Year: 2023
Type: preprint
Abstract: Music is a universal yet diverse cultural trait transmitted between generations. The extent to which global musical diversity traces cultural and demographic history, however, is unresolved. Using a global musical dataset of 5,242 songs from 719 societies, we identify five axes of musical diversity and show that music contains geographical and historical structure analogous to linguistic and genetic diversity. After creating a matched dataset of musical, genetic, and linguistic data spanning 121 societies containing 981 songs, 1,296 individual genetic profiles, and 121 languages, we show that global musical similarities are only weakly and inconsistently related to linguistic or genetic histories, with some regional exceptions such as within Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that global musical traditions are largely distinct from some non-musical aspects of human history.
Authors: Sam Passmore, Anna Wood, Chiara Barbieri, Dor Shilton, Hideo Daikoku, Quentin Atkinson, Patrick E. Savage
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, Royal Society, Royal Society Te Apārangi, Keio University, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Universität Zürich, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
OpenAlex ID: W4353081969