Bruno NettlAbstract
The existence and identification of universals in music have long been a matter
of concern to ethnomusicologists who considered them helpful in theorizing
about the origins of music. Identification of universals depends on definitions of
music, of musical units analogous to culture units, and on an interculturally valid
concept of music, all problematic issues. It may be helpful to consider various
levels of universals—those extant in music at all times, those present in each
musical utterance, others present in some sense in each musical system or musical
culture, and yet others found in most but not all cultures. A group of simple styles
with limited scalar structure, and forms consisting of one or two repeated phrases,
and found in virtually all known musics, may be the contemporary phenomena
closest to the earliest human music. However, musical universals can provide
only the most tentative guide to the origins of music.Ethnomusicology, Universals, and the Origins of Music
When I meet with colleagues at my university who are in other depart-
ments and explain to them that I work in a field known as ethnomusicol-
ogy, they usually ask me about what they call “ancient” music and are
surprised when I tell them that this is not a primary focus of my discipline.
On the other hand, during the last conference of the Society for Ethno-
musicology, while some 600 people devoted to that field had gathered in
Toronto, the New York Timesand the Toronto papers published an article
about what is supposed to be the oldest known musical instrument, a bone
“flute” with at least two finger holes, coming from a Neanderthal archeo-
logical site in Slovenia (see Kunej and Turk, this volume). I found it inter-
esting that no one at this meeting, to my knowledge, noted or mentioned
the discovery. The point is that ethnomusicologists today have no special
claim to be concerned with or to know something about the origins of
music.They are really more concerned with beliefs or myths of the world’s
societies about the origins of music, and with what these myths may tell
us about the way each of the world’s peoples conceives of music and its
role in culture. It is this discontinuity of attitudes that makes universals as
guides to the origins of music an issue wrapped in ambiguity.
The origins of music were once a hot topic in ethnomusicology, as sug-
gested by the title of one of the earliest classics of the field by Carl Stumpf,
The Beginnings of Music(1911), but it has cooled off considerably. In con-
trast, universals were once a matter of little concern but they have come
closer to being a hot topic. When I was a student I was taught that any
attempt to generalize about the music of the world should be countered
by an example falsifying that generalization. I was taught to reject the