About Session
Homo sapiens mania for speaking (sometimes indiscriminately) and singing
As a singing teacher and vocal coach specializing in popular music, I’m increasingly passionate about the question of why do we sing ? It’s quite strange, all the same, this Homo sapiens mania for speaking (sometimes indiscriminately) and singing… But above all, we can only be surprised to note that we are (until proven otherwise, and according to our own definitions) the only animals to engage in this strange practice…
Until the 2000s, the verticality and bipedalism of Homo sapiens have been considered the reason for the presence of spoken and sung language in the species (while it is absent in other great apes). A quite simple, intuitive, concrete, and truly anthropocentric explanation…
But, lo and behold, over the past fifteen years or so, this theory has been crumbling. It has indeed been shown that other great apes, as well as newborns, despite having a much higher larynx than us nevertheless have the ability to utter what they call proto-vowels.
Then, why are we the only apes to speak and sing ? We will try to get an explanation in the meanders and convolutions of the human brain, quite a piece of art !
