Dr. Sam Passmore and Hideo Daikoku of the Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance and Associate Professor Patrick Savage of the Keio University Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, in collaboration with colleagues from around the world, have conducted the first global comparison of musical, linguistic, and genetic diversity. They developed the Global Jukebox (http://theglobaljukebox.org) – a public database of over 5,000 songs coded using a standardized "Cantometric" classification scheme – and compared it with global databases of genetic and linguistic diversity. Direct comparison of 121 societies with matched musical, linguistic, and genetic data revealed surprising differences in the global distribution of musical, linguistic, and genetic diversity, suggesting that music has its own story to tell about human history. The results were published in the open-access journal Nature Communications on May 10, 2024.
