How many purposes?
Headline: Music is universal.

Not a surprising fact, but surprisingly not systematically proved. This BIG study is trying to prove it, and more specifically to categorize the main types and PURPOSES of music.

They looked at every society for which there was ethnographic information in a large online database, 315 in all, and found mention of music in all of them. For their own ethnographic portion, they collected around 5,000 descriptions of song from a subset of 60 cultures spanning 30 distinct geographic regions. For the discography, they collected 118 songs from a total of 86 cultures, again covering 30 geographic regions.

They found that, across societies, music is associated with behaviors such as infant care, healing, dance, and love (among many others, like mourning, warfare, processions and ritual), and that these behaviors are not terribly different from society to society. Examining lullabies, healing songs, dance songs, and love songs in particular, they discovered that songs that share behavioral functions tend to have similar musical features.

"In music theory, tonality is often assumed to be an invention of Western music, but our data raise the controversial possibility that this could be a universal feature of music," he said. "That raises pressing questions about structure that underlies music everywhere -- and whether and how our minds are designed to make music."

The last question, whether and HOW OUR MINDS ARE DESIGNED to make music, is sliding into problematic territory for academics. I'd add that our minds are designed to make and use and consume music. Music is necessary food for the wave patterns that form our mind.

We no longer do lullabies or healing songs. We have plenty of war songs and procession and ritual songs, and we have plenty of futile mating songs.

Wouldn't be surprised if we have genes for each of the universal purposes, and wouldn't be surprised if the same genes are expressed in birds and bees for the same purposes.

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Related thought: While reading about semaphores I bumped into an unexpected type and purpose of song. It's not clear to Modern Me what these songs were doing, but their purpose was definitely clear to the writers.

Les Merveilles de la Science was written in 1868 by Louis Figuier. He wrote several compendiums of various subjects. Especially in the section on balloons (aerostats), he frequently breaks into song. Each song is set to a popular melody so the reader can sing it. I googled these popular melodies and found only one of them. The others are totally unmentioned and unrepresented online.


Two examples with only the first verse:

LE VOYAGE AÉROSTATIQUE.
AIR : Le curé de Dôle.
Écoute, ma mie:
Dans les Tuileries,
On a vu Charles et Robert,
S'allant promener en l'air.
Ça faisait envie!


AIR : Premier jour de janvier.
L'autre jour, quittant mon manoir,
Je fis rencontre sur le soir
D'un globiste de haut parage;
ll s'en allait tout bonnement
Chercher un lit au firmament,
Et moi, je lui dis bon voyage.

What category do these fit? Songs of science? Songs of wonder and discovery?

Tom Lehrer's semi-modern science songs have the same flavor. I can't think of more recent examples. The "climate" genocidists sing, but their songs are ferocious all-consuming war screeches, devoted to obliterating science along with the rest of life and civilization.

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Random speculation: We're finding that 40 Hz is a crucial brain syncing frequency, and auditory inputs of that freq seem to make a difference in aging and Alzheimers. The ears just barely pick up 40 Hz as a sine tone, but we can hear it easily as a trill or a beat frequency superimposed on a higher note. Did any of those healing songs require the singer to trill? Did they involve two singers 40 Hz apart, or more complex harmonies that evoked a 40 Hz beat freq?

Labels: Carbon Cult, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:04 PM