Is music biology? Is music culture?

Some animals sing. Songbirds, whales and gibbons sing to mark their territories and to attract mates. Some sound sequences are genetically implanted in the brain, some sound sequences are learned.

When you listen to roaring soccer fans, it sounds like territorial marking. If you watch pop or opera stars and their fans, you see a lot of attraction and courtship behavior.

Our closest relatives – the bonobos and chimpanzees – have no music. How did humans come to music? How did music come to humans?

Did our ancestors roar in chorus on the savannah to keep other hordes at bay? But wouldn’t that have attracted too many hungry lions and hyenas?

Did our ancestors sit by the fire and sing to make an impression on the opposite sex?

Yes, our ancestors will probably have done both. But that is still no explanation for the origin of music. So how could music have originated in humans?

According to current knowledge, there is much to suggest that mothers and babies were the first to throw melodic sounds back and forth to each other.

Later, music grew out of the infant milieu and was warbled for entertainment and, of course, for courtship. This led to the more musical early humans reproducing more successfully than the unmusical ones. And from then on, music and the genes for music developed rapidly.

More in the chapter: Orpheus in the primeval world – What is music and why?