ZOOMUSICOLOGY AND ETHNOMUSICOLOGY: A MARRIAGE TO CELEBRATE IN HEAVEN

Author(s): Marcello Sorce Keller

Source: Yearbook for Traditional Music , Vol. 44 (2012), pp. 166-183
Published by: International Council for Traditional Music
Stable URL: [Link]

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 Zoomusicology and Ethnomusicology:
A Marriage to Celebrate in Heaven
Marcello Sorce Keller

What Cartesian nonsense to think of birdsong as pre-programmed cries uttered by birds to

advertise their presence to the opposite sex, and so forth! Each bird-cry is a full-hearted
release of the self into the air, accompanied by such joy, as we can barely comprehend.
(J. M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year, 2008:132)

S’il s’avère que la musique est un phénomène répandu chez plusieurs espèces vivantes
en-dehors de l’homme, cela remettra forcément en cause la définition de la musique, et
plus largement de l’homme et de sa culture, ainsi que l’idée que l’on se fait de l’animal
lui-même.
(François-Bernard Mâche, Musique, mythe, nature, 1983:61)

Why this article

This is not a research article. It is rather an opinion piece, the expression of interest
for an area of intellectual endeavour that appears promising and, in my perception,
could inject a surplus of energy into ethnomusicology and make it an even more
exciting field than it has already been.
It was pure serendipity that many years ago, while reading an issue of the
National Geographic, I chanced upon some intriguing scholarship devoted to—of
all things—the sonic world of humpback whales (Earle 1979; Payne 1979). I was
fascinated, because what I read perfectly complemented what I was learning at
the time about the dynamics of oral traditions, as Bruno Nettl explained them in a
seminar at the University of Illinois, that is, how they are governed by continuity,
variation, and selection.1 Ever since those readings I kept an eye on research focus-
ing on animal sounds. My perception is that many scholars working in ethnomusi-
cology may not necessarily be aware of how much there is to them, and how much
there is in them that we might easily connect to.2 At least I do not suppose any of
my readers will easily recall many articles on animal sounds published in the major
musicology or ethnomusicology journals.3 My interest in this area also combines
at the present time with my growing uneasiness with the word “music,” what I
call a “word of mass deception,” overloaded with romantic overtones, and giving
1.  Those characteristics were part of how “folk music” was defined by the International
Folk Music Council in 1954 (Karpeles 1955).
2.  The appended, selective, admittedly idiosyncratic bibliography offers a sample of the
extensive literature dealing with animal sonic productions, and how it gathers contributions
from different fields, including the newest in the area of music studies, i.e., zoomusicology.
3.  They occasionally appear in the Transcultural Music Review (Doolittle 2008; Taylor
2008), Contemporary Music Review (Mâche 1997), and Musicae Scientiae (Merker 1999;
2002). Otherwise, they turn up in periodicals like Music Perception (D’Amato 1988; Fitch
2006; Merker 2006; Patel 2006), not often read by most music scholars.
Yearbook for Traditional Music 44 (2012)

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 167

the impression that it corresponds to something solid and definable existing out
there—whereas it does not. That is why I once suggested the usefulness of speak-
ing about “sound-centred,” “sound-enhanced,” “sound-complemented” forms
of behaviour—forms of behaviour that are not necessarily human (Sorce Keller
2010).4 It may be the Platonic heritage we all share in Western society that makes
many of us constantly look for “things” rather than processes; and once labels
are attached to our mental constructs, the tendency is to believe that they exist in
reality;5 at which point seeking out their essence and definite boundaries becomes
the challenge. It is this heritage that easily engenders the belief that a fuzzy con-
cept such as “music” may refer to something ontologically solid in possession of
Homo sapiens. And yet evolutionary biology shows that in nature, boundaries are
often blurred. The very concept of “species” is a good example. In fact, Darwin’s
theory of evolution is all about the ways in which old species change into new
ones. There is no answer to the question of where one species finishes and a new
one begins, because each one of them evolves into another by minimal genetic
alterations spread over millions of years (Dawkins 2010). By the same token, I
would like to suggest that along the process leading from “non-music” (however
defined) to what we may call “music” (however defined), so spread out in time as it
is, across cultures, and quite probably, across animal species and genera, there are
no borderlines or sharp transition stages.
In ethnomusicology we know quite well how problematic the term “music”
really is, and how many cultures employ specialized terminology to indicate dif-
ferent forms of organized sound, avoiding any catch-all concept. What a hindrance
it can be, when we use it as a tool for gaining knowledge, is even more effectively
realized if we abandon an anthropocentric view of things. If we do so it becomes
easier to see who we are and what we do, because the evolutionary processes that
made humans so different from other animals are hard to understand if not com-
pared with one another. Stephen Blum, while explaining the importance of eth-

