How did music become universal?

Dave Grothusen · From: Scott City, Ks

Does anyone have any clues (opinions) how music became universal and language did not? What I mean, and I may be wrong, a C chord is a C in all counties is it not? Made up of the same tones. I hear classical, polkas, mexican music etc and chord progressions are all alike. How did that all happen. Is it just univeral law same as gravity? I guess our ears all hear the same in every language.

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

Dave, that's a great question.
Although there are some countries, or areas, like India that use microtones and/or different scale tone divisions, most of the world uses very similar musical tools. Perhaps it's because of natural mathematical divisions that everyone responds to, but it's very interesting that while there are so many different spoken languages, music can be shared and enjoyed across all national and cultural boundaries.

Maybe we should all pay attention to that!

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

I simply think of music as a language. There's tons of reading material on brains & music, ethnic studies & music, evolution & music... if you start with these two, then read all the books in their bibliographies, you'll be getting somewhere.

"This is your Brain on Music" - Daniel Levitan

"Music, the Brain and Ecstasy" - Robert Jourdain

This one was kind of cool, too -

http://www.amazon.com/Stone-Age-Soundtracks-Acoustic-Archaeology/dp/184333447X

Music undoubtedly grew out of language, then a specialized form of emphasized language. At some point beating on things with a stick got added in, I personally would guess that that part was a warning to others - "Yo - Oggnuts, next I'm-a gonna beat on YOU"...[/i]

Brint Hannay · From: Maryland, USA

I can agree with the concept of music as a type of language (a type entirely distinct in form, uses, and content from verbal language). I wouldn't think music "grew out of" language, defined as words expressing concepts. My guess would be that proto-music came before language. What I mean by proto-music is that melody in its most basic form would have been a development of the expression available in the capacity for barks, howls, wails, moans, growls, murmurs, etc. that our ancestors had in common with other animals. (Yes, this does assume the correctness of the theory of evolution.) Early hominids may well have chanted wordlessly together before the development of language in words.

As to music being universal, Western music, i.e. music that includes the concept of "chords", may be becoming universal, much as Western "cuisine" (e.g. McDonald's) is becoming universal, but for most of human history the musics of other cultures--that is, most of the cultures in the world--had little or nothing in common with that concept. Before "learning" through exposure to hear chords as chords, and one chord after another as "progressing", people from those other cultures didn't immediately and intrinsically perceive those things as music that made any sense.

Music, capital M, may be universal, in the same sense as Language, capital L, is universal--all peoples have music, all peoples have language--but the forms of any particular type of music are not hardwired into the human being, any more than all humans could be expected to automatically understand English, just because it "makes sense" to us.

Just my own ramblings--I haven't read the books mentioned, though I'd like to.

Dave Grothusen · From: Scott City, Ks

I have to agree that music may be based on a mathematical scale more than anything. It is relative to where you start.

Bill McCloskey · Posted 13 Oct 2010 9:54 am

Well, I would disagree that music all started from common universality. Certainly African music introduced blue notes and playing between the notes, Indian, Chinese, japanese, Balanese, Java, south east asia, aborigines of australia, new guinee, new zealand, the music of ireland with the drones, scottish music. The music of tibet...

I could go on and on, but little to none of this music had anything to do with western music as we know it. I think what you are experiencing is that music from around the world in the 20th began to influence each other.

Susan Alcorn · From: Baltimore, MD, USA

They say that we humans are hard-wired for language, but sometimes I wonder if music might have preceded language in our early development. It's been around as long as there have been humans and, depending, I suppose, on what you call "music", has been here long before us and, perhaps on a more esoteric level, before there were plants and animals.

Language, writing systems, alphabets, and pronunciations vary from place to place as do tuning systems, melodic rules, etc., but everywhere people (as well as plants and animals) respond to music or to melodious sound.

I also wonder what affect the advent of written language (which profoundly influenced culture) had on the creation and perception of music.

