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Study: Common beat runs through world music

"Our findings help explain why humans make music," researcher Thomas Currie said.

By Brooks Hays
Common beats characterize world music. File photo by UPI Photo/Michael Kleinfeld
Common beats characterize world music. File photo by UPI Photo/Michael Kleinfeld | License Photo

EXETER, England, June 29 (UPI) -- The world is a noisy, vibrant place. Full of diversity. One might say, each world culture marches to the beat of their own drum. Except they don't, exactly.

New research suggests a common rhythm runs through the entire catalogue of world music. Worldly revelers may be marching to their own beat -- but they're dancing to a universal one.

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The new study, carried out by scientists at the University of Exeter and Tokyo University of the Arts, finds that world music is littered with commonalities. The draw of music, the need for it, is human nature -- nature common to all human cultures.

"Our findings help explain why humans make music," researcher Thomas Currie, a professor at Exeter, explained in a press release. "The results show that the most common features seen in music around the world relate to things that allow people to coordinate their actions, and suggest that the main function of music is to bring people together and bond social groups -- it can be a kind of social glue."

In analyzing more than 300 musical samples from songs all over the globe (and from a variety of cultures), researchers found a range of commonalities and related patterns, involving pitch, rhythm, composition structure and social context.

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In their statistical analysis, researchers identified rhythms based on two or three beats common to all types of world music -- songs originating from everywhere from North America to Northern Africa, from the Balkans to Southeast Asia.

"In the West we can sometimes think of music as being about individuals expressing themselves or displaying their talent, but globally music tends to be more of a social phenomena," Currie said. "Even here we see this in things like church choirs, or the singing of national anthems. In countries like North Korea we can also see extreme examples of how music and mass dance can be used to unite and coordinate groups."

The new research was published in the journal PNAS.

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