Cross-cultural perspectives on music and musicality

Abstract: Musical behaviours are universal across human populations and, at the same time, highly diverse in their structures, roles and cultural interpretations. Although laboratory studies of isolated listeners and music-makers have yielded important insights into sensorimotor and cognitive skills and their neural underpinnings, they have revealed little about the broader significance of music for individuals, peer groups and communities. This review presents a sampling of musical forms and coordinated musical activity across cultures, with the aim of highlighting key similarities and differences... 

 

...The focus is on scholarly and everyday ideas about music—what it is and where it originates—as well the antiquity of music and the contribution of musical behaviour to ritual activity, social organization, caregiving and group cohesion. Synchronous arousal, action synchrony and imitative behaviours are among the means by which music facilitates social bonding. The commonalities and differences in musical forms and functions across cultures suggest new directions for ethnomusicology, music cognition and neuroscience, and a pivot away from the predominant scientific focus on instrumental music in the Western European tradition. (Trehub, Becker & Morley, 2015)

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- Trehub, S. E., Becker, J. & Morley, I. (2015). Cross-cultural perspectives on music and musicality. Philos Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biol Sciences, 370, full text: link
- photograph of George Harrison via

Ethnomusicology as an Intercultural Tool

In 1885, the Bohemian-Austrian musicologist Guido Adler used the term ethnomusicology for the first time. It was founded as "comparative musicology" with the aim to compare music cultures of different peoples, countries, and territories for ethnographic reasons (Hemetek, 2010).



As ethnomusicology involves research into music of non-Western cultures, it requires an understanding of the social, religious, historical and political background of the people (Natalia, 1978).



Comparing different music cultures means trying to understand them which again can be seen as a point of departure for interculturality. At the beginning, European classical music was defined as the standard, as the foundation for all comparisons. Due to this eurocentric view, all except European was seen as primitive.



Today, ethnomusicology is defined by an interculturally comparative perspective, an important aspect of its application is: for the benefit of the people that are studied. Ethnomusicologists bridge the gap to the cultural "other". The former concept of homogeneity was replaced by a concept of heterogeneity (Hemetek, 2010).



Hemetek, U. (2010) Applied ethnomusicology as an intercultural tool: Some experiences from the last 25 years of minority research in Austria. Proceedings of cAIR10, the first Conference on Applied Interculturality Research (Graz, Austria, 7-10 April 2010), 1-9
Natalia (1978) Ethnomusicology and its relationship to some aspects of music in Cetshwayo's time. Natal Society Foundation, 61-68; photos via and via and via and via