Bobby McFerrin hypothesized that music is a natural human instinct that is not only connected to the artistic or creative side of the human mind, but also the mind’s natural tendency to make intelligent predictions based on consonance and dissonance. The pentatonic scale could be the universal foundation for music of all cultures, supporting the idea that music is in fact a universal language. To support this idea, Bobby uses the audience to show how internal the pentatonic scale is to most humans, of any culture. Bobby gives the audience 4 notes: I, II, III and VI. Seeing as how the pentatonic is based on 5 notes (penta), the audience is left to naturally predict what the next note in the scale is depending on where he places his body on the stage. He gets them accustomed to these 4 notes to start the ball rolling so they pick up the next notes effortlessly. While the VI only has a very subtle need to resolve, the very basic and almost unnoticable dissonance of the minor interval between IV and I made the audience collectively decide to resolve down to the V. The V was expected as the most sensible resolution for the VI, in other words. Finding that V (and beyond that, continuing the scale to both the higher and lower neighboring octaves without guidance) was a natural, universal discovery made by the audience, partly due to Bobby’s genius capabalities of activating the audience’s mind with the improvised progression he coupled with rhythm and melody to give the audience a way to lose themselves as part of a joint experience so that they would subconsciously make this musical discovery together.
Super freaking cool to me.
