In two recent studies, researchers uncovered clues that suggest the link between music and language is a straightforward one.
A study article published in Science Advances comparing songs and speeches from other global cultures. Yuto Ozaki and Patrick Savage of Keio University in Japan collaborated with a giant team of foreign studios to analyze recordings of songs, melodies and speeches in more than 50 languages around the world. the world.
By looking at many other musical languages and cultures, they can investigate how the characteristics of speech and music compare, regardless of the differences between languages or musical styles. In general, they found that instrumental songs and melodies were slower and sharper than the spoken word. The reason is still clear, but Savage suspects that one of the reasons music is more predictable and natural than speech may simply be because it can act as a form of social bonding.
A total of 75 students participated in this study, each of whom contributed to an audio recording of themselves speaking and composing a song (or making music in some other way). Savage didn’t have much trouble convincing his fellow musicians to sing. Most of them laughed, and Savage enjoyed reviewing this rare set of study data. “I downloaded all of his songs and lyrics to my phone,” he says. “And I shuffled it as I walk. ” I really enjoy listening to his songs.
Savage himself represented the English language with the song “Scarborough Fair,” while Ozaki sang “Ōmori Jinku,” a Japanese folk song from the Tokyo area. The many other researchers involved in the recordings contributed in Maori, Yoruba, Cherokee, Hebrew, Mandarin. , Arabic, and several other languages.
Although the focus of the study was very broad, it was not conceivable to have more than a few samples according to the language or musical culture, so more in-depth studies are still needed.
Meanwhile, Savage also participated in a study work with Sam Passmore of the Australian National University (ANU) and others, in which they used the “Global Jukebox”. It is a knowledge base of more than five thousand songs, each of them annotated with data on musical taste and geographical data. They compare the knowledge of the Global Jukebox with knowledge bases that record genetic diversity or linguistic diversity in other regions.
Genetic and linguistic research is used to examine how human societies have evolved and spread around the world. For example, cultures that have diverged more recently will have more similar languages than cultures that diverged much longer ago.
But music also evolves over time, as do languages and genes. By analyzing the Global Jukebox database, lead researcher Passmore hoped to discover whether musical evolution aligned with that of language and genetics. “What we learned is that musical history occasionally diverges from linguistic and genetic history and may be more aligned with other markers such as social organization,” Passmore said in a statement to ANU.
Together, those two new studies begin to reveal how music plays a role in cultures around the world and in which spaces it intersects or differs from languages. It’s obviously a complex relationship.
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