Global musical diversity is largely independent of linguistic and genetic histories

Sam Passmore (), Anna L. C. Wood (), Chiara Barbieri, Dor Shilton, Hideo Daikoku, Quentin D. Atkinson and Patrick E. Savage ()
Additional contact information
Sam Passmore: Keio University
Anna L. C. Wood: Association for Cultural Equity
Chiara Barbieri: University of Zurich
Dor Shilton: Tel Aviv University
Hideo Daikoku: Keio University
Quentin D. Atkinson: University of Auckland
Patrick E. Savage: University of Auckland

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Music is a universal yet diverse cultural trait transmitted between generations. The extent to which global musical diversity traces cultural and demographic history, however, is unresolved. Using a global musical dataset of 5242 songs from 719 societies, we identify five axes of musical diversity and show that music contains geographical and historical structures analogous to linguistic and genetic diversity. After creating a matched dataset of musical, genetic, and linguistic data spanning 121 societies containing 981 songs, 1296 individual genetic profiles, and 121 languages, we show that global musical similarities are only weakly and inconsistently related to linguistic or genetic histories, with some regional exceptions such as within Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that global musical traditions are largely distinct from some non-musical aspects of human history.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48113-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-48113-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48113-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().