Is Music an Adaptation or a Technology? Ethnomusicological Perspectives from the Analysis of Chinese Shuochang

Abstract

This paper examines two opposing perspectives on the debate about whether music is a biological adaptation or a technology. Those who espouse the first perspective claim that recent explorations into the intrinsic musical nature of human communication suggest an adaptive function for ‘communicative musicality.’ The main proponent of the second perspective argues that music is not an adaptation, but considers it biologically significant as a transformative technology. Based on my research into northern Chinese shuochang (‘speaking-singing’), I support the notion that musilanguage—an evolutionary antecedent of communicative musicality—is an adaptive trait, and consider shuochang a modern example that displays some of the characteristics of musilanguage, reflecting a difference between semanticity and musical play as the two ends of the musilinguistic spectrum. At the same time, I also suggest that shuochang has been technologised by written orthographies, making it an example of a transformative technology. In addition to recognising the significance of play on the musical side of the musilanguage gamut, I argue that humans are predisposed to technologising musilanguage, particularly in using some kind of visual orthography. I also suggest that neophilia—a biological instinct to search for the novel—may well be the root of musical play as well as the proclivity to technologise it.