Week 2 (1/12-1/14) The Body: Evolutionary Psychology, "The Biology of Music-Making," and Musical Universals

Reading: All readings located in course reserve binder, call # DeWitt Mus950.01 PC-1, unless call number is explicitly given below.



Group A—Evolutionary Psychology

Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. 1992. "The Psychological Foundations of Culture," in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, 19-136. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.



Group B—The Biology of Music-Making

Blacking, John. 1992. "The Biology of Music-Making," in Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, editor Helen Myers. The Norton/Grove Handbooks in Music, New York, NY: W.W. Norton. ML3799.E826 1992.

Baily, John. 1992. "Music Performance, Motor Structure, and Cognitive Models," in European Studies in Ethnomusicology: Historical Developments and Recent Trends, editors Max Peter Baumann, Artur Simon, and Ulrich Wegner, 142-158. Intercultural Music Studies, series editor. Max Peter Baumann, 4. Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag.

Blacking, John, editor. 1977. The Anthropology of the Body. Association of Social Anthropologists Monograph, 15. London: Academic Press.
pp. v-x, 1-28

Tolbert, Elizabeth. 1992. "Theories of Meaning and Music Cognition: An Ethnomusicological Approach." World of Music 34/3:7-21.



Group C—Musical Universals

Dowling, W. Jay, and Dane L. Harwood. 1986. Music Cognition. Academic Press Series in Cognition and Perception, San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
pp. 235-239

Meyer, Leonard B. 1960. "Universalism and Relativism in the Study of Ethnic Music." Ethnomusicology 4/2:49-54.

Becker, Judith. 1994. "Music and Trance." Leonardo Music Journal 4:41-52.

Rouget, Gilbert. 1977. "Music and Possession Trance," In The Anthropology of the Body, editor John Blacking, 233-239. Association of Social Anthropologists Monograph, 15. London: Academic Press.

___. 1985. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations Between Music and Possession. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
(book review presentation)



Bibliography searches: The subject of your one-paragraph annotation should be, how does or can the reading contribute to cognitive ethnomusicology? If not, why not?

  1. Birdsong
  2. Psychological literature on trance
  3. Evolutionary thought in comparative musicology (ethnomusicology before 1950)
  4. Evolutionary thought in ethnomusicology since 1950
  5. Neuroscientific studies on music
  6. Cross-cultural neuroscience studies
  7. Musicological controversies concerning universals