Title | Universality and diversity in human song. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2019 |
Authors | Mehr SA, Singh M, Knox D, Ketter DM, Pickens-Jones D, Atwood S, Lucas C, Jacoby N, Egner AA, Hopkins EJ, Howard RM, Hartshorne JK, Jennings MV, Simson J, Bainbridge CM, Pinker S, O'Donnell TJ, Krasnow MM, Glowacki L |
Journal | Science |
Volume | 366 |
Issue | 6468 |
Date Published | 2019 11 22 |
ISSN | 1095-9203 |
Keywords | Anthropology, Cultural, Auditory Perception, Behavior, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Dancing, Humans, Infant Care, Infant, Newborn, Love, Music, Psychoacoustics, Religion, Singing |
Abstract | What is universal about music, and what varies? We built a corpus of ethnographic text on musical behavior from a representative sample of the world's societies, as well as a discography of audio recordings. The ethnographic corpus reveals that music (including songs with words) appears in every society observed; that music varies along three dimensions (formality, arousal, religiosity), more within societies than across them; and that music is associated with certain behavioral contexts such as infant care, healing, dance, and love. The discography-analyzed through machine summaries, amateur and expert listener ratings, and manual transcriptions-reveals that acoustic features of songs predict their primary behavioral context; that tonality is widespread, perhaps universal; that music varies in rhythmic and melodic complexity; and that elements of melodies and rhythms found worldwide follow power laws. |
DOI | 10.1126/science.aax0868 |
Alternate Journal | Science |
PubMed ID | 31753969 |
PubMed Central ID | PMC7001657 |
Grant List | DP5 OD024566 / OD / NIH HHS / United States |