If music is fundamental to humanity, why has most of its history vanished—and why have so many people become listeners rather than music-makers?
Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world.
Using The Musical Human by Michael Spitzer as our lens, this investigation follows music across the human lifespan, world history, and biological evolution. Spitzer presents music as a deeply human capacity grounded in emotion, movement, cognition, culture, and social connection.
Viewed structurally, the history of music is also a history of preservation. Oral practice gave way to notation, musical institutions elevated specialized performers and canonical works, and recording and streaming made music continuously available. These systems preserved extraordinary creative achievements while filtering out forms of musical life that could not be written, recorded, or separated from communal participation.
The central tension lies between preservation and participation, access and agency, and technology as an extension of human musicality versus a possible replacement for it.
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This content was created using AI-assisted tools for research synthesis, structuring, and narration support. All analysis, framing, and editorial decisions are guided by human judgment as part of the Crisis in Perception project.
