TED Talk with Bobby McFerrin

While I was stumbling around the internet a few weeks ago I came across this video from TED.com. It shows Bobby McFerrin, the writer of the popular song “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. In the video Bobby shows us that without prior music knowledge peoples’ brains could be hacked to understand music. He starts by standing in one space and tells the crowd to sing a certain note. Afterwards he proceeds to move to the left and right, showing members of the audience that when he steps to the audience’s left the note the audience is sings should be lower. Oppositely when he steps to the right the note the audience sings should go higher. Stepping back and forth the audience starts to create a song, under the direction of Bobby McFerrin. He soon begins to extend the range of the song and the audience is shocked that they are going that high and low. Bobby McFerrin only told the members of the audience to sing the note only 1 step left and 1 step right of the original spot. When the audience followed along with him as he began to move farther up and down the stage (scale) he was basically hacking the peoples’ brains. Afterwards you can hear one of the other guests on the stage asking if he was ever interested in a job in neuroscience, showing how well thought out this talk and experiment was. Bobby McFerrin sure made me not worry and be happy after I saw this great presentation.

I thought this was very interesting that all people are created with something inside of them that after they are exposed to music, was released. The ability to count and follow basic musical notation, without being taught to do so shows us how amazing human beings are and how powerful the music influences all of our lives.