What’s the deal behind Google’s latest music Doodle?

A few days ago, Google gave its homepage a temporary logo that blew me away: This one had an earth-toned drawing of an ancient musical instrument called the mbira.  

Not your basic “thumb piano”: mbira photo by Alex Weeks, Wikimedia Commons.

Outside of Africa, few people have heard of the mbira (“em-BEE-ra”). Those do often get hooked.

Last year, the American duo Pomplamoose featured a giant mbira in a breathtaking cover of the Billie Eilish song “Bury a Friend.”

I’ve been learning to play this meditative instrument for a few years now. It has a tinkling sound, like falling rain.

The mbira is made from metal keys, longer than spoon handles, fastened to a wooden slab the size of an iPad. Bottle caps give it a buzzing sound.

Caution Shonhai: mbira player and healer, February, 2019.

You need sturdy thumbs and solid rhythm to learn the intricate patterns of a traditional mbira song. The Shona people of Zimbabwe have been playing interlocking melodies on this instrument for more than 1,000 years.

Google’s Doodle nod to the mbira has Zimbabweans rejoicing worldwide. (Not all, though: some Zimbabwean scholars are calling Google’s project a form of “cultural vampirism.”)

Nevertheless, I’m glad to see people in high-tech places paying attention to other kinds of ingenuity.

I got to know the mbira better last year on a family trip to Zimbabwe. We landed in the capital city, Harare, and then made our way to the rural village of Ubuntu, named for the African philosophy that translates as “I am, because we are.”

We spent a few days hanging out with children bathed in mbira music since before they were born, along with musicians who filled us in on its fundamental role in Shona communities.

The Shona regard the mbira as a sacred instrument—a way to connect with ancestors long past. Several musicians described it to me as a “cell phone to the spirit world.”

Mbira party at Ubuntu village, 2019. From left: Joyce Warikandwa, Dzekwa Samaita, Chiedza Mutamba.

Google’s mbira Doodle barely touched on Shona spirituality (a respectful choice for a topic far too complex to cover in a brief video).

Art by Google “doodler” Helene Leroux.

Instead, the “doodlers” did a nice job of capturing the joy the mbira brings to those who hear and play it. The Google animations tell the story of a girl who learns to play the mbira at a young age and later inspires the next generation.

“We’ve tried to give people around the world a taste of a broad and deep cultural tradition that isn’t very well known outside its homeland,” said Jonathan Schneier, the Google software engineer who pitched the idea.

Schneier knew of similar instruments through his family in South Africa. Lots of people have heard of African “thumb pianos,” he said, but “I was curious, what are the origins, where did this come from?” He and his Google teammates followed the trail all the way to Zimbabwe.

They definitely did their homework. When I clicked on the “behind the scenes” video (at the bottom of this post), I recognized many names in their list of Zimbabwean consultants:

Fradreck Mujuru (centre) teaching in Berkeley, California. (I’m on the right, in red.)

There was Fradreck Mujuru, descendant of a long line of mbira players (and maker of the sweet-toned mbira I play). He has traveled to America multiple times to perform and teach in cities such as Berkeley.

Other familiar faces included Musekiwa Chingodza, a top mbira player, and Caution Shonhai, a musician and teacher I met in Zimbabwe.

Shonhai doubles as a healer in his village. Listening to the mbira calms the brain, he told me. This line of thinking is consistent with medical research on music as a treatment for acute anxiety. (I’ll be exploring the connection between music and health in my book.)

But the best reason to get into mbira music, of course, is pleasure.

“I think anyone who has had more than five minutes with the Zimbabwean mbira cannot forget the sound,” said Albert Chimedza, founder of the Mbira Centre in Harare, speaking on the Google video.

“To me, it’s a cross between water and air.”

learn more:

The non-profit MBIRA organization supports traditional Shona music through the sale of musical recordings, instructional media, and mbira instruments made by master craftspeople in Zimbabwe. MBIRA was founded by Erica Azim, who in 1974 became one of the first non-Zimbabweans to study the instrument with traditional mbira masters. She has taught mbira players worldwide. (I have taken several workshops with Erica, and can vouch for her gifts.)

5 ways to use music to soothe your anxiety

LISTEN: Press play below to hear my interview with CBC Radio, Canada’s national broadcaster:

In these plague times, fears run wild. We try to laugh away our anxiety with memes of the feral hairdos we’ll sport after months away from the salon. But jokes are no match for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers unfolding before our eyes.

Huddled at home, many of us can do little but watch as an invisible pathogen overwhelms hospitals and threatens to sicken the people we love. As fresh horrors flash across our screens, some of us can no longer bear to look. “Today I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath,” said a friend on Facebook. She wasn’t coming down with the virus, she realized: “I was having an anxiety attack from reading the news.”

Anyone longing for a Xanax right now is not alone, because this virus not only infects throats and lungs—it’s tightening its grip on our hearts and minds. In a survey of 1,055 Americans, 41 per cent singled out anxiety as a major pandemic concern.

Music can help.

For weeks, I’ve been combing through stacks of research on music and anxiety for my book on music and health. Here’s what I found: In studies of people about to undergo invasive procedures, such as open-heart surgery, music calmed patients as effectively as Valium and other benzodiazepine drugs. Without the side effects.

“Music calmed surgical patients as well as Valium and other benzodiazepine drugs, without the side effects”

Too good to be true? Not according to the Cochrane network, a global authority on evidence-based medicine. After conducting four stringent reviews of music for acute anxiety, Cochrane gave music thumbs-up.