4. When observing sound-centred, sound-enhanced, or sound-complemented forms

of behaviour, two main characteristics may signal when they fall into the area that most
Westerners are likely to indicate as “musical”: (a) the degree to which sonic behaviour
requires to be “listened to,” rather than just “heard” (related to hi-brow/low-brow classifica-
tion of genres, where at the lower end of the spectrum some would be reluctant to speak of
“music”); (b) the amount of information that sonic behaviours and their signals carry. For
instance, tool and machine noises carry low information content and high redundancy—
they only tell us that someone is working. At the other end of the continuum we find sound
with high information content. Some of that may be translatable (and largely falls into the
language-communication category). What remains untranslatable may either be intrinsic to
the sonic configuration itself (where “the message is the form” and there is gratification in
making sense of it), extrinsic and socially-constructed, or a combination of both. Here one
realizes that putting everything into the same basket and calling it “music” is not likely to
help us gain much knowledge. In other words, the term “music” has little heuristic potential
and is rather a blanket term which blurs all differences.
5.  I am reminded in this connection of Émile Durkheim and how in his Les règles de la
méthode sociologique (1895) he states that the “first” and most fundamental rule is to con-
sider “social facts” as “things” (rather than “processes”)—and today’s fuzzy logic could
probably help us get out of this dualistic perception: either it is an object or a process.

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168 2012 yearbook for traditional music

nomusicology, once put it quite aptly by saying that “a musicology that excludes
‘non-Western music’ and ‘non-art music’ cannot describe the attributes of ‘Western
music’ and ‘art-music’ ” (Blum 1986:3). By the same token, and in a broader per-
spective, I would like to suggest that musical scholarship excluding non-human
animals cannot ultimately describe “how musical is man” (Blacking 1973).

Monkeys, whales … and other things in-between

At the beginning of the twentieth century, comparative musicologists did take into
consideration the possibility that forms of “music” might exist among non-human
animals. Hornbostel and Herzog come to mind first of all (Hornbostel 1911; Herzog
1941).6 That is understandable because they had it high on their list of priorities to
investigate the question of the origins of music and of music universals. In the evo-
lutionary perspective of the time, it only made sense to consider life forms believed
to represent an earlier evolutionary stage than Homo sapiens, as biological environ-
ments in which to look for survivals of pre-musical utterances and practices.7 Not
to be forgotten in determining this orientation is the influence of that ancient tradi-
tion (going back to the Renaissance and Middle Ages) that made it conceivable to
think of music as something not necessarily human. That is a tradition often voiced
by poets, from Dante Alighieri8 to George Gordon Byron.9 Intriguing snippets of

