Published papers

Musics, like languages and genes, evolve through a process of transmission, variation, and selection. Evolution of musical tune families has been studied qualitatively for over a century, but quantitative analysis has been hampered by an inability to objectively distinguish between musical similarities that are due to chance and those that are due to descent from a common ancestor. Here we propose an automated method to identify tune families by adapting genetic sequence alignment algorithms designed for automatic identification and alignment of protein families. We tested the effectiveness of our method against a high-quality ground-truth dataset of 26 folk tunes from four diverse tune families (two English, two Japanese) that had previously been identified and aligned manually by expert musicologists. We tested different combinations of parameters related to sequence alignment and to modeling of pitch, rhythm, and text to find the combination that best matched the ground-truth classifications. The best-performing automated model correctly grouped 100% (26/26) of the tunes in terms of overall similarity to other tunes, identifying 85% (22/26) of these tunes as forming distinct tune families. The success of our approach on a diverse, cross-cultural ground-truth dataset suggests promise for future automated reconstruction of musical evolution on a wide scale.

Comparative musicology has the potential to contribute greatly to our understanding of the evolution of culture. Comparative musicology flourished during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but declined after World War II due in part to its reliance on questionable models of progressive evolution. Its successor, ethnomusicology, generally avoided cross- cultural comparison and evolutionary theory. We propose a return to the forgotten agenda of comparative musicology, but one that is updated with modern scientific method and evolutionary theory. We outline five key areas and debates where comparative musicological data can contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of the evolution of culture : 1) classification, 2) mechanisms of cultural evolution, 3) migration, 4) universals, and 5) biological evolution. We suggest that examining the coevolutionary relationships between musics, languages, and genes will provide a promising avenue for exploring these areas in future research.

We propose a return to the forgotten agenda of comparative musicology, one that is updated with the paradigms of modern evolutionary theory and scientific methodology. Ever since the field of comparative musicology became redefined as ethnomusicology in the mid-20th century, its original research agenda has been all but abandoned by musicologists, not least the overarching goal of cross-cultural musical comparison. We outline here five major themes that underlie the re-establishment of comparative musicology: (1) classification, (2) cultural evolution, (3) human history, (4) universals, and (5) biological evolution. Throughout the article, we clarify key ideological, methodological and terminological objections that have been levied against musical comparison. Ultimately, we argue for an inclusive, constructive, and multidisciplinary field that analyzes the world’s musical diversity, from the broadest of generalities to the most culture-specific particulars, with the aim of synthesizing the full range of theoretical perspectives and research methodologies available.