Laurel Katz-Bohen met her husband in middle school, and even in her earliest memories of him, he is playing guitar.
“I remember being totally turned on by him playing at a dance in eighth grade,” she explains a little wistfully. “He was playing Faith No More.”
Her husband, Matt Katz-Bohen, now plays keyboard for the band Blondie. And Katz-Bohen, a mother of two and the owner of the Harlem Yoga Studio, still loves musicians.
“They speak through their instruments,” she explains, “and touch you personally and deeply even in a huge stadium.”
In Ted Gioia’s new book, “Love Songs: The Hidden History,” he cites a recent study in France that found 31 percent of women were willing to give their phone numbers to a strange man who approached them while carrying a guitar, compared to a measly 14 percent of women who were approached by the same man empty-handed.
When Gioia set out to write his book, he intended to refute some of the ideas Darwin writes about in “The Descent of Man.” In that 1871 book, Darwin argued that birds and humans share some biological compulsion to create music, and that musicality is linked to sexuality.
Gioia was skeptical. If true, why wouldn’t we share this trait with most of the primate species with whom we are much closer on an evolutionary timeline?
In fact, only 11 percent of primate species compose any kind of music at all.
“If you listen to fornicating gorillas,” Gioia says by way of example, “they hardly sound musical.”
But as Gioia researched the book, he started to change his mind.
“I was forced to reconsider based on the growing evidence of a biochemical link between music and sexual activity,” he says.
Gioia is talking about variations on a pair of common hormones found across the mammalian kingdom — vasopressin in humans and vasotocin in birds. These two hormones are so similar that the only difference between them is a single amino acid.
Elevated levels of vasopressin in women and men can be an indicator of sexual arousal. Fascinatingly, studies suggest that with increased levels of vasopressin in our bodies, we also tend to be better musicians. Could vasopressin work as a musical enhancer much like steroids for athletes? So far the research doesn’t say, but it’s an intriguing thought.
It takes me back to the feeling of being young and in love with everything. It’s a kind of sexual freedom, beautiful and dirty all at once.
- Laurel Katz-Bohen, on her favorite love song
Gioia writes about baby chicks injected with the vasotocin hormone who become immediately more outgoing. When those same chicks are played the music of Beethoven, the same thing happened. They became more social and interactive.
Mainly this hormonal link between music and love is making one thing increasingly obvious: Love songs — and perhaps all songs — are genetic.
Gioia points to another study out of Emory University that found neural patterns in female songbirds listening to the songs of their male counterparts to be nearly identical to people listening to live music.
There are now very specific studies that have been set up to prove that music, at least the avian variety, is designed to woo. Recently, Duke University conducted a study in which zebra finches were mutated so that they could no longer sing. As a result, none of the silent zebra finches were able to attract a mate.
The link between vasotocin, vasopressin and music is becoming increasingly understood. But hormones are only one avenue of proof. Think about the many musicians who boast sexual conquests by the thousands. Or about how people correlate love and music. From relationship songs, to social and romantic attraction forming around a love of a specific type of music or musical group, music and love do seem to intersect, and when they do, it’s powerful.
When asked about her favorite love song, Katz-Bohen poetically replies, “It takes me back to the feeling of being young and in love with everything.”
She adds sheepishly, “It’s a kind of sexual freedom, beautiful and dirty all at once.”