6.  Birdsong mostly attracted their attention. In the Western world, birdsong more than any
other animal sound has been recognized, since antiquity, to have musical quality. That is
witnessed in modern times by the large number of composers who, in one way or another,
made use of bird songs in their pieces: Janequin, Beethoven, Respighi, Messiaen, and Villa-
Lobos among others. Across cultures, where music may be differently conceptualized, if it
is at all, birdsong is not necessarily perceived as “musical.”
7.  Today we easily forget what a veritable paradigm the concept of cultural evolution was,
even in music studies. Only after World War II did it come under criticism when, for instance,
Sir Jack Westrup in 1955 explained that Purcell is not more complex than Byrd, and that
continuity does not necessarily imply development from simple to complex, or progress
from a lower to higher level: “There is no objection whatever to speaking of the ‘evolution’
of music, but we shall get into great difficulties if we regard it as synonymous with progress”
(Westrup 1970:13). He added further: “The application of evolutionary theory has induced
authors to regard a period as a time of steady progress from small or even insignificant
beginnings to heights of supreme mastery. The method is seen in its most grotesque form in
the History of Music by Sir Charles Stanford and Cecil Forsith” (ibid.:54).
8.  “Quando la rota, che tu sempiterni / Desiderato, a sé mi fece atteso, Con l’armonia che
temperi e discerni, / Parvemi tanto, allor, del cielo acceso / De la fiamma del sol, che pioggia
o fiume / Lago non fece mai tanto disteso” (Dante, Paradiso, 1, 76–81).
9.  “There’s music in the sighing of a reed; There’s music in the gushing of a rill; There’s
music in all things, if men had ears; Their earth is but an echo of the spheres” (Don Juan,
1819–24, canto 15/5). Needless to say, if we could have Plato and Boethius with us today,
they would find our concept of “music” quite narrow. They both regarded what we today
consider “music” (humanly organized sound) as only one segment of a broader, universe-
embracing phenomenon unfolding on three hierarchical levels: on the first and highest, the
“music of the spheres,” or musica mundana, a concept taken seriously as late as Kepler
(Stephenson 1994). And then, “on the second level, Boethius placed musica humana,
‘humana’ being interpreted both physically and spiritually. In the first sense, reference is

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 169

information had also appeared in the early literature on music history, concern-
ing animals supposedly making music, although some of them were quite improb-
able. In fact, according to Jaap Kunst (1974:49, n.2), Jacques Bonnet and Abbé
Pierre Bourdelot tell us in their Histoire de la musique (1715:472) that monkeys
in New Guinea play the flute, overlooking the fact that there are no monkeys in
New Guinea.10 However, without question, a number of animal genera—although
none of them is known to play the flute—nonetheless produce sounds that are very
noticeably patterned: mammals, amphibians, fish, birds, and insects.11
Then, intriguingly, at the time that comparative musicology transformed itself
into what we know today as ethnomusicology, and scholars began to specialize
in specific geographic areas and repertoires, the quest for the origins of music
was generally abandoned, and the animal world no longer attracted much atten-
tion.12 New scenarios opened up in the 1970s, beginning with studies of humpback
whales made by Roger Payne and Scott McVay (1971), followed by many others.
A fascinating amount of information was collected. We now know—and this is the
crucial point—that several animal species indeed learn to pattern sounds accord-
ing to rules that are not only species-specific, but also according to “styles” that
are specific only to single populations and even individuals. Here one would be
tempted to apply Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole or, possibly
better, the distinction between “tradition” and “innovation.”13 Indeed, zoologists
often speak of “dialects” in referring to sonic productions by dolphins, whales,

