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 - Funding Information:
We thank the hundreds of anthropologists and ethnomusicologists whose work forms the source material for all our analyses; the countless people whose music those scholars reported on; and the research assistants who contributed to the creation of the Natural History of Song corpora and to this research, here listed alphabetically: Z. Ahmad, P. Ammirante, R. Beaudoin, J. Bellissimo, A. Bergson, M. Bertolo, M. Bertuccelli, A. Bitran, S. Bourdaghs, J. Brown, L. Chen, C. Colletti, L. Crowe, K. Czachorowski, L. Dinetan, K. Emery, D. Fratina, E. Galm, S. Gomez, Y.-H. Hung, C. Jones, S. Joseph, J. Kangatharan, A. Keomurjian, H. J. Kim, S. Lakin, M. Laroussini, T. Lee, H. Lee-Rubin, C. Leff, K. Lopez, K. Luk, E. Lustig, V. Malawey, C. McMann, M. Montagnese, P. Moro, N. Okwelogu, T. Ozawa, C. Palfy, J. Palmer, A. Paz, L. Poeppel, A. Ratajska, E. Regan, A. Reid, R. Sagar, P. Savage, G. Shank, S. Sharp, E. Sierra, D. Tamaroff, I. Tan, C. Tripoli, K. Tutrone, A. Wang, M. Weigel, J. Weiner, R. Weissman, A. Xiao, F. Xing, K. Yong, H. York, and J. Youngers. We also thank C. Ember and M. Fischer for providing additional data from the Human Relations Area Files, and for their assistance using those data; S. Adams, P. Laurence, P. O’Brien, A. Wilson, the staff at the Archive of World Music at Loeb Music Library (Harvard University), and M. Graf and the staff at the Archives of Traditional Music (Indiana University) for assistance with locating and digitizing audio recordings; B. Hillers for assistance with information concerning traditional Gaelic music; D. Niles, S. Wadley, and H. Wild for contributing recordings from their personal collections; S. Collins for producing the NHS Ethnography validity annotations; M. Walter for assistance with digital processing of transcriptions; J. Hulbert and R. Clarida for assistance with copyright issues and materials sharing; V. Kuchinov for developing the interactive visualizations; S. Deviche for contributing illustrations; and the Dana Foundation, whose program “Arts and Cognition” led in part to the development of this research. Last, we thank A. Rehding, G. Bryant, E. Hagen, H. Gardner, E. Spelke, M. Tenzer, G. King, J. Nemirow, J. Kagan, and A. Martin for their feedback, ideas, and intellectual support of this work. Supported by the Harvard Data Science Initiative (S.A.M.); the National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence Award DP5OD024566 (S.A.M.); the Harvard Graduate School of Education/Harvard University Presidential Scholarship (S.A.M.); the Harvard University Department of Psychology (S.A.M. and M.M.K.); a Harvard University Mind/Brain/ Behavior Interfaculty Initiative Graduate Student Award (S.A.M. and M.S.); the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (M.S.); the Microsoft Research postdoctoral fellowship program (D.K.); the Washington University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office (C.L.); the Columbia University Center for Science and Society (N.J.); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (T.J.O.); Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (T.J.O.); and ANR Labex IAST (L.G.).
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 - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075469784&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85075469784&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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 -