Universality and diversity in human song

Samuel A Mehr; Manvir Singh; Dean Knox; Daniel M Ketter; Daniel Pickens-Jones; S Atwood; Christopher Lucas; Nori Jacoby; Alena A Egner; Erin J Hopkins; Rhea M Howard; Joshua K Hartshorne; Mariela V Jennings; Jan Simson; Constance M Bainbridge; Steven Pinker; Timothy J O'Donnell; Max M Krasnow; Luke Glowacki

doi:10.1126/science.aax0868

Universality and diversity in human song

Science. 2019 Nov 22;366(6468):eaax0868. doi: 10.1126/science.aax0868.

Authors

Samuel A Mehr^{1

2

3}, Manvir Singh⁴, Dean Knox⁵, Daniel M Ketter^{6

7}, Daniel Pickens-Jones⁸, S Atwood², Christopher Lucas⁹, Nori Jacoby¹⁰, Alena A Egner², Erin J Hopkins², Rhea M Howard², Joshua K Hartshorne¹¹, Mariela V Jennings¹¹, Jan Simson^{2

12}, Constance M Bainbridge², Steven Pinker², Timothy J O'Donnell¹³, Max M Krasnow², Luke Glowacki¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Data Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. sam@wjh.harvard.edu manvirsingh@fas.harvard.edu glowacki@psu.edu.
² Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
³ School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
⁴ Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. sam@wjh.harvard.edu manvirsingh@fas.harvard.edu glowacki@psu.edu.
⁵ Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
⁶ Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14604, USA.
⁷ Department of Music, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO 65897, USA.
⁸ Unaffiliated scholar, Portland, OR 97212, USA.
⁹ Department of Political Science, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
¹⁰ Computational Auditory Perception Group, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, 60322 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
¹¹ Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
¹² Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, 78464 Konstanz, Germany.
¹³ Department of Linguistics, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1A7, Canada.
¹⁴ Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16802, USA. sam@wjh.harvard.edu manvirsingh@fas.harvard.edu glowacki@psu.edu.

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.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Anthropology, Cultural*
Auditory Perception
Behavior
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Dancing
Humans
Infant Care
Infant, Newborn
Love
Music*
Psychoacoustics
Religion
Singing*

Grants and funding

DP5 OD024566/OD/NIH HHS/United States