Musical Efficacy: Musicking to Survive—the Case of the Pygmies

Rouget, Gilbert; Buckner, Margaret

doi:10.5921/yeartradmusi.43.0089

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Such use makes sense in situations of using loud complex sounds while hunting large prey and repelling human predators in open savannah space (Jordania, 2011). Large groups of big-game foragers tend to prioritize collective music-making over personal, confining the latter to prepubertal age, like Aka Pygmies (Rouget, 2011). Homo probably exported isophonic proto-music from Africa to Europe.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is how infants learn to make their own songs and how children acquire "musical ear" (Nikolsky, 2020). Even in non-European traditions that are exclusively polyphonic, such as Aka Pygmy, motherese and children-made music remain monophonic (Rouget, 2011). This is because an auditory stimulus must be objectified to become accessible for reproduction: a relation of 2 tones in certain aspect must be realized as an auditory constant to lay the foundation for construction of a musical mode (Nazaikinsky, 1973).…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Pastoral Origin of Semiotically Functional Tonal Organization of Music

Nikolsky

2020

Front. Psychol.

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This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born. Eleven principal expressive aspects of music each contains specific structural patterns whose configuration signifies a certain affective state. This distinguishes the tonal organization of music from the phonetic and prosodic organization of natural languages and animal communication. The question of music’s origin can therefore be answered by establishing the point in human history at which all eleven expressive aspects might have been abstracted from the instinct-driven primate calls and used to express human psycho-emotional states. Etic analysis of acoustic parameters is the prime means of cross-examination of the typical patterns of expression of the basic emotions in human music versus animal vocal communication. A new method of such analysis is proposed here. Formation of such expressive aspects as meter, tempo, melodic intervals, and articulation can be explained by the influence of bipedal locomotion, breathing cycle, and heartbeat, long before Homo sapiens. However, two aspects, rhythm and melodic contour, most crucial for music as we know it, lack proxies in the Paleolithic lifestyle. The available ethnographic and developmental data leads one to believe that rhythmic and directional patterns of melody became involved in conveying emotion-related information in the process of frequent switching from one call-type to another within the limited repertory of calls. Such calls are usually adopted for the ongoing caretaking of human youngsters and domestic animals. The efficacy of rhythm and pitch contour in affective communication must have been spontaneously discovered in new important cultural activities. The most likely scenario for music to have become fully semiotically functional and to have spread wide enough to avoid extinctions is the formation of cross-specific communication between humans and domesticated animals during the Neolithic demographic explosion and the subsequent cultural revolution. Changes in distance during such communication must have promoted the integration between different expressive aspects and generated the basic musical grammar. The model of such communication can be found in the surviving tradition of Scandinavian pastoral music - kulning. This article discusses the most likely ways in which such music evolved.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pastoral Origin of Semiotically Functional Tonal Organization of Music

Nikolsky

2020

Front. Psychol.

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“…If music research under the culture-cognition-mediator model considers both musical and extramusical parameters as musical features, this implies that "music" is perhaps better conceived as a broad set of behaviors, products, beliefs, affordances, and associations surrounding the object researchers typically think of as music. This ontological shift is not entirely new because it has been presaged by several researchers over the past half-century (Gourlay, 1984;Rouget, 2004;Small, 1998), who found broad intercultural differences in where the line between music and closely related practices, such as dance, lie. The culture-cognition-mediator model, however, expands musical ontology in a slightly different way: Rather than extending music into the domains of other related practices, this extends music to include aspects such as emotion, genre, and performance context as features, indistinguishable in kind from harmonic closure, syncopation, or melodic coherence.…”

Section: Ontological Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Music in the Middle: A Culture-Cognition-Mediator Model of Musical Functionality

Fram

2023

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Music is both universal, appearing in every known human culture, and culture-specific, often defying intelligibility across cultural boundaries. This duality has been the source of debate within the broad community of music researchers, and there have been significant disagreements both on the ontology of music as an object of study and the appropriate epistemology for that study. To help resolve this tension, I present a culture-cognition-mediator model that situates music as a mediator in the mutually constitutive cycle of cultures and selves representing the ways individuals both shape and are shaped by their cultural environments. This model draws on concepts of musical grammars and schema, contemporary theories in developmental and cultural psychology that blur the distinction between nature and nurture, and recent advances in cognitive neuroscience. Existing evidence of both directions of causality is presented, providing empirical support for the conceptual model. The epistemological consequences of this model are discussed, specifically with respect to transdisciplinarity, hybrid research methods, and several potential empirical applications and testable predictions as well as its import for broader ontological conversations around the evolutionary origins of music itself.

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“…This distinction perhaps suggests that, in the future, human music will be increasingly intense emotionally, but with ever looser syntax; whereas human language will be increasingly neutral emotionally, but with ever tighter syntax. (Wey, 2020), the polyphony of African pygmies (Rouget & Buckner, 2011), and Tuvan overtone singing (Bergevin et al, 2020). musical cultures.…”

Section: The Music-language Continuummentioning

confidence: 99%

Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music

Jan

2022

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Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music by Steven Jan is a comprehensive account of the relationships between evolutionary theory and music. Examining the ‘evolutionary algorithm’ that drives biological and musical-cultural evolution, the book provides a distinctive commentary on how musicality and music can shed light on our understanding of Darwin’s famous theory, and vice-versa. Comprised of seven chapters, with several musical examples, figures and definitions of terms, this original and accessible book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the relationships between music and evolutionary thought. Jan guides the reader through key evolutionary ideas and the development of human musicality, before exploring cultural evolution, evolutionary ideas in musical scholarship, animal vocalisations, music generated through technology, and the nature of consciousness as an evolutionary phenomenon. A unique examination of how evolutionary thought intersects with music, Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music is essential to our understanding of how and why music arose in our species and why it is such a significant presence in our lives.

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Musical Efficacy: Musicking to Survive—the Case of the Pygmies

Cited by 11 publications

References 12 publications

The Pastoral Origin of Semiotically Functional Tonal Organization of Music

The Pastoral Origin of Semiotically Functional Tonal Organization of Music

Music in the Middle: A Culture-Cognition-Mediator Model of Musical Functionality

Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music

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