The Origins of MusicNils L. Wallin, Bjorn Merker, Steven Brown The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology. What biological and cognitive forces have shaped humankind's musical behavior and the rich global repertoire of musical structures? What is music for, and why does every human culture have it? What are the universal features of music and musical behavior across cultures? In this groundbreaking book, musicologists, biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, ethologists, and linguists come together for the first time to examine these and related issues. The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology—the study of which will contribute greatly to our understanding of the evolutionary precursors of human music, the evolution of the hominid vocal tract, localization of brain function, the structure of acoustic-communication signals, symbolic gesture, emotional manipulation through sound, self-expression, creativity, the human affinity for the spiritual, and the human attachment to music itself. Contributors |
Contents
An Introduction to Evolutionary Musicology | 3 |
VOCAL COMMUNICATION IN ANIMALS | 25 |
Prolegomena to a Biomusicology | 27 |
Origins of Music and Speech Insights from Animals | 31 |
Birdsong Repertoires Their Origins and Use | 49 |
Whats Behind a Song? The Neural Basis of Song Learning in Birds | 65 |
The Sound and the Fury Primate Vocalizations as Reflections of Emotion and Thought | 77 |
Gibbon Songs and Human Music from an Evolutionary Perspective | 103 |
The Musilanguage Model of Music Evolution | 271 |
How Music Fixed Nonsense into Significant Formulas On Rhythm Repetition and Meaning | 301 |
Synchronous Chorusing and Human Origins | 315 |
Evolution of Human Music through Sexual Selection | 329 |
Simulating the Evolution of Musical Behavior | 361 |
Antecedents of the Temporal Arts in Early MotherInfant Interaction | 389 |
A Neurobiological Role of Music in Social Bonding | 411 |
UNIVERSALS IN MUSIC | 425 |
Social Organization as a Factor in the Origins of Language and Music | 125 |
The Progressively Changing Songs of Humpback Whales A Window on the Creative Process in a Wild Animal | 135 |
MUSIC LANGUAGE AND HUMAN EVOLUTION | 151 |
Can Biomusicology Learn from Language Evolution Studies? | 153 |
Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Music and Language | 165 |
Paleoneurology and the Biology of Music | 177 |
Hominid Brain Evolution and the Origins of Music | 197 |
Fossil Evidence for the Origin of Speech Sounds | 217 |
New Perspectives on the Beginnings of Music Archeological and Musicological Analysis of a Middle Paleolithic Bone Flute | 235 |
THEORIES OF MUSIC ORIGIN | 269 |
Human Processing Predispositions and Musical Universal | 427 |
The Question of Innate Competencies in Musical Communication | 449 |
An Ethnomusicologist Contemplates Universals in Musical Sound and Musical Culture | 463 |
The Necessity of and Problems with a Universal Musicology | 473 |
THE END OF THE BEGINNING | 481 |
Listening to Music | 483 |
Author Index | 485 |
495 | |