The Most Powerful Sound in the World Is Just One Syllable

And it comes from you

We have two children, now grown up. But when they were infants, they both started talking the same way.

Their first word was mama—or more like MA-MA, as they said it, with a short pause between the two syllables. Or sometimes they added more of the same, calling for ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. 

Guys, that’s just how it rolls. Dads are second class citizens when it comes to babies.

---

If you want to support my work, take out a premium subscription (just $6 per month).

---

But it’s hardly surprising. For a newborn, mama is the source of all good things. That’s why babies learn to ask for Mom ahead of everything else—and long before they learn their own names.

But here’s something that is surprising. The word for mother is almost identical in a wide range of languages.

Here are a few examples:

• English: Mother, Mama, Mom, Mum, etc. 

• French: Maman, Mère.

• Italian: Mamma, Mammina.

• German: Mama, Mutter

• Russian: Мамочка (Mamachka), Мам (Mam).

• Persian: Madr or مادر .

• Dutch: Moeder, Moer.

• Polish: Mama, Mamula.

• Icelandic: Móðir.

• Swahili: Mama.

• Czech: Matka, Mama.

• Korean: Eomma.

I could give you a hundred more examples. 

There may be a biological explanation. The shape and movement of a baby’s mouth while breastfeeding is the same as when speaking the m sound. 

Just recite the alphabet to yourself and notice the difference. M is a strange sound, unlike the others—your lips close, and your mouth moves inward on itself. You are literally sucking in the world when you make that sound.

By the way, the word world in many languages also starts with an M sound. Mmmm is the link between me and my mundo.

The Earth truly is our mother, at least syllabically speaking.

And Mother Earth even reciprocates. The world makes its own mmmm sound—geologists can tell you all about it.

This simple syllable is both our first sound and our happiest one. It’s also the most sustainable sound you can create with your mouth. If you hold on to your mmmm, you can keep going until you run out of breath.

We’re like cats purring.

You can feel its power in your embouchure (another mmmm word)—if you will allow me to borrow the terminology of horn players.

Humming is simply the continuance of the mom syllable.

“But where is our musicologist of mmmmm? Where is our manifesto of M?”

This must be why the M sound has become central to religious and New Age rituals of various sorts. In Hindu traditions, the syllable Om is the pathway to transcendence. You can find it in the Upanishads, where we learn that Om is a bow, and our soul is an arrow. In the Bhagvad Gita, it represents the highest level of consciousness.

In Tibetan Buddhism, Om often initiates a mantra. The best known mantra practically hums off the page: Om mani padme hum—scholars debate its precise meaning, but the sound is what matters most.

By the way, the word mantra also latches on to that same powerful M sound. That’s no coincidence.

Go ahead, take it for a test drive. Here are three hours of Om.

Can you feel it? That’s why there’s no other sound that can take the place of mmmm.

---

Does this impact our musical sensibilities?

It must. How can a sound with such deep connection to our souls and psyches and earliest experiences fail to retain its hold on us?

I first encountered this while researching my book Healing Songs. I started paying attention to the throbbing low tones that were part of so many rituals and therapeutic techniques.

In the aftermath, I listened to music differently, even commercial songs on the radio.

At around 20 beats per second, a rhythm turns into a hum. And beyond that it takes on the quality of Om. You can hear it happening in this video.

Max Goodbird has studied this, and (drawing on Husserl and William James) suggests that, in the presence of this hum, our sense of future and past get eclipsed by the thickness of the present moment.

He quotes William James, who talks about those extraordinary moments when we “seem to feel the interval of time as a whole.”

In music, this is the role played by the drone.

I’ve written repeatedly about the popularity of drones in music. They were once associated with meditation music or so-called world music.

Just listen to the tanpura and you can hear the Om.

But drones have now gone mainstream. I’m hearing them in almost every genre.

I wrote this in my article “Drone Attacks: The New Sound of Contemporary Music”:

In only the last few weeks, I’ve encountered these recordings:

• Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard has just released a drone album featuring 19 bass clarinets;

• John Roebuck, in contrast, finds his more personal approach to low tones via “a broken guitar being scratched by a broken violin bow”;

• percussionist Tyshawn Sorey has instead crafted his drone-inflected textures in collaboration with cutting-edge chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound;

• Philip Blackburn draws more eclectically on a whole arsenal of low-tech tools, from conch shell to handclaps in old cisterns;

• Derek Monypeny, for his part, dispenses with such elaborate accessories, preferring his “poorly-tuned guitar” whose sound is adjusted by a time-stretching effect.

I could give many more examples—I discover new drone albums almost every day.

That was drawn from random listening during a single month.

Someone should create a timeline of this. When did the drone enter jazz? When did the drone enter rock? What was the first movie soundtrack to feature a drone? When did classical music embrace the drone?

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Perhaps classical music started with drones, long before it discovered harmony.

I note that the biggest selling songs of all time are mostly Christmas songs, starting with “White Christmas” at the top of the list. And that m sound is embedded in Christmas, and is usually emphasized when the word is sung.

That’s a strange deviation from normal usage.  In spoken language, Christmas has an accent on the first syllable. But when Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas,” the accent shifts to the second syllable—which is held for much longer.

There’s power in the mmm sound. Even marketers have figured that out.

Mmmm is such a universal sound of satisfaction that it even works for canned mushroom soup.

But we deserve better than that. This sound is literally our birthright. And musicians should have precedence over marketeers in celebrating and propagating it.

But where is our musicologist of mmmmm? Where is our manifesto of M?

We don’t have those, not yet. But in the meantime, we have the sound itself—and a whole world/mundo filled with chants and rituals drawing on its power. When put into practice, they are far more valuable than any theory.