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Origin of Culture and Cultural Similarities
All culture, including music, is biological in origin because culture originates, ultimately, in human brains, and manifests amazing similarity worldwide. What we humans think, what we know, and how we behave comes partly from our genetic inheritance, and partly from what we learn (using our brains) from the people we personally associate with, and the cultural artifacts we come in contact with, such as the television we watch and the music we listen to.
Our genes do not control us. But the culture around us does not control us, either. No amount of social engineering can change that. As the American biologist E. O. Wilson aptly put it in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, On Human Nature, “The genes hold culture on a leash.”
We humans use our brains to create new, original culture all the time. But it’s rarely so new and so original that it has nothing to do with our genetic predispositions, notwithstanding the efforts of postmodern artists, including musicians.