made to the external symmetry of the human body, the balance of its members and their
placement; in addition, there is the beauty of the internal organs and their arrangement, as
well as the harmony between their functioning and man’s well-being. On the other hand,
there is also a harmonious relation between the body and the soul, a harmony seen in the
health of the body and the functions of the soul—intelligence, love, etc. These relation-
ships are a form of music, for they are, like music, founded on the same numerical laws”
(Seay 1991:20). Only on the lowest rank did Boethius consider musica instrumentalis to be
divided into the “theoretical” and the “practical,” and only the “practical” is what today is
humanly organized sound, and today referred to as “music.”
10.  This seems to be an error made by Kunst, since the two French authors do not actually
mention New Guinea, but rather “Guinea” in Africa, where monkeys have been present all
along. As far as playing the flute, if they ever did … today they certainly do not! (I am grate-
ful to Don Niles for making me aware of Jaap Kunst’s erroneous footnote/remark.)
11.  It is, as we know from daily experience, among birds and mammals that such ability is
more easily observed. Among about 8,700 species of birds, at least four to five thousand of
them “sing” in some way or form. In recent years research on bird songs has also consider-
ably progressed in the fields of zoology, animal behaviour, and cognitive psychology (Patel
2008).
12.  When investigation on the origins of music became again topical, thanks to the possibil-
ity of pursuing it from the new angle of cognitive psychology, the question of music in the
animal world is raised once again by the new field of zoomusicology.
13.  Such a realization opens mind-boggling perspectives. One becomes curious to learn
whether among such non-human animals, localized forms of “culture” result from those pro-
cesses ethnomusicologists and anthropologists have been studying for a long time: natural
selection of cultural variants, random variation, cultural drift, guided variation and transmis-
sion bias, marginal survival, emphasized memory and mannerism, revival and reconstruc-
tion, fusion and hybridizing, substitution/replacement, imitation/innovation, compartmen-
talization, modernization, etc. (Barnett 1953; Horx 2009).

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170 2012 yearbook for traditional music

birds, etc. (Lemaire 1975; Arcadi, Robert, and Boesch 1998; Arcadi, Robert, and
Mugurusi 2004). In this respect, among animals whose sonic patterns are not just
species-specific but specific to single populations, the humpback whales turn out
to be a wonderful case to observe; although change can be verified in bird songs
over rather long periods of time, among whales change takes place within a single
season only and is therefore much easier to gauge.
I do not see good reasons to keep such a promising area of investigation out of
our horizon. I like to think that ethnomusicology embraces the study of meaning-
ful sound everywhere in the universe (or even in the “multiverse,” if string theory
proves it not to be science fiction). And yet, regretfully, several areas of musi-
cal scholarship have actually been drifting away from ethnomusicology. Although
many of us deal enthusiastically with popular music, popular-music studies at large
has for all practical purposes become a field in its own right, pursued by a majority
of scholars who do not think of themselves as ethnomusicologists at all. The same
is true of scholars of African-American music and jazz (although many ethnomu-
sicologists are also interested in jazz). And the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology
also leads a life largely of its own, with limited contacts with the “musicologies.”14
Neuroscience is also producing research which is seldom represented in con-
ferences devoted to music studies, with the notable exception of music theory,
although we do get some reverberations of it once in a while. Undeniably, the
literature concerned with what its practitioners call “zoomusicology” has been
developed entirely by scholars who are not associated with our field and without
any visible input from ethnomusicology. The novelty with zoomusicology is how
it analytically investigates sound productions by non-human animals and, more
importantly, discusses them in terms of their significance for the cultural dynamics
within the animal species and/or specific populations where they occur. I do not
therefore see as “zoomusicology” proper, the effort of understanding what human
cultures make of natural sounds in their habitat which is a question addressed by
a relatively large body of literature in ethnomusicology. Steven Feld’s Sound and
Sentiment (1982) is arguably the best known case study in this area.

Who belongs to whom?

Sonic behaviour among non-human animals relies on oral tradition. In other words,
one recognizes in what they do the process of oral composition: a chain of individ-
ual interventions, based on the elaboration of formulas, stereotypes, stock phrases
(however we wish to identify the elements that bind together sets of utterances
and make of them a style, a repertoire, or even a tradition) (Sorce Keller 2011).

14.  The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), founded in 1993, is an international
association whose members share concerns for the soundscapes of our planet. Even the
interest in the WFAE manifested by an exceptionally influential scholar such as Steven Feld
is not representative of general awareness for sonic-environmental issues in ethnomusicol-
ogy at large. It is also difficult to interpret why the more visible scholars who function as a
bridge between the WFAE and the musicologies (Andra McCartney and Helmi Järviluoma
initially come to mind) often work in communication or cultural studies.