In this age of contagion, people worldwide have turned to music. We rejoiced at the balcony singers of Florence, Siena and Milan, whose plucky faces and dented pots and pans were so very charming, so Italian. Many of us told ourselves that if they could summon beauty and grace amid devastating loss, then maybe we could too.

Even if we’ve never touched a musical instrument in our lives, recent findings from neuroscience can help us tap into music’s stress-reducing effects. Here are five evidence-based listening tips:

1. Choose the music you love most. The more you light up the pleasure and reward system in your brain, the more music activates the same pathways stimulated by morphine and cocaine (but to a safer, milder degree).

2. Try music at 60 to 80 beats per minutes, the pace of a resting heart. Brain areas involved in regulating heart rate and breathing tend to synchronize with the tempo we hear. In a large 2019 review, slow-paced music was the most effective in lowering stress. (Playlists organized by beats per minute are easy to find online.)

3. Listen for 20 to 30 minutes. That’s the typical duration used in studies of music’s sedative effects.

4. Close your eyes and do nothing else. Multitasking increases production of cortisol and adrenaline, driving up stress.

5. Pick a sad song to make it better. Sad songs tend to move us more than happy songs, offering a cathartic release of tension, and feelings of relief. 

In this pandemic, there’s no shortage of glorious music to choose from. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has serenaded healthcare workers in a series of videos posted under #songsofcomfort. Neil Young reached out to fans with a fireside session in his home. Many other artists, from James Taylor to Jann Arden, have given online performances to lift our spirits.

Amateurs, too, are sharing their music. Martha Smith of Florida posted a video for her 76th birthday of herself playing “Solace” by Scott Joplin, king of ragtime. “Despite mistakes,” she wrote on YouTube, “I kept going, as we all must.”

(P.S. The tips above are for mild to moderate anxiety and stress. If you have moderate to severe anxiety or stress, please seek professional help.)

Disclaimer: Discussions about health topics provided in this blog, or in any linked materials, are not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. The author accepts no responsibility or liability for any health consequences relating to information published on this blog.

‘Binaural beats’ debunked: These apps offer cool marketing, but iffy health effects

Optical illusions mess with how we see things. “Binaural beats,” a type of auditory illusion, mess with how we hear things—and may play tricks in other ways, too.

Photo credit: Darekm135 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

An odd thing happens when you listen through headphones to two steady tones at slightly different frequencies, one in each ear. You start to hear a low beat that sounds like it’s coming from inside your head. But this third sound is just a figment of your brain’s auditory system. A phantom pulse.

What’s up with that? Scientists have known for decades that our brainwaves tend to synchronize, or “entrain,” with the rhythms we hear. In theory, slightly mismatched tones may confuse the brain. If one ear picks up a tone at 550 Hertz, while the other hears 558 Hertz, the brain will perceive a third frequency—binaural beats—at the points where the sine waves bump together.

Researchers haven’t fully studied binaural beats, let alone the possible health effects. But that hasn’t stopped an overkill of apps from marketing them as “digital drugs” with the power to relieve migraines, sharpen mental focus and blast away stress.

Even Bayer, maker of Aspirin, promotes binaural beats as “good vibes” for relaxation on its Austrian website.

So far, however, the evidence of any health benefits is thin.

So far, the evidence of any health benefits from binaural beats is thin

The latest study to poke holes in the hype comes from an international team led by scientists at the Montreal-based Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research.

In the study, published this week in eNeuro, healthy adults wore head caps with electrodes for monitoring brainwaves using electroencephalography (EEG).

First, they listened to a series of binaural beat frequencies. Next, the same volunteers listened to frequencies mixed on a computer to create a third beat before the sound reached the ears. In this case, the third beat was part of the audio mix (and not an illusion).

After each session, the listeners rated their levels of mental relaxation, alertness and feelings of absorption in the experience.

The researchers found that binaural beats did entrain the brain—but not as much as the premixed beats. What’s more, neither had any effect on mood. A previous study, published in 2017, reached similar conclusions.

This didn’t surprise me. The mood-boosting effects of music, based on a large body of research, stem from the brain’s pleasure and reward response to our favorite sounds. Binaural beat apps use computer-generated frequencies, many of which sound only vaguely like music.

The Montreal study, to be fair, involved just 16 participants and listening sessions of eight minutes each. Chances are this study won’t put the nail in the coffin for binaural-beat diehards.

Whether binaural beats can cause a “high” remains debatable, but the power of suggestion can be intense

Digital drugs have a cult following online. Teens have posted YouTube videos of themselves “getting high” on audio tracks. Reviewers on iDoser’s website have raved about the trippy experiences they’ve had. Whether binaural beats can cause a “high” remains debatable, but the power of suggestion can be intense.

And some studies have shown possible benefits. A 2018 analysis of 22 studies concluded that binaural beats may help lower anxiety and offer modest pain relief.

Behavioral studies, however, tend to search for specific effects, such as relaxation. This approach can bias the results, noted Joydeep Bhattacharya, a cognitive psychologist who has studied the neuroscience of music. Binaural beats, he said, in an interview with Discover magazine, “raise a lot of flags.”

The few studies that have used brain imaging to understand what’s happening during binaural beats have produced inconclusive results, he pointed out. “That gives you a good indication that the story is more complicated than many of the behavioral studies want to convince you.”

Until more research is done, our best bet might be to see this phenomenon as a quirk of our gray matter—a bit of mischief from the proverbial ghost in the machine.

Disclaimer: Discussions about health topics provided in this blog, or in any linked materials, are not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. The author accepts no responsibility or liability for any health consequences relating to information published on this blog.