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1.3.24 Music Is the Universal Language, So What Is World Music? Here's a List
Similar musical elements show up to some degree in the music of all cultures. In that sense, music is a universal language, perhaps another meaning of the term, "world music." For example, Westerners listening to Hindustani music report feeling the same specific emotions as the emotions Hindustani musicians report they are intending to convey. Similarly, young children specify the same emotions elicited by a piece of music as do adults. If you could time-travel, you would find the same musical universals in the music of cultures that went extinct tens of thousands of years ago.
Today, music likely tops the list of all the artistic activities humans practise globally. Here are some musical universals (Table 3)—musical traits found in all musical cultures worldwide (not necessarily characteristic of every individual, but in pretty much all cultures):
TABLE 3 Some Musical Universals
- Cadence
- Children’s music as its own genre
- Dancing to musical accompaniment
- Emotions aroused by the same musical information are the same emotions (i.e., not dependent on previous exposure or knowledge of the music being played)
- Harmonic sensing automatic (i.e., ability to sense a note and relate it harmonically to other notes)
- Infants’ ability to discriminate differences in pitch and timing
- Intervals with small-integer frequency ratios, such as octaves, fifths, and fourths
- Melody, and grouping of melodic notes into sequences
- Music considered as art
- Music listening involves rhythmic bodily movement (entrainment)
- Music not a rare talent
- Music used in ritual or religious practice
- Music used to mark important events
- Musical instruments
- Phrase as the basic unit of musical structure
- Resources and time dedicated to music are substantial (applies as much to industrial societies as to hunter-gatherer societies)
- Rhythm based on isometric beats
- Rhythmic pulse groupings of 2 or 3 beats
- Scales of 7 or fewer different pitches to the octave
- Scales with unequal steps, such as the pentatonic scale
- Song classification/categorization
- Songs with short repetitive phrases within a range of a perfect fifth
- Symmetry in musical structure/form
- Vocal music, practised by both men and women