title: Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music.
abstract: Music has been called "the universal language of mankind." Although contemporary theories of music evolution often invoke various musical universals, the existence of such universals has been disputed for decades and has never been empirically demonstrated. Here we combine a music-classification scheme with statistical analyses, including phylogenetic comparative methods, to examine a well-sampled global set of 304 music recordings. Our analyses reveal no absolute universals but strong support for many statistical universals that are consistent across all nine geographic regions sampled. These universals include 18 musical features that are common individually as well as a network of 10 features that are commonly associated with one another. They span not only features related to pitch and rhythm that are often cited as putative universals but also rarely cited domains including performance style and social context. These cross-cultural structural regularities of human music may relate to roles in facilitating group coordination and cohesion, as exemplified by the universal tendency to sing, play percussion instruments, and dance to simple, repetitive music in groups. Our findings highlight the need for scientists studying music evolution to expand the range of musical cultures and musical features under consideration. The statistical universals we identified represent important candidates for future investigation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Musicology, Tokyo University of the Arts, 110-8714 Tokyo, Japan; patsavagenz@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Patrick E
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6996-7496
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Savage
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada L8S 4K1;
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: Department of Musicology, Tokyo University of the Arts, 110-8714 Tokyo, Japan;
authors.forename: Emi
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sakai
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ecology & Conservation, College of Life & Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Cornwall TR10 9FE, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Thomas E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Currie
mesh_terms: D019992:Databases as Topic; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009146:Music; D010802:Phylogeny; D013223:Statistics as Topic
keywords: cross-cultural universals; cultural phylogenetics; ethnomusicology; evolution; group coordination