Group singing is globally dominant and associated with social context

Abstract

Music is an interactive technology associated with religious and communal activities and was suggested to have evolved as a participatory activity supporting social bonding. In post-industrial societies, however, music's communal role was eclipsed by its relatively passive consumption by audiences disconnected from performers. It was suggested that as societies became larger and more differentiated, music became less participatory and more focused on solo singing. Here, we consider the prevalence of group singing and its relationship to social organization through the analysis of two global song corpora: 5776 coded audio recordings from 1024 societies, and 4709 coded ethnographic texts from 60 societies. In both corpora, we find that group singing is more common than solo singing, and that it is more likely in some social contexts (e.g. religious rituals, dance) than in others (e.g. healing, infant care). In contrast, relationships between group singing and social structure (community size or social differentiation) were not consistent within or between corpora. While we cannot exclude the possibility of sampling bias leading to systematic under-sampling of solo singing, our results from two large global corpora of different data types provide support for the interactive nature of music and its complex relationship with sociality.

Love songs and serenades: a theoretical review of music and romantic relationships

“…Music, for most of our evolutionary history, was something that was done. For instance, even in most contemporary societies, group singing is far more common than solo singing ( Shilton et al, 2023 ), which would not appear to be the case if we were only to study Western pop. Therefore, the use of musical taste as a means of assessing partner compatibility is likely a more recent cultural innovation and is not relevant to discussions of evolutionary history.…”

“…Most previous research on the social bonding effects of music has focused on social bonds in general, rather than romantic relationships in particular. Indeed, group musicking seems to be the dominant mode cross-culturally ( Shilton et al, 2023 ). Nevertheless, there are few examples of studies that have specifically examined the role of music in romantic pair-bonding (e.g., Sharon-David et al, 2019 ).…”