The Pastoral Origin of Semiotically Functional Tonal Organization of Music

Abstract

This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born. Eleven principal expressive aspects of music each contains specific structural patterns whose configuration signifies a certain affective state. This distinguishes the tonal organization of music from the phonetic and prosodic organization of natural languages and animal communication. The question of music’s origin can therefore be answered by establishing the point in human history at which all eleven expressive aspects might have been abstracted from the instinct-driven primate calls and used to express human psycho-emotional states. Etic analysis of acoustic parameters is the prime means of cross-examination of the typical patterns of expression of the basic emotions in human music versus animal vocal communication. A new method of such analysis is proposed here. Formation of such expressive aspects as meter, tempo, melodic intervals, and articulation can be explained by the influence of bipedal locomotion, breathing cycle, and heartbeat, long before Homo sapiens. However, two aspects, rhythm and melodic contour, most crucial for music as we know it, lack proxies in the Paleolithic lifestyle. The available ethnographic and developmental data leads one to believe that rhythmic and directional patterns of melody became involved in conveying emotion-related information in the process of frequent switching from one call-type to another within the limited repertory of calls. Such calls are usually adopted for the ongoing caretaking of human youngsters and domestic animals. The efficacy of rhythm and pitch contour in affective communication must have been spontaneously discovered in new important cultural activities. The most likely scenario for music to have become fully semiotically functional and to have spread wide enough to avoid extinctions is the formation of cross-specific communication between humans and domesticated animals during the Neolithic demographic explosion and the subsequent cultural revolution. Changes in distance during such communication must have promoted the integration between different expressive aspects and generated the basic musical grammar. The model of such communication can be found in the surviving tradition of Scandinavian pastoral music - kulning. This article discusses the most likely ways in which such music evolved.

The evolution of human music in light of increased prosocial behavior: a new model

“…Similarities extend to the animal lullabies in traditional pastoralist societies sharing many common traits with human lullabies and animal spells -with human magic spells, found in human communication to virtually all domestic animals [13]. What unites all of these forms of musicking by means of singing, humming, whistling, and articulating unusual sounds is the framework of establishing an intimate bond between just two parties, which lays down the foundation for building a repertory of meaningful signals as a "mini-culture," confined to a duetic format [345].…”

“…Although humans show a propensity for acquiring and using languages in order to fulfill many goals, linguists carefully distinguish between the human faculty of language (e.g., language-readiness or human linguisticality), the languages we speak (their suite of distinctive structural features as well as their commonalities with other languages), and the diverse uses of language. In our view, the starting point for any attempt to delineate the evolutionary history of music should be a comprehensive and reliable structural definition of music, followed by a comprehensive and reliable 10 In many indigenous societies, vocalizations associated with magic beliefs are not regarded as "music" per se, despite their close similarity (to the extent of being audibly undistinguishable) to the sound of genres that are regarded as music: e.g., animal spells, animal lullabies, children lullabies, and milking songs [13]. Similar confusion characterizes the use of recitative in liturgical service of a number of religious denominations.…”

“…A very limited use of repetition for specific effects is regulated by rhetoric figures: a single repetition in antimetabole, antanaclasis, anadiplosis, epanalepsis and polyptoton; 1-4 repetitions in epizeuxis, 3-4 in epistrophe and mesodiplosis, 2-8 in anaphora and diacope [21]. 13 Compared to music, this level of redundancy is insignificant. Thus, a popular song "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder is based on about a hundred repetitions of the same riff [22].…”

“…Even in the tradition of classical music, where frequent mechanical repetition of the same brief thematic material is generally regarded as bad taste, there are genres based on exact reproduction of the same theme in the same part -e.g., passacaglia (for example, 21 continuous repetitions in the famous Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor BWV 582 by Bach). 13 More frequent repetitions of the same pattern of verbal expression tend to make speech acquire musical traits, as evident in such genres as street cries, forest calls, magic incantations, shamanic healing rituals, moherese, herders' conversations with domestic animals, or animal spells for sick domestic animals. In all these examples, a repeated pattern that expresses a particular affective state or an attitude becomes prolonged, directing the listener's attention to the tonal properties of sound rather than the lexical meaning of words -which makes the sound music-like.…”

“…After providing a definition of music and identifying specific features of music, we shall list the types of functions typically performed by music, according to the ethnomusicological, cognitive, and sociological data [12,13,17,29,[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]. Active (performance) and passive (listening) uses 15 of music can be grouped in 14 general operational types, following the criteria of cross-cultural stability of their pragmatics and presence of specific structural means to distinguish each type of use.…”