The relationship between music and food is much like any other great bond: partners, best friends, loving siblings – you just can’t imagine them not being together. Whether at restaurants, weddings, festivals, or a picnic blanket at Proms in the Park, they’re almost inseparable.
But what sparked this passionate affair? It’s not like the first humans were chewing on a woolly mammoth when they decided that what the meal really needed was a conch concerto in the background – food was functional, music was non-existent. Then along came civilisation (jumping a few millennia of cultural evolution) and the romance began. And like many a good romance, it began with a party.
“Music and food have always gone hand in hand,” says singer, songwriter and broadcaster Cerys Matthews, whose boutique festival, the Good Life Experience, gives equal weight to both. “Were feasts ever silent? No. Whether the Romans, or the bards of Wales, music was always present.
“If the music is wrong, it negates everything, but when it’s right – bingo,” she says. “I remember, as a child, looking forward to going to my favourite Indian restaurant in Swansea. The food, the Bengali music, it all helped escape the humdrum.”
Both music and food were important parts of ancient civilisation, the Romans in particular being keen foodies. Music would be played at all sorts of public and private gatherings, and those events – such as funerals, the theatre and festivals celebrating the gods – would frequently involve eating.
Centuries later, the synthesis of music and food that remains with us to this day would come into being in the baroque and subsequent periods of classical music – not only were royal banqueting halls filled with waltzes, concertos and chamber pieces (some of which would have been the pop hits of the day), but food actually inspired the composers who wrote them. Famed caffeine addict Bach wrote his Coffee Cantana, Debussy wrote La Puerta del Vino, inspired by the wine gate at the Alhambra palace in Granada, while in Carl Orff’s Olim Lacus Coluera, from Carmina Burana, a swan sings from a roasting spit.
But perhaps the most significant development would be the arrival, in the 18th century, of the modern restaurant – the kind of place we would recognise by contemporary standards, complete with waiters, set tables and … music. There are few places now where you can dine in public without a backing track. It’s a matter of some debate.
“In a lot of the very high-end restaurants you rarely get music,” says the food critic and editor of Waitrose food William Sitwell. “The only noise is the chef. Other than that it’s complete silence.
“But music when eating can create atmosphere – if it’s done right,” he says. “It needs to be done with subtlety. Great chefs are masters of many things, from decor to music. If your only gift is to cook supremely, you won’t get far.”
Matthews agrees. “Music accentuates a meal, but getting that music right is an art,” she says. “If you’re in a big industrial restaurant, you can’t have tinny digital files playing. And you need old material speakers so that the music gets into your body. You can’t underestimate the power of sound. It affects our emotions.”
It’s been shown that people are more likely to enjoy a meal if they like the tunes playing as they eat. The same goes when the cultural provenance of the food and music are matched, as Matthews alluded to when reminiscing about the Indian meals of her childhood. Thai music enhances the joy of Thai food; panpipes pep up Peruvian, and so on. The effects go beyond that, though. Manipulation is a strong word, so let’s say music can be used to give our decision-making a little nudge.
“If music is played too loud it actually suppresses our ability to taste,” says Prof Charles Spence of the University of Oxford, a psychologist and author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating. “But if it’s played at a pleasant level, our association with that music can carry over. For example, if classical music is played, people spend more. If French music is played in a supermarket, they’re more likely to buy French wine.
“The loudness and tempo, or beats per minute affect how we eat,” adds Spence. “As they go up, we tend to eat or drink to the beat. Some restaurants use fast music to get people out of the door quickly and slow it down if they want customers to linger. We’re pulled in certain directions by music.”
And it’s not just how we eat that’s swayed by music, but also how we cook.
“Music when I cook is therapeutic,” says Sitwell. “It can be anything from Mozart to NWA. I’d find it very strange to cook without it. Among professional chefs, again it’s a contentious issue – some think music is a distraction, while others insist, even thrive on it.”
Anthony Bourdain’s eclectic Music to Cook By playlist is a huge hit on Spotify, while examples of music-loving chefs include René Redzepi of Noma, who asked Metallica’s Lars Ulrich to write the foreword to one of his books, and Jamie Oliver, who told us that Westlife are just perfect for preparing salmon.
“Cooking without music is bland,” says Ben Lebus, founder of Mob Kitchen, whose connection with music is so close that their upcoming eponymous debut book comes with codes for carefully curated cooking playlists. “It’s like cooking without salt,” he says. “Cooking has a rhythm, like music. You can dance around. I like upbeat tunes. Rossini’s Thieving Magpie is a big favourite at the moment. Coldplay just ruins food.
“I think my dream combination would be cooking spaghetti puttanesca to Van Morrison’s Cleaning Windows. That would take me back to being 12 and the happiest times I had with my parents.”
So, music can be used to influence both our choices of what and how we eat. It can affect the way we cook. It stirs up emotions and triggers associations, and can just as easily ruin a meal. But we’re beginning to learn that music is more than just a mood-setter, even more than a psychological tool that can get us to shimmy our finger a few more rungs down the wine list: it can actually affect the way we taste food. It’s an ingredient.