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 171

Although scholars of animal behaviour are not familiar with the concept of “oral
composition,” and its long history in folk-song scholarship and ethnomusicology, it
was the apparently cultural nature of the process that lead to the idea of a “zoomusi-
cology.” There is today substantial consensus that the field was born in 1983, when
François-Bernard Mâche published his book Musique, mythe, nature ou les dau-
phins d’Arion, translated into English in 1992 (Mâche 1983). Zoomusicology in
the meantime has not really attracted wide attention among music scholars (Arom
2000; Marler 2002). And yet it is an area of research that, while requiring speciali-
zation in animal behaviour, would also benefit from the attention of ethnomusi-
cologists, because of their expertise in both the oral process and cultural dynamics.
What ethnomusicology would gain from zoomusicology is the possibility to con-
sider human musicality in a wider context. Denizens of the field are not ethno-
centric-minded people (hopefully not anthropocentric either) and inclined to call
“music” almost anything; it would then seem natural for their interests to extend
to, and include, the world of animals at large. Some of the psychological resist-
ance we experience in contemplating the idea may come from the strong emphasis,
over the last few decades, laid upon questions of gender, identity, nationalism,
war, migration, ethnicity, etc. All of these processes are not yet observable among
non-human animals, so we would have to go back to the study of sound itself and
its cultural-natural underpinnings. Moreover, the study of animal sonic behaviour
would be tantamount to studying “cultures” where participant observation is not
possible, and where the comparative method (in some ways de-legitimized by the
otherwise healthy heuristic attitude resting on cultural relativism) would need to be
revived and practised.15
John Blacking defined “music” as “humanly organized sound” (1973). That is
an appealing definition, because it ignores the “intention to make art” (what art-his-
torian Alois Riegl called Kunstwollen), and thus embraces a range of sonic produc-
tions that scholars focusing on the Western European written tradition would not
categorize as “music” proper (Iversen 1993). In a way it signals that music is more
than art; music is not always art, and is not necessarily intended to be, although
it obviously always is “culture.” And yet John Blacking’s definition is clearly
anthropocentric. One rather wonders why he would define music in terms that even
composers like John Cage would have considered narrow and restrictive.16 A more

15.  Cultural relativism, as defined and propounded by the anthropological school of Boas,
Mead, Benedict, and Bateson, assumed cultures to be so intrinsically different as to discou-
rage comparison. One can probably attribute to the influence of Anglo-American anthropo-
logy if ethnomusicology, as it developed since the 1950s, tendentially moved away from
large-scale comparative studies. Bruno Nettl once stated that “while a great deal of research
in recent years has been extremely specialized and practically defied intercultural compari-
son … The most influential publications engage, in fact, explicity or implicitly, in the com-
parison of musical systems around the world” (Nettl 1979:70). I would argue that ever since
1979 the intrisically comparative nature of ethnomusicology has been kept more often than
not “implicit.”
16.  John Blacking in ethnomusicology represented anthropology—the science of “man”—
and was keen on showing how just as people organize sound, sound also organizes people
(Blacking 1973).

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172 2012 yearbook for traditional music

general definition was once given by another composer, Edgar Varèse, who simply
spoke of “organized sound.” In so doing he cast a much wider net capable of catch-
ing—even literally—more interesting fish (Hitchcock 1974:180). Of course, if we
cast our net wide enough, we would have to conclude that musicology and ethno-
musicology are both a part of zoomusicology, a much larger field; we ourselves are
animals, after all. And yet in considering how all studies of meaningful sound will
be understood from a human perspective, then zoomusicology can reasonably be
seen as part of ethnomusicology. I further explain why this is so in the following
sections.

