Music and evolution: the nature of the evidence

Book section

In recent years the relation of music to human evolution has begun to be explored from many different perspectives. In large part, these explorations are motivated by the sense that an evolutionary perspective may be the best way to integrate an understanding of music as a biological phenomenon with an understanding of music as a component of culture. This paper is intended to identify the nature and the sources of the evidence in which explorations of the relations between music and evolution must be rooted in order adequately to address the concerns of musicology, anthropology, archaeology and cognitive science. The principal sources of evidence fall into six categories: functional, phylogenetic, developmental, physiological, ethnographic and archaeological. The first, functional, deals with the social and individu al roles of 'music' across cultures, and provides the fundamental delimitation of what can legitimately be construed as 'musical'. The second, phylogenetic, is required to assess the degree of homology between human musical behaviours and 'musical' competences in other species. The third, developmental, provides indications as to the genetic component of sets of behaviours, while the fourth, physiological, sets the boundaries for the possession and exercise of 'musical' capacities and behaviours. The fif th, ethnographic, examines the roles and possible forms and artefacts of music in current lifeways and environments that are similar to ancient lifeways and environments, while the sixth, archaeological, is concerned with the 'hard' evidence of ancient art efacts and their find contexts. The evolutionary perspective on music needs to be examined and its evidentiary bases need to be made explicit in order to elucidate the relation of culture to biology and situate music within that relation as well as, critically, to delimit the implications of an evolutionary view

Authors: Cross, I; Morley, I

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Causal Productions
• Host title: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference On Music Perception and Cognition
• Publication date: 2002-07-01
• Keywords: SBTMR