Looking at Music Globally

Music to Just About Everyone's Ears

Statistical analysis finds globally shared rhythms, pitch changes, instrumentation

Bruce Bower | June 29, 2015

Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news: Scientists have for the first time identified key characteristics of music worldwide. The findings lay the groundwork for deciphering why people everywhere sing, play instruments and find melodies so compelling.

Source: http://www.kijiji.ca/v-books/kitchener-waterloo/thinking-musically-and-teaching-music-globally-books/1028354221

<more at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/music-just-about-everyone%E2%80%99s-ears (Vol. 188 No. 2, July 25, 2015, p. 12); related link: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/06/23/1414495112 (Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music) [Abstract: Music has been called “the universal language of mankind.” Although contemporary theories of music evolution often invoke various musical universals, the existence of such universals has been disputed for decades and has never been empirically demonstrated. Here we combine a music-classification scheme with statistical analyses, including phylogenetic comparative methods, to examine a well-sampled global set of 304 music recordings. Our analyses reveal no absolute universals but strong support for many statistical universals that are consistent across all nine geographic regions sampled. These universals include 18 musical features that are common individually as well as a network of 10 features that are commonly associated with one another. They span not only features related to pitch and rhythm that are often cited as putative universals but also rarely cited domains including performance style and social context. These cross-cultural structural regularities of human music may relate to roles in facilitating group coordination and cohesion, as exemplified by the universal tendency to sing, play percussion instruments, and dance to simple, repetitive music in groups. Our findings highlight the need for scientists studying music evolution to expand the range of musical cultures and musical features under consideration. The statistical universals we identified represent important candidates for future investigation.]>