Music is in our genes : Nature News
Here is an interesting article on Nature. It’s a study that show a correlation between genetics and singing patterns in African tribes. This reminds me of how me and my dad would joke that we’re good at drumming because of our Afro roots (there are unverified, yet plausible family legends of Sub-Saharan African ancestry on the English side of the family).
The study used an arbitrary set of ways to measure singing patters, such as presence of yodeling, pitch, etc and looks at correlations with geography and with genetics. The strongest relationship was with genetics. Of course, this doesn’t rule out the possibility that culture passed down generations can be more powerful than influence from neighboring tribes especially given that people move around a lot, so it would only add up to noise.
Now, if a child adopted from another tribe had difficulty with his or her host family’s singing style (unlikely, though it was a good gag in The Jerk), this might give credence to the notion that “Music is in our genes” and even to the absurd racialist notion that culture is burnt onto the EEPROM, not installed on the hard drive. That being said, it’s not too far-fetched to think that people who’s ancestors were in tribes that placed greater importance on music in ritual would, on average, have more innate musical talents. The musical sense in general is universal and that would mean that we’ve been doing this stuff as long as, or even before, we were human.
Unfortunately, since it’s been long enough, you need a subscription to Nature to read the article now, but it was free when I read it.