Abstract
Human interaction through music is a vital part of social life across cultures. Influential accounts of the evolutionary origins of music favor cooperative functions related to social cohesion or competitive functions linked to sexual selection. However, work on non-human “chorusing” displays, as produced by congregations of male insects and frogs to attract female mates, suggests that cooperative and competitive functions may coexist. In such chorusing, rhythmic coordination between signalers, which maximizes the salience of the collective broadcast, can arise through competitive mechanisms by which individual males jam rival signals. Here, we show that mixtures of cooperative and competitive behavior also occur in human music. Acoustic analyses of the renowned St. Thomas Choir revealed that, in the presence of female listeners, boys with the deepest voices enhance vocal brilliance and carrying power by boosting high spectral energy. This vocal enhancement may reflect sexually mature males competing for female attention in a covert manner that does not undermine collaborative musical goals. The evolutionary benefits of music may thus lie in its aptness as a medium for balancing sexually motivated behavior and group cohesion.
Highlights
Music is a social communicative art form whose pervasiveness across human cultures suggests convergent evolutionary origins (McDermott and Hauser, 2005; Fitch, 2006; Merker et al, 2015)
The incidence of singing in male humpback whales is greater in the presence of unescorted mother-calf pairs than for mother-calf pairs who are already escorted by another male (Smith et al, 2008). It has been proposed—originally by Darwin (1871)—that the genesis of human music lies in courtship displays that evolved through sexual selection fuelled by competition between individuals (Miller, 2000)
The present case study tested the hypothesis—motivated by research on non-human “chorusing” displays—that group music making serves cooperative and competitive functions simultaneously
Summary
Music is a social communicative art form whose pervasiveness across human cultures suggests convergent evolutionary origins (McDermott and Hauser, 2005; Fitch, 2006; Merker et al, 2015). The incidence of singing in male humpback whales is greater in the presence of unescorted mother-calf pairs (in which the adult female provides a mating opportunity) than for mother-calf pairs who are already escorted by another male (Smith et al, 2008). By analogy, it has been proposed—originally by Darwin (1871)—that the genesis of human music lies in courtship displays that evolved through sexual selection fuelled by competition between individuals (Miller, 2000)
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