On Hating Music

by Daniela Salazar Monárrez
NYC-Religious Friends Society (www.quakers.nyc)

This is the full article. To hear a spoken version, click here. (https://recorder.google.com/45083706-f2b9-4ca8-8948-487b9eb89b11)

28 years ago, I was born. There are many things I inherited, from my grandfather’s eyelashes, to my grandmother’s blue-black hair; the one thing I did not inherit from either side of my family was an ear for or a love of music.

Of the most effective gaslights to my self-conception was a boy I liked the first semester of the first year of college, informing me that contrary to my suspicions I couldn’t actually be tone deaf because that was a rare thing so I must not suffer from it. He would know—both his parents were doctors. It wasn’t until I was 23 that my now-spouse, then-boyfriend said to me, “If you’re not tone deaf, I will eat my hat. The way you describe the sounds in music is absolutely bananas.”

As ‘rare’ as tone-deafness purportedly is, someone has to have it. The rarity of something is not contrary evidence to its existence. Perhaps equally misunderstood: perfect pitch was also described to me as “extremely rare.” However my immediate and strong reaction when someone tried to correct me, was that of disbelief. No longer a student, now a professor of college, I declared “Is that right?” Snorting, I said, “rare for you, perhaps, but every autistic friend I have has perfect pitch. All of them.” The autism, probably related to the prevalence of Perfect — also called Absolute — Pitch amongst my close family and friends, is likely also the reason for my own tone-deafness.

Our autistic denser-than-average gray matter makes for neural overconnectivity locally and hyperconnectivity across specific and repeated cross-brain pathways. Hyperfocus and ultra-specialization comes easier, and certain coordinated behaviors gain near-compulsion status quickly. This means that often, autistics are either inept or savant at the same kinds of skills. Social reclusion, but also hyper-sociability are traits in autism, hyperlexia (which I and my father have) or dyslexia (which my mother and grandfather had). Hearing pitch perfectly, or not at all — the two go hand-in-hand; two sides of the same coin.

The ability to correctly hear the absolute pitch of notes, regardless of if you are then able to reproduce them, means that you have Perfect Pitch. It is likely that you cannot become a musical prodigy without the extreme advantages that come with the ability to correctly identify notes, but an ear can still be trained to do so; and the ability to hear the precise pitch of sounds does not at all mean you can then produce those sounds. Often people with perfect pitch are extra-dissatisfied with their own musical ability and will tell me they are ‘tone-deaf’ because they are certain of their inability to make perfect music. This is how most people use the term; to apologize for poor musical skill, they will call themselves this.

Tone-deafness does not mean that I do not enjoy music. I fully appreciate beats and can hear melody. I have songs I listen to on repeat, albums I adore and artists I follow, but when the best of singers harmonize, a pleasant enough sound turns instantly bitter, an unpleasant buzz in my ears. If I’ve made my peace with a soothingly dull church song, it will suddenly be sung in the round and turn into the equivalent cacophony of a garbage disposal. Although I can tell the difference between the thin and pale wails of vocals and the thick, dampness of other heavier notes, their contrast does not seem to bring me the intrinsic joy nor artistic appreciation it has always seemed to for others.

As an emerging adolescent at 13, already socially stressed in school, other teenagers’ constant desire to talk about music (bands & tours & instruments & the quality of a voice or the skill of a bassist) was, to me, absolutely insufferable and deeply exhausting. I had no clue that, like a colorblind man in an impressionist exhibit, I could see the shapes and values but was missing whatever exciting thing animated others into a singular kind of delight. It was, in the end, an experience that deeply damaged my trust in others.

At certain points in my life I was sure that everyone else was lying. Music just wasn't that good— the forceful beats and incredible wordsmithing of mostly Spanish, French and Arabic rap songs were what I first found compelling enough to pass as 'my favorite musicians', which was a requirement for any self respecting high schooler to have. But still, hearing Whitney Houston hold an impressive (to others) note when singing became, while not unpleasant, extra boring despite clearly being a powerful performance. When singers hold a note, the variation of noises lessens, which suddenly diminishes whatever beauty I was gleaning from the singing until that point. So much of what I know to be considered Good Music by the masses was unobtrusive, loud, but boring, and before I was clear that I could not differentiate nor appreciate certain sounds (as much as others could), I assumed that everyone else was somehow deceiving me. I assumed everyone was boring, and talked about music because it was safe and comfortable, like chatting about the weather.

