Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception
| Autor: | Ricardo Godoy, Josh H. McDermott, Alan F. Schultz, Eduardo A. Undurraga |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Adult
Male Pleasure Bolivia Rainforest Esthetics Urban Population Culture Singing 050105 experimental psychology 03 medical and health sciences Young Adult 0302 clinical medicine Cognitive dissonance Humans 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Natural sounds Multidisciplinary Music psychology Indians South American 05 social sciences Contrast (music) Consonance and dissonance Acoustics United States Variation (linguistics) Harmony (Music) Sound Acoustic Stimulation Aesthetics Auditory Perception Female 030217 neurology & neurosurgery Music |
| Zdroj: | Nature Artículos CONICYT CONICYT Chile instacron:CONICYT |
| ISSN: | 1476-4687 |
| Popis: | by biology remains debated. One widely discussed phenomenon is that some combinations of notes are perceived by Westerners as pleasant, or consonant, whereas others are perceived as unpleasant,or dissonant. The contrast between consonance and dissonance is central to Western music and its origins have fascinated scholars since the ancient Greeks. Aesthetic responses to consonance are commonly assumed by scientists to have biological roots, and thus to be universally present in humans. Ethnomusicologists and composers, in contrast, have argued that consonance is a creation of Western musical culture. The issue has remained unresolved, partly because little is known about the extent of cross-cultural variation in consonance preferences. Here we report experiments with the Tsimane'--a native Amazonian society with minimal exposure to Western culture--and comparison populations in Bolivia and the United States that varied in exposure to Western music. Participants rated the pleasantness of sounds. Despite exhibiting Western-like discrimination abilities and Western-like aesthetic responses to familiar sounds and acoustic roughness, the Tsimane' rated consonant and dissonant chords and vocal harmonies as equally pleasant. By contrast, Bolivian city- and town-dwellers exhibited significant preferences for consonance,albeit to a lesser degree than US residents. The results indicate that consonance preferences can be absent in cultures sufficiently isolated from Western music, and are thus unlikely to reflect innate biases or exposure to harmonic natural sounds. The observed variation in preferences is presumably determined by exposure to musical harmony, suggesting that culture has a dominant role in shaping aesthetic responses to music. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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