Ben Jones · From: Seattle, Washington, USA

We listen to our mothers heartbeats before we are even born, so I think rythym precedes even language.
we require it and rely on it for locomotion (walking).
every living human has a pulse.
the ocean has a pulse.
the cosmos has a pulse albeit an extremely slow and long one... um without getting to hippy dippy about it. Embarassed

I do recall there have been quite a few experiments on babies across various cultures and how they respond to music of other cultures before language becomes a factor...I cannot recall the results unfortunately.

heres one, no clue about the scientific merit of it but its kind of interesting I think.
http://www.greenwych.ca/babies.htm

Clete Ritta · From: San Antonio, Texas

Frequencies are universal I guess.
Close Encounters?

Human language and music have both evolved through the ages,
and its all relative to Einstein.

A C chord might not be relative to music from another [part of the] world.
But D minor is the saddest of all keys in the world as far as I know.
That was professed by Nigel Tufnel I think.

Clete

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

Bill McCloskey · Posted 23 Oct 2010 5:54 am

"musicologists can trace distinct intervals and rhythms traveling across territory, as a function of the people carrying them along"

? Well then that supports my argument. Tell me how Japanese koto music fits in or gamelon music.

Richard Sevigny · From: Salmon Arm, BC, Canada

Earnest Bovine · From: Los Angeles CA USA

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

I think music in a culture, per se, is universal, but not any specific type of music. But I do think music style does become, more or less, universal within a specific culture. It's just one of many non-verbal means of communicating ideas that words don't quite get at. Dance is another, graphic art is another.

Which is to say I basically agree with what Bill, Dave, and Earnest say.

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

I wonder about that chord progression thing. As I understand the antecedents to Steel guitar music, Early pre-Missionary Hawaiian music was entirely vocal, and rhythmic, and the earliest Hawaiian guitarists picked up guitars left by Portugese sailors (perhaps having heard some Indian musicians sliding things!) and just tuned them to the same "chords" they were used to from the traditional vocal music, creating the first open tunings that lead to slide and slack-key styles.
I've heard recordings of early Hawaiian vocal music that they think is similar to the pre-western influenced music, and it's definitely chordal in nature.
I've also hear Fijian choral groups doing what is supposed to be long-traditional music from their older culture, and it seems to revolve around moving vocal chordal stacks. Absolutely stunningly beautiful, as well.
Apparently there are evidences from the quantum level of "musical" vibratory structure from the largest to the smallest segments of our cosmos.
It makes sense that music would be universal to varying degrees.

Joe Miraglia · From: Jamestown N.Y.

AJ Azure · From: Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.

By product of (mainly European) conquering colonialism. The standardized music system literally came along with missionary and forced conversion by conquest to0 Christianity.

The 'laws' of music were seriously regulated by the church.

For better or worse we get the standardized music system today.

Dave Boothroyd · From: Staffordshire Moorlands

Bill McCloskey asked
"Tell me how Japanese koto music fits in or gamelon music"

I'm not an expert on the Koto, but I have composed for and played in a Gamelan Orchestra, both Balinese and Javanese styles. The connection is simple, it is based on the pentatonic scale. The Sixth is sharper than E.T, in Gamelan, but not unrecognisable. Incidentally the sixth is the pivot note in common between the Pelog and Slendro scales.
Pentatonic scales are very nearly universal, from the eastern edge of Mongolia to the west coast of Ireland.
You'll find them in Native American music too.
It would not be silly to suppose, that since Humanity originated in one place, perhaps the original humans discovered the interesting thing about notes in the pentatonic scale, and took it wherever they went.
What is it, this great truth?
All the notes fit together, any two or any three notes in the scale fit together to make a pleasant sound, and the individual pitches can be tuned from a tonic pitch by lining up the harmonics by ear. (For example, the note C contains harmonics that sound at G, and E. To tune either of these notes to harmonise with the C is just a matter of listening.) It took Pythagoras to define the formula, but he was working on something that had probably been known for half a million years.
Music is universal, because it has a common source, elaborated differently in local communities, but at base, universally human. The point is , that with pentatonic, music can be spontaneously communal, a stranger can join in and play or sing along, without need for language. It is one of Ivan Ilyich's "Tools for Conviviality"
About 170 BC, Terence (Latin poet) wrote
Humanus sum. Nihil humanum a me alienum puto.
I'm human. I consider nothing human strange to me.

Music is about being human and living together- and also about the grumpy old soul at the back saying, "That's not the way you should play it. We had proper music in my day!"
You need to take a very much longer view to come close to answering this question.
Cheers
Dave

AJ Azure · From: Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.