I assumed that when people were obsessed with music, they were trying to be interesting because they had a bland personality otherwise. I thought that we were all collectively putting on a performance that "music was good" much like we perform that "inequality is inevitable" and "lying is an inherent part of the human psyche" and "poverty is a problem of the poor". Clearly, it was necessary to pretend that music was as interesting as other art forms, which clearly it wasn't, because I had ears and was listening to the same things as seemingly every other person in the world was. And I just didn't get it. I had no one to explain this particular instance of what was, for me, the most rampant of collective social delusions.

My mother, second-handedly embarrassed one too many times at a party by me at age 9 or 10 or maybe even 12, brought me home and spent hours upon hours didactically teaching me to sing 'happy birthday' in both English and Spanish. She did, and I can sing it to a normal & fine standard. But it was hardwon to get even those basic tunes into my muscle memory, well past the age when other children knew it without ever having to practice.

At some younger age than even that, maybe 4, possibly 6, I came home outrageously furious at my family for having told me I was good at singing. I had found out (years after my own parents, obviously) that I was not good at singing. The object of my rage was my mom, who had told me (in that way you tell small children) that my singing voice was perfect and beautiful, just like my art skills or story-telling abilities. She had lied. But the sense of betrayal, deeply embedded, was due to that betrayal of disabled access: that it was particularly bad to be lied to about something which was about you, that literally everyone could perceive but you.

What's worse than being excluded from any integral aspect of life, is feeling singular in your discomfort, like there must be something essential in your body-mind that doesn't render because... well, how can you know why, if you don't have a word for what?

"I don't regret telling you you were a good singer; what's the alternative, to impede the childhood joy of singing?" my mother tells me once, as I explain neurons and my acoustic self-discoveries. I think about that perspective and then respond, "It's not about lying; you thought my singing was valuable even though that was objectively wrong."

"But there's no wrong way to sing!" she objects, with great conviction.

"That's true no matter what. But it's not offensive to be told you're bad at a thing you literally can't tell exists. In fact, it's important to me to talk about it because I thought I was the one in the wrong for forever, and I'm not. But they're not wrong either. I thought it was either me or everyone else in the world. The two couldn't be right at the same time. But they can, just like it's not bad to be autistic. It's life-saving to know that there's a reason I can't seem to lie; for why we are the way we are, right?"

My mother, longtime explainer to other parents and family of the name-less weirdness of her extra-bookish, antisocial husband, who finally found the name for it when a cousin was diagnosed with asperger's and her daughters identified as autistic, understands this comparison perfectly. Just like she had to have conversations about why constantly correcting the teacher was inappropriate, despite school being about learning, she also had many a meeting with music or dance teachers where they were terrified to break the news that I was just never going to be on good terms with the difference between notes, and it wasn't for lack of effort on either part.

"It's soul-soothing to know that I'm not missing an aspect of human-hood, I just don't perceive what you perceive when hearing the exact same thing. And it's fine, and it has a name, and it helps to explain lots of things to myself and others." In fact it's great fun, to finally know how to ask all the things I really truly wonder about music; my descriptions had sounded unhinged without that magic word: tone-deaf.

Now, sitting next to my husband with perfect pitch, from a family with perfect pitch, I whisper during a Broadway musical, "Why is his voice doing like a shaky thing when it goes up and gets long but hers is steady and big but also moves like a snake but at different widths all the time?" He narrows his eyes, closes them while he turns one ear to the stage, listening to a Nala & Simba duet in The Lion King. After about 45 seconds, he then opens them with the sparkling excitement of a competent teacher in his eyes. "It's because he's singing out of his range, and she's not." He whispers, hotly in my ear, "He's not bad at covering it up, clearly he's a talented enough singer, but you can't fake your range. In fact she's helping him out at times, but she's probably the better Broadway star, a triple-threat. He must be an exceptional dancer or something; maybe he's the understudy."

Although I flee from choir-like songs, and singing in the round (which Quakers love to do constantly, and without ceasing) sounds absolutely horrific and almost physically painful to sit through, much less to pretend to enjoy; sometimes I can't escape Friends' love of music, and spontaneous song erupts.

As long as there's lyrics, I do participate, not with sounds but with signs. Not because of my tone-deafness, but because while English is my third language, ASL is my fifth. I spent months when I was 18, ten years ago, teaching that boy in college who denied my tone-deafness American Sign Language, and then I completed a bachelor's degree in sign language linguistics; later a masters thesis on the methodological literary translation of ASL poetry. And so, if ever we share a meetinghouse — you & I — know that when you all raise your voices in worshipful song, I will lift my hands and in complete silence, sign along to whatever words I hear in the music you sing and to the beat of whatever joy lives in all of our hearts.