Language is Music

My attention was recently drawn to an excellent podcast series, Radiolab, by the US public service radio broadcaster WNYC. One episode in particular caught my eye then ear titled Musical Language and the opening feature is fascinating, take a listen by clicking on the link below

http://www.box.net/shared/neopnukjoc

That got me thinking about language's influence on memory and how we use language through our voice to create a form of music often using rhyme. For kids there are endless rhyming and sung phrases to help remember things and in the adult world of presentations and speeches this technique is used extensively (among those in the know). I remember listening to an interview with the late George Carmen QC who talked about being influenced by advertising slogans when summing up in court, to ensure share of voice in the jury's mind long after he'd shut up, some of his brilliant quotes taken from a Guardian article;

On Hamilton: a man 'on the make and on the take'. On David Mellor, someone who 'behaved like an ostrich and put his head in the sand, thereby exposing his thinking parts'. On Ken Dodd's taxmen: 'Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants.'

I regularly use the Martin Luther King "I have a dream" speech as the ultimate example of voices' ability to communicate emotion, but its musical quality is also undeniable. Something that hasn't passed by the supporters of the pretender to the King's crown;