Home
Scholarly Works
Universals in the world’s musics
Journal article

Universals in the world’s musics

Abstract

Many decades of skepticism have prevented the field of musicology from embracing the importance of musical universals. When universals have been discussed, it has generally been in the form of meta-critiques about the concept of universals, rather than in positive proposals about actual universals. We present here a typology of four categories of musical universals and a listing of 70 putative universals in musics cross-culturally. These universals span a wide variety of features, including pitch, rhythm, melodic structure, form, vocal style, expressive devices, instruments, performance contexts, contents, and behaviors.

Authors

Brown S; Jordania J

Journal

Psychology of Music, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 229–248

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Publication Date

January 1, 2013

DOI

10.1177/0305735611425896

ISSN

0305-7356

Contact the Experts team