The "Hummin' The Tune" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Listening to music that I downloaded into iTunes a couple or three years ago that I bought from a beach vendor in St. Martin.  He was walking up and down the beach with earphones and a case with CDs in it.  He passed me and motioned to the headset as he passed.  I motioned for him to come over and in no time I was listening to "You and I" which was recorded on the island by a local band known as I Lee.  Fantastic local Raggae music.  The CD was in a clear plastic CD sleeve and the names of the songs were hand-lettered on the ruled cover sheet.  Songs like Rocking Down Town, You Baby, and Telephone Mama joined You and I on the list of nine songs.  Didn't matter to me that I had never heard of the group or that it didn't have a fancy sleeve to hold it.  I loved the rhythmatic beat and the fact that I could understand the words.  The more I listened to it the more I enjoyed it.  Then I read when we hear music that we like, even for the first time, a part of the brain's reward system is activated.  The region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens determines how much we value a song, even predicting how much a person is willing to pay for the new track.  For years scientists have been trying to understand why humans attach so much value to abstract sequences of sound waves.  A powerful song, no matter what type of music, can evoke a deep emotional response.  It has been found that dopamine, a chemical produced in the brain, plays a major role in the brain system that is responsible for reward-driven learning.  Listener's pleasure centers in the brain surge during key passages of favorite music anticipating the crescendo to come.  As for me, my dopamine was surging when I heard I Lee for the first time, much like it was the first time I heard Jimmy Buffett singing on the car radio the first time about a dozen years ago.  I read that there have been many studies done to determine why a person's brain reacts the way it does to certain types of music.  I'm sure that when my mom and dad heard rock and roll music for the first time in the 50s their dopamine must have sent shock signals through their bodies.   Probabaly did the same thing for me when I heard rap for the first time.  Actually, my dopamine still is in the hold mode when I hear rap today.  Think about your favorite genre of music and how you reacted the very first time you heard it.  How about a favorite musician?  Remember how you felt when you heard him or her for the first time.  Well, that's how I felt that day on the beach when the beach vendor pushed play and I was engulfed in the music of I Lee.  I'll never forget it!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.