The Cultural Evolution of Music

For many years, music was treated as a reified auditory stimulus, and its evolution studied within a neo-Darwinian framework. This talk will present an alternative theory, which defines music as an interactive technology that evolved first as a cultural invention, and was only later genetically accommodated. The relationship of music to language and attachment will be discussed, as well as the social niche of human codependence which made music not only possible, but also advantageous.