Citation:
Mehr, Samuel, Manvir Singh, Dean Knox, Daniel Ketter, Daniel Pickens-Jones, Stephanie Atwood, Christopher Lucas, Alena Egner, Nori Jacoby, Erin J Hopkins, Rhea M Howard, Joshua Hartshorne, Mariela Jennings, Jan Simson, Constance Bainbridge, Steven Pinker, Timothy J O’Donnell, Max Krasnow, and Luke Glowacki. 2021. “Universality and diversity in human song.” Science, 366, 6468, Pp. 1-17.
It is unclear whether there are universal patterns to music across cultures. Mehr et al. examined ethnographic data and observed music in every society sampled (see the Perspective by Fitch and Popescu). For songs specifically, three dimensions characterize more than 25% of the performances studied: formality of the performance, arousal level, and religiosity. There is more variation in musical behavior within societies than between societies, and societies show similar levels of within-society variation in musical behavior. At the same time, one-third of societies significantly differ from average for any given dimension, and half of all societies differ from average on at least one dimension, indicating variability across cultures.
