Arny Krueger wrote:

Does music have a purpose?

Music seems to satisfy some very basic human needs.

The book "This is your Brain on Music" provides a ton of
well-documented supporting evidence for that idea.

Interesting. Looking at that and a brace of "you may also
like" suggestions from Amazon, it appears there is a body of
theory around what we might call "psychoacoustics"...the
psychology of sound and music. For me, it kind of misses the
crucial issue, or perhaps just loses it in a heap of detail.
I would expect anthropology and sociology to envisage a
bigger picture with a different sense of "purpose".

Is it important?

Yes, which seems self-evident. Music and music-makers
seem to have a firm niche in just about every human
social pattern.

Not self-evident for those who only listen to pop, or who
have only superficial knowledge of the world in general. A
recent visitor to my house seemed taken by the valve
amplifiers, so I asked if she was interested in music. "I'm
not obsessed" she replied. I guess she meant "no".

Though interestingly some Muslims claim that music is
"forbidden" by God.

So do some Christian Denominations. The prohibition of
music by Christian denominations seems strange given the
Bible's treatment of music. The usual Christian canon of
holy writings includes the book of Psalms, which can be
translated "songs".

The link between music and religion is an interesting issue.
For some reason I never worked out I was sent to Catholic
schools, one a convent and the other a gothic pile with
Jesuits. God, for fear of terminal unpopularity, had
recently decided to relax the rules of language and music,
but my bunch of
fundamentalists, bent on self-anihilation, stuck to the old
ways. Latin plainsong covered the ground between dreary and
angelic, but couldn't do happy or sad. For christmas we were
allowed some jolly polyphony.

http://mb-soft.com/believe/txc/plainson.htm

AFAIK, plainsong was used not just because it harked back to
the halcyon days of the Christian church, but because it
adhered to a set of rules that made it godly. No lewd
intervals, heathen rythms, or whimsical elaboration. Unlike
folk music, which was only banned in churches AFAIK, it
wasn't the kind of thing you could dance to.

Unlike, at a guess, your bunch, Arny, who praise the lord
more
joyously. Modern Christians reflect a more
sophisticated society, in which complex divisions of labour
achieve unity through the advanced management technology of
industrial organisation. I imagine four-part polyphonic
harmony with funky freeform soloists soaring over the top. I
guess the problem for Catholics is that this merging of folk
and religious music questions the distinction between heaven
and earth. Consequently, nothing is sacred.

Listening to the wailing from several local mosques, it
sounds like plainsong rules apply in the world of Islam, but
the fact that Bradford is otherwise a musical vacuum has
more to do with the particular demographic of its dominant
population than Islam itself. There used to be a Bradford
Festival, with music from all over the Islamic world.
Although Banghra seems to be frowned upon by the orthodox
older folk, it's popular with youth and tolerated by the
mullahs. Sufi music

http://folkpunjab.com/nusrat-fateh-a...khian-da-chaa/

OTOH, seems to be reviled by all orthodox muslims.
Naturally, where there's sufi there should be whirling
dervishes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJIofU-0jC0

....who's dance is explained, in an intriguing exposition of
the dielectical principle of the "interpenetration of
opposites", as a pursuit of not-moving:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeca3...eature=related

The big thing with Islamic youth in Bradford now is gangster
hip-hop, but in towns where muslim youth is better educated,
I gather there is some progressive music going on. A
little further afield, France has plenty Arabs who do stuff
like

http://www.last.fm/music/IAM/_/La+Saga

which, for modernity at least, beats any Christian music
I've heard. At the Divine Mission of Christ the Saviour,
Bradford's last stand, they're into heavy metal.

Seems odd for something that seems to
be as essentially human as language is.

The banning of pop music would be part of a bid for total
control: a society in which everyone must consider
themselves in church wherever they are. An attempt to make
everything sacred, which to Christianity's traditional
dualism is a contradiction in terms. Not even the most
fundamental catholics, AFAIK, tried to make people speak
Latin, or constrain themselves to plainsong, at home or in
the street.

Not only that, but music is a kind of language, even just
instrumental music.

This is where the crux is, I imagine. But where's the
Music/English dictionary? Linguists have, sensibly IMO,
drawn a line. Are there several languages of music, I
wonder, or is it universal?

Transcendental, perhaps. Whereas English is the language of
individuals within a society, music is the sound of society
itself. Just as the cells in our bodies can't understand
English, we can't understand music.

Should an audio engineer know?

Depends what you mean by "audio engineer". If you mean a
recording engineer in the music recording business - yes,
otherwise not necessarily.

I haven't met an audio engineer who does not seem to think
that music has a purpose. Some of them can be quite
eloquent about it, even those who are far removed from
actual music production.

How does that sense of purpose manifest itself in the work
of the engineer? Does it guide him, or merely spur him on?

Ian