idioma pensado

Last post I talked about music, and said I had more to say. I do. Music... the other day I babysat for triplets, seven months old, along with the family's AuPair. Now, I don't know much about babies. I haven't spent a whole lot of time with kids less than two years old- and most of my two-year-olds are precocious, so they can talk to me. These kids, I was nervous about (partly because there were 3 of them and 2 of us, but hey, who cares, right?). They can't talk, and the only way to know what they want is to implement "people skills" aka, the ability to read people and anticipate what they're thinking. ... Ok, so it wasn't THAT bad. Still, I didn't know what to do with the tykes, so when Ve (not her real name, but it'll serve) left the room, I sang to them. The little girl, Em, seemed to like it. She stopped bouncing in her swing and just stared at me with her big sky-blue eyes. So did Dan, though he was shyer about it. If I looked his way he promptly got embarrassed and started biting his toys busily. =) It was fun, singing to those kids. Later I found out that the only thing that will keep them quiet when they're hungry is this show of kids singing songs and dancing. Now, granted, it could be the visual stimulation, and the fact that they're used to those videos, and the routine that follows. However, I still think that the fact that they're music videos is intriguing. What is it about music that strikes a chord (no pun intended), even with 7-month-old babies?
Music isn't just melody and harmony. It's rhythm too, and lyrics. And some types of music even separate these elements from one another. Some more classical pieces, arias for example, are pure melody and harmony. Rap- or some of it- is almost pure rhythm. Poetry is the lyrical part of music. So what is the underlying unifying something that makes music so important to us? Is it like language, the importance of making meaningful sounds? Or is the whole of music greater than the sum of its parts? I have already said that I think music is more than just meaningful sounds. What that more is, I cannot, right now, discover. All I know is that the acoustic guitar is the most comfortable sound in the world; vocal harmony one of the most beautiful; screamo some of the most pained and painful; drums one of the most moving; a band one of the most exciting. But then again, that's all subjective. :P