

I don't think so, but I admit I didn't find it as difficult as rumored. It IS very detailed. Basically, it's a comparison of the linguistic aspects of pitch, timbre and rythm between language and music. Many of the details, all backed up by annotated research studies, are quite interesting. By themselves, they don't provide an answer to the big question of the evolutionary relationships between the two. Speculations on this are provided in the last chapter. I'm now reading Mithren's SINGING NEANDERTHALS for a more bluesky view. This book, the book reviewed, is a necessary prerequisite to any of that more general work and I would recommend it to any student of language or music.

---

## Why Shop on Desertcart?

- 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016
- 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories
- 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price
- 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members)
- 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection
- ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews

**Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.id/products/8198070-music-language-and-the-brain](https://www.desertcart.id/products/8198070-music-language-and-the-brain)

---

*Product available on Desertcart Indonesia*
*Store origin: ID*
*Last updated: 2026-03-03*