RICHARD DAWKINS MEETS LITTLE RICHARD:

The Selfish: KEY : A New Theory of Music

Genes are selfish. But so are piano keys. 

In 1976, Richard Dawkins transformed the popular conception of biology and of Darwin by proclaiming that genes are selfish but that nature honors them and nothing else. The bumper sticker version might read, “Nature likes selfishness.” This is a misconception of what Dawkins actually said. But in his still best-selling book, The Selfish Gene, he did say that genes, if personified, would be like people who care about being selected and honored and nothing else. They don’t even “care” about other genes unless they see an opportunity to combine them in a body. As for you and me, we are just on loan to our genes. We are gene-carriers and our genes
“hope” we find sex fun and kids cute and will pass them down the germ line, but long after we are gone, genes will still be around as “immortal coils.” Some genes have greater selective advantages than others–for instance, genes “for” hands to gesticulate with and lungs to breathe with have a great leg-up in competition to be housed in the human body. Genes for heights about seven feet two inches are not totally out of luck, but nearly so. If all human beings did was rival one another in basketballs, these genes would do better. 

Millions of readers have found Dawkins’ book to be both mind-bending and life-changing, while others, biologists and philosophers alike, have frowned in severe disapproval. Some of them say that we are not total slaves of our genes and that culture is vital–something Dalwkins never really disagrees with. He has inveighed against “doctrinaire sociobiologists.” Others say natural selection doesn’t just “see” genes but also individuals and groups. This is also undoubtedly true, although Dawkins would reply that in the long run, even individual and group selection come down to genetic instructions, even if they are indirect, and that in the great scheme of things, genes will be around to be chosen long after single individuals and groups are gone. Genes for peripheral vision are still going strong, however much the Flat Earth Society’s numbers, or those of the carrier pigeon, have dwindled. 

My theory of music is rooted in the Selfish Key. I have a standard 88 key piano.  The keys are competing to be played. They are tied in composition to notes and in physics to frequencies and pitches. Some of them are at great disadvantage, such as the lowest note, which is of such low frequency as to be barely heard, and the highest, which is the same but at a high frequency. I find that note to be blood-curdling creepy and rarely play it except on Halloween. 

If every day were Halloween, that note would be at an advantage. The rivalry for selection goes on in both the diatonic scale notes of most Western music and the pentatonic-scale notes of most non-Western music. 

These hyper-upper and hyper-lower keys, like the genes for seven feet tall, are at a disadvantage.  The ones most played, given the limits of most pianists, are probably the ones on the octave that start with Middle C and go up and the Middle C octave notes that go down. Now of course these keys are not selfish or unselfish in the usual sense. But they are in competition and monomaniacal to be played and have no outside hobbies. They are in competition from Beijing to Berlin. 

Genes are selected over time for their usefulness in producing advantageous traits, capacities, tendencies, and behaviors. They are mostly exact copies of each other. White piano keys, or notes on a sax or guitar, may be “out of tune,” they are still nearly exact from instrument to instrument. A C on a piano will not sound disharmonious with a C on a flute or viola. While our genes give us human beings the ability to function in the world, keys give musicians and composers and listeners an ability to function in the musical world. Just as genes operate in many and varied combinations, so do keys or notes. There is the C major scale but also the relative A minor one. There are melodic minor scales and natural minor scales. There are diminished fourths and augmented fifths.  There are genes for big ears and blue eyes, for blonde hair and long arms. If a gene for the former can collaborate with one for the latter, great. If a church musician finds that pious people like changing the key of “Blessed Assurance” from G major to F major at the end, fantastic. Give her a raise! 

Above all, however, the keys of G and F benefit as well. They will still be around long after our Baptist organist is dead. 

I have so far said nothing about rhythm, but it is important, too, of course, as any key or set of keys can be struck in any time signature, whether 3/4 or even 5/4, which is rare. Rhythm shouldn’t matter in the selection process, but it does. For beginning pianists, syncopation is easier with white keys, for the raised black keys are harder to finger at unusual times in the performance. But rhythm is likely a small consideration. 

The major ones are the talents and tastes and the musical heritage of the musician and the audience, or what Dawkins would call “memes,” his cultural replicators alongside the natural ones of genes.  And yet….it’s the same old 88 notes in competition. 

You will object that surely this is less important than whether we are talking symphonies or jazz, country or blues, hymns or rap. Surely the “basic 88” is unimportant. But is it? Consider again the parallel with genes. For all the cultural variants from Trobriand Islanders to contemporary Danes, much of human activity is boringly predictable and similar: birth, death, mating, sex, children, conflict, envy, revenge. We may not know why a particular group of people is fighting over this or that, but we find it easy to believe they are. These are our fellow human beings. They look like us and act like us.  While societies vary according to the level of violence, the highest level always comes from males between 18-30. This is selfish genery at work. 

A human being is a human being.  

There are few things more fascinating than novels by Alice Walker and solos by Nina Simone–culture is a great treat. Still, our genes keep us on a relatively short leash.  

So does the basic 88, which is why we have so much musical crossover as in “Roll Over, Beethoven” or “PDQ Bach” or operas like Hamilton based in hip-hop or Beyonce going country or Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan teaming up, or George Jones and Keith Richards doing so. These are fascinating blends, but they come courtesy of the selfish, duplicating keys.  

Music is music. 

There is at least one more thing to say: the keys are pitched to what is audible to the human ear. If dogs had evolved as the species now ruining the planet, things would be different for the selfish keys. I had a wonderful poodle who howled every time I played the piano. Even in the backyard she could hear me tickling ivories. If genes had been combined differently, then keys would have been as well, and the Fido Overture would consist of very different pitches and frequencies than does the overture to The Marriage of Figaro. Likewise, if aliens, light years away, should ever send us their “music,” we might well not be able to hear it, much less like it, and by the time it gets to us, we may be gone. Will the human specdies make it another 100,000 years?

The selfish genes and selfish keys certainly hope so. We give them so much, and yet they are so indifferent to us. In a more perfect world, Louis Armstrong and Patsy Cline would go on forever. And genes and keys should not let them go away just because they are done with them and can find replacements.  

Take heart! This is not the end of the story. We have rebelled against the selfish keys by recording the likes of Armstrong and Cline and in that sense, we have compensated for the indifference of the selfish ksys with the equal indifference of the selfish recordings. And it gets even better. Once, as part of the posthuman project, we get our brains uploaded, we can live forever as an avatar in cyberspace, perhaps often playing the piano. We will have traded the selfish keys for the selfish digits. Lucky us. We always seem to be products of these little things that don’t give a a damn about us and that will long survive us. 

–Tom McBride mcbridet@beloit.edu