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Great show. I listened as I was on my way home from my work as a music therapist for children with autism.

In response to one of the above comments, many people with autism do respond to group musical experiences with increased communication and cooperative behavior. I'm not aware of music therapy studies focusing specifically on increased cooperation but, after hearing your show, I may try to formulate one.

Great show topic, John. Very interesting! I wonder if the gentleman who studied the newborns and their responses to rhythm took into account that babies hear in the womb. Perhaps the mother's choices of music/drumming has an effect on what the baby expects or reacts to rhythmically. I'd love to hear more on this topic when you have enough for another show!

Fifteen or more years ago, a PBS documetnry series on choral singing that had developed with and aided particular social/political movements was broadcast on Channel 13. I remember being very interested in the South African episode of the series, and wanting to see other episodes. But I have never been able to track down the makers or producers of these films. Can you help?

The downtown salsa community, which developed around the "Buena Vista Social Club" movement, has remained connected for over a decade. It's a shame that so many New Yorkers have not taken advantage of the great spiritual and emotional sustenance that live Afro-Cuban and -Latin music and dancing has to offer.

www.myspace.com/salsamundial

on this topic, my 6th month old neice was boppin away during our faimlys singing of hadgadya and dianu during passover a few years ago. She was dancing and swaying away - it was the cutest thing. She had the beat right away and both songs are very rythmic.

Also - babies are bathed in rhythm for months before they are born. The rush of the mother's blood through her circulatory system, and the fetus hears that as son as hearing is developed.
I believe that we are all born "rhythm-ready", and then our musical culture shapes that readiness (which may explain the West's strong 4/4, and India's 9s and 11s).

There is a reason that the Waltz swept the globe.....it's rhythm is that of the human heart.

Please ask him to talk abou "GANDY DANCERS" Railroad gangs of the South.

via Wikipedia:

For each stroke, a worker would lift his gandy and force it into the ballast to create a fulcrum, then throw himself sideways using the gandy to check his full weight (making the "huh" sound recorded in the lyrics below) so the gandy would push the rail toward the inside of the curve. Even with all impacts from the work crew timed correctly, any progress made in shifting the track would not become visible until after a large number of repetitions.

Rhythm was necessary for this process, both to synchronize the manual labor, and to maintain the morale of workers whose exertions produced only a minuscule effect; hence "gandy dancers". The songs sung in this occupation have been recognized as a major influence on later blues music; one such song is reproduced below.
-more im article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandy_dancer

This is not new information - the community-building aspect of rhythm and song is something percussionist Layne Redmond has been talking and writing about for decades, as has singer Ysaye Barnwell, of Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Also read "Keeping Together in Time" by Wm. McNeill (Harvard Press, 1995).
The beat goes on

My daughter and a friends daughter could both hum songs (learned from music boxes in toys) long before they could speak. Is this a language skill as well as a musical one?

i wonder if the researchers looked at people who don't have the sense of rhythm: from self-proclaimed ones, to pathology impaired...and what about Autistic people? some of them excell in music, but not in social cooperation.

About how singing together promotes the release of neurotransmitters involved in feelings of trust: consider the effect of chanting on monks.

Are dance companies more socially functional than other companies, in my experience, I'd say no, but maybe I'm taking our cooperation for granted! In terms of "putting money in the pot," dancers are certainly generous, willing to work for next to no pay!

i wonder if you're familiar with a phenomenon called interactional synchrony. a pscyhologist working in Edinburg many many years ago found that at the micro-kinesic level (and without knowing it) we tend to synchronize the motion of our limbs in accordance with the phonetic breaks in our speech.

Is this similar to a chain gang singing together on the side of the road? Or pirates on a ship singing "yo ho ho" altogether?

The current issue of "new scientist" discusses a similar experiment but takes a different spin.

HITLER and Mussolini both had the ability to bend millions of people to their fascist will. Now evidence from psychology and neurology is emerging to explain how tactics like organised marching and propaganda can work to exert mass mind control."

"Scott Wiltermuth of Stanford University in California and colleagues have found that activities performed in unison, such as marching or dancing, increase loyalty to the group. "It makes us feel as though we're part of a larger entity, so we see the group's welfare as being as important as our own," he says."

I rowed in college. When we had a good day of practice and were perfectly in sync we got along. When we had a bad day we argued. Or we would be angry with the one who caused the lack of rythym in the boat.