public tv alert: the music instinct

Last night my dad called to tip me off that a music-and-the-brain documentary was airing on PBS. I caught the whole second hour of "The Music Instinct: Science & Song," and it's must-see-TV for the musically curious, so watch for repeats and visit the fabulous website. It covered theories about music's origins, its relationship to language and motor skills, and it even included Brian Greene, the physicist and author who popularized string theory (yay!), talking about the very fabric of the cosmos being (theoretically) made of ridiculously small vibrating strings. The show tapped all the big authors I've written about here over the past couple of years, like Oliver Sacks and Daniel Levitin. Most folks will relate to the chapters dealing with music therapy and the power of music TRAINING (not so much listening a la the "Mozart Effect") in human cognitive development. The film was a survey of a new and fast-widening field of study that touches numerous disciplines, and it did an admirable job hitting a lot of emerging discoveries in rapid-fire fashion. But it just shows that there's a lot more work to be done not only in these vital fields of research but in translating that research to the public, because to not know the power of music is to dis-serve children, the elderly, Parkinson's patients, stroke victims, and really everyone. We stand ready to make any documentary in this field anyone would like to finance.