“I call it sonic seasoning,” says Spence, who has led the research into this phenomenon. “You can pick or make music because its sonic qualities seem to make flavour. A higher pitch might make sweet or sour flavours, while lower notes can produce bitter flavours. You can create musical menus: creamy music, umami music.”
Is this innate or learned?
“It’s not been fully tested, but it appears to be cross-cultural,” says Spence. “One suggestion is that we have some innate sense that’s been useless until now. We naturally correlate colour and taste, for example, so that green in fruit tends to mean bitter and unripe, so maybe we do the same with sound.
“Another theory is to do with the noises we make when we’re babies. Across all species of mammal, newborns make the same oral and facial gestures when they taste things. For example, the tongue will stick out when we taste something sour, so perhaps the gurgles and utterances we make when our tongue is in that position stay with us.”
Could it be that all of those high-end, music-free establishments are missing a trick?
“Quite possibly. You do get places that are a throwback to the Michelin-starred restaurants of the past – silent temples where the food will speak for itself. Wiley restaurateurs and businesspeople know the value of music. I think it was the founders of the Hard Rock Cafe who said: ‘We play music because it makes people spend more.’”
These hypothesis are being put to the test by one chef in particular: Jozef Youssef, founder of Kitchen Theory, which describes itself as an experimental gastronomy design studio. He works closely with Spence in a field they have dubbed “gastrophysics” – an investigation of how our senses affect the way we taste.
Youssef’s Chef’s Table events have become one of the UK’s – if not the world’s – most exciting culinary experiences. They are multi-sensory, placing emphasis on texture, smells, visual stimulation, and very much on sound.
“For years, a lot was taken for granted with taste,” he says. “Sound was overlooked when it came to flavour perception. The music was tied to emotions, to nostalgia. It was used to set a tone, such as Indian music in Indian restaurants. It still is. Here we create playlists that actually enhance the flavour of the food. It can even work the other way round. For a synaesthesia event we did, we listened over and over to one piece of music until we had inspiration for a dish. Every moment of our Chef’s Table experiences, from when you walk in for cocktails, to when you’re relaxing after the meal, is carefully influenced by music.
“If people are sceptical, they should sit and relax with a glass of their favourite whisky, then play different types of music while they enjoy it,” says Youssef. “They’ll notice different characteristics being brought out by the sounds. The access we have to music now, through radio stations and streaming, means it’s easy to experiment.”
There is, of course, a balance to be struck: a fine line between enhancing and getting in the way. “The keyword is congruency,” says Steve Keller, chief executive of audio branding company iV. “It’s about aligning the senses.”
Keller comes at it from the other side to Youssef. With a background in psychology, followed by 30 years working in the Nashville music business, he now combines these two worlds, treading the ground between science and art to use sound to influence our behaviour and perceptions.
He says that his aim is to “hack our perceptions”, and acknowledges fully that the mere mention of the word “hack” probably has you checking your bank statement. But he firmly believes that the clever use of music to influence the way we taste can have huge benefits now and in the future.
“Throughout history, music has been part of the ritual of eating,” he says. “But we had no understanding of its influence. Through being intentional, music can improve a meal. It’s about how you use it. You know the ingredients for a cake, but it’s how you bake it that affects the flavour. The music has to sound good – it can’t be a cacophony. It’s not magic, either. You can’t make something spicy with sound, but ‘spicy’ music enhances spicy flavours.”
For Keller, it’s not all about adding sonic seasoning to fancy meals. He sees a broader use for the science: one that could have a profound impact on lives.
“If we dream about the future, we can imagine how you get home to your smart refrigerator and you ask it to look at its contents and provide you with a recipe for those ingredients. Then you instruct your speaker: ‘Hey, I need music to enhance pasta primavera.’ But what I’m really interested in is how this could be used in healthcare. For example, cancer and its treatment can change or diminish our sense of taste. Could music improve patients’ eating experiences? Could a soundtrack add sweetness for people with diabetes?”
It seems the already intimate relationship between music and food is only going to get closer as our access to music continues to increase and artificial intelligence helps machines to crunch the numbers for crunchy sounds. And let’s not forget the wonderful possibility that our fridge and speaker could team up to provide the perfect evening in. Yet technology can only do so much and go so far. Deep down, the connection between us, food and music runs deeper.
“So much has been marketed to keep products distant, to be desired from afar,” says Matthews. “But I think people are moving away from things such as celebrity DJs and just want to watch players play. The idea of our festival is to go out, enjoy music and eat good food. It’s all about doing the simple things.”
And Keller agrees: “The future is more dynamic than static,” he says. “I would like to think as humans we crave these sensory experiences. It’s why people still enjoy music on vinyl – they can touch and smell it. Fads will come and go, but at the end of the day we will always be drawn to how we experience the world with our senses.”
Quite so. Which is why we should celebrate the wonderful marriage of taste and sound; why we should, with apologies to Shakespeare, for the love of food and music, play on.
