As mentioned Friday, I have been working on a larger post regarding music and the brain. This is going to take some more extensive research before posting it here. In part, I've been inspired by a couple of music cognition/neuroscience books: Daniel Levitin's The World in Six Songs (which I am currently finishing up) and Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia. 

These are both excellent sources of information regarding the connection between music and the mind, sharing countless anecdotes and examples of the brain's (and, ultimately, humanity's) dependence on music and vice-versa. However, one thing neither tackles in depth - and what I am curious about - is how this two-sided relationship differs among different cultures. Has the brain evolved different responses to music - and thus, different music preferences and tendencies to create different kinds of music - in different regions around the world? Furthermore, does music fulfill the same instinctive human needs in every culture? And to what extent? Obviously, these are some big questions, some of which are nearly impossible to answer with any clarity. 

What's particularly strange about Levitin's book (despite my extreme fondness for it) is that while he posits a lot of universal ideas about human/brain evolution alongside musical evolution, almost all of his specific examples come from Western music. Obviously, his experiences as an American guitarist and record producer have given him a broader knowledge/understanding of modern American musics, so he's playing to his strengths - not to mention the fact that the book is marketed toward a Western audience. But I find it surprising that he doesn't spend more time focusing on the earliest known origins of music/instruments - possible Neanderthal bone flutes from Germany and Slovenia have been dated back to at least 30,000 years ago (and many sources say longer). Levitin does theorize about the origins of vocal song/music and the possible evolution of non-human sounds (e.g. frog croaks) alongside the evolution of humans. Have we always had 'music,' even just as primitive mimetic noises? I believe what many of us would call 'music' - more organized sounds, although definitions differ (to say the least!) - probably didn't exist until we had reached at least a near-human evolutionary stage. Even so, did music evolve independently in many parts of the world? Or did it 'originate' primarily in one (or just a few) locations and spread?

More or less unrelated, I visited our closest branch of the New Orleans Public Library today and checked out - among other things - a 1970s field recording of Korean court music by ethnomusicology giant John Levy. Some sort of analysis of that should be coming soon - and likely before the brain-related post, considering the magnitude of that one.