TY - JOUR
T1 - Universality and diversity in human song
AU - Mehr, Samuel A.
AU - Singh, Manvir
AU - Knox, Dean
AU - Ketter, Daniel M.
AU - Pickens-Jones, Daniel
AU - Atwood, S.
AU - Lucas, Christopher
AU - Jacoby, Nori
AU - Egner, Alena A.
AU - Hopkins, Erin J.
AU - Howard, Rhea M.
AU - Hartshorne, Joshua K.
AU - Jennings, Mariela V.
AU - Simson, Jan
AU - Bainbridge, Constance M.
AU - Pinker, Steven
AU - O’Donnell, Timothy J.
AU - Krasnow, Max M.
AU - Glowacki, Luke
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2019, American Association for the Advancement of Science
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85075469784
U2 - 10.1126/science.aax0868
DO - 10.1126/science.aax0868
M3 - Article
C2 - 31753969
AN - SCOPUS:85075469784
SN - 0036-8075
VL - 366
JO - Science
JF - Science
IS - 6468
M1 - eaax0868
ER -