Measuring the cultural evolution of music: Cross-cultural and cross-genre case studies

Abstract

In this article I apply methods for measuring the cultural evolution of music to four diverse case studies for which the history of musical evolution has already been qualitatively documented: 1) the divergence of the Scottish 17th c. Lady Cassiles Lilt into nearly unrecognizable 20th c. American descendants, 2) the merging of work songs from distant prefectures into the Japanese folk song Esashi Oiwake, 3) the simultaneous performance of vestigial, inaudible 1,000-year-old Chinese melodies and their radically changed descendants in the Japanese gagaku piece Seigaiha, and 4) the legal cases finding George Harrison's My Sweet Lord (1970) and Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams' Blurred Lines (2013) liable for copyright infringement. Although the precise mechanisms differ and absolute rates of evolution vary almost 400-fold within and between these case studies, several patterns are consistent with the predictions of previous research. These patterns include: 1) the relative ease of mutations to nearby pitches, 2) the relative predominance of insertions/deletions over substitutions, 3) the relative stability of functional notes (e.g., rhythmically stressed vs. unstressed), and 4) the relative stability of written over oral traditions. Both increases and decreases in complexity were observed, with no clear trend favouring one direction.

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