The relationship betwen Music/Singing and Magic

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Mugwump

Incidentally, the primal connection between music and courtship would explain why Gandalf and other wizards (who appear as old men) would not use music in that way.

I think combining mythology and evolutionary biology this way is a bit complicated... (it might be a bit complicated whichever way we try to do it...)

I mean if you think of the mythologies, fex. the famous scenes in Kalevala where Väinämöinen (the old "wizard") sings Joukahainen (a young "wanna be wizard") into the swamp, or when he sings a boat into existence, you have exactly a character like Gandalf doing the magical singing...

And anyway, if one wishes to look at music from an evolutionary biology POV I think we might find more fruitful ground from the other explanation given by EB, that music is enhancing the group's strength, ties them together more closely and possibly even threathens the enemies... there you could say there is power in music you can immediately recognise for real: it makes you feel braver, it makes you forget the fear, it scares the enemies... So we might be kind of nearer to Tolkien's musical magic than with the courtship explanation.