Whales

After mentioning how organized sounds produced by humpback whales stand out,
I can now better explain why they are of extraordinary musicological interest.17
Humpbacks (scientifically, Megaptera novaeangliae) have no vocal cords, and yet
produce a wide range of sounds through their pharynx. Thanks to the density of
water, they can be heard miles away, producing patterns linked into discrete utter-
ances: “songs” if you will. Whale songs circulate among individuals belonging
to the same group and, in the course of time, their configuration is constantly and
gradually altered. So much so that eventually each song turns into a new one. In
other words, individual songs are forgotten, while their style characteristics and
formulas remain (Payne 1995). I am reminded here of Brazilian scholar Mario de
Andrade, when he observed that urban Brazilian folk songs underwent such rapid
melodic evolution that, while their style was rather stable and permanent, indi-
vidual melodies were not (de Andrade 1959).18 One has to surmise that humpbacks,
like human traditional singers, inherit a set of rules whose application governs song
production and development and allows for vernacular forms and individual con-
tributions. Governed by the same general criteria, it is fascinating how humpback
songs differ among populations.
When several whales are together, they sing the same song. However, like the
muni birds of Papua New Guinea described by Steven Feld (1982), they do not
practise unison. The term heterophony better describes what they do. Each indi-
vidual seems to follow “a different drummer,” with flexibility—and one is tempted
to say—with creativity. Humpbacks do not repeat songs mechanically. As they
17.  This case was the real catalyst for the development of zoomusicology. The sound of
whale songs is now so widely known that many contemporary musicians have used it in
their compositions (from singer-songwriter Judy Collins to composers Alan Hovhaness and
Paul Winter).
18. Roger Payne made recordings by humpbacks showing that, although songs produced
within the same year in Hawai‘i differ from those heard around the Bermudas, they seem to
obey the same transformational rules and maintain the same overall form. Each one of them
consists of some six “themes” or passages with nearly identical phrases. Whale populations
in the Hawai‘i region are not known to be in contact with the Bermudas population, and
it is therefore striking that in both cases compositional process appears to be the same, as
if humpbacks as a species applied a set of rules flexible enough to allow vernacular styles
among different populations (Payne 1979, 1995).

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 173

sing, they add new twists to a song that give impulse for the tradition to continue.
Fundamentally though, at any given time, every single population sings the same
song (although in a cluster of individual variants). The following year they will have
another one which, though related to that of the previous, will nonetheless appear
noticeably different; intriguingly, songs belonging to successive years diverge less
than those separated by longer time intervals. And within generally accepted style
constraints, individuals collaborate in shaping, year after year, the song on which
other members of the group are also working. What makes the difference, year
after year is, however, no random variation. Just like Béla Bartók revealed with his
lexicographic and grammatical indexing of Hungarian folk tunes, change occurs
more in some sections of the song and less in others (Sorce Keller 1984). Among
humpbacks we therefore see an oral tradition unfolding in its transformational, col-
lective and participatory dimensions. Marine biologists do not appear fully aware
of how good a description they gave us of the oral process so widely practised by
Homo sapiens as well.19
Other animals offer interesting instances of sonic pattern production that is, at
least in part, a result of learning through imitation: mice, elephants and, of course,
birds.

Music or communication in animal sounds?

The question often asked of animals’ sonic utterances is whether they are really
“music” (that is, play, entertainment, or something intended to carry aesthetic
import) or “communication” of some kind.20 Much as it is a natural question to ask,
it is probably not the right one if we look at things ethnomusicologically. In fact, a
clear-cut distinction between “music” and “communication” or “language,” is hard
to make even among human cultures. In other words, it is not a question of either/
or. Language and speech are not just grammatically connected words. Speech has
inflection, intonation, tempo, rhythm, and a melody of sorts.21 In fact, most theo-

19.  The oral transmission of a song text is beautifully described by Elias Lönnrot in his
preface to the second edition of Kalevala (1963). He explains how the traditional singer,
once a new song is learned, will remember more its general literary content than specific
elements. What he does not remember he will make up as he goes, which at times may turn
out to be an improvement. He may emphasize some episodes more than others. The same
happens when another singer learns the song from him. And while this chain of transmission
from singer to singer develops, so does the one from father to son. The two lines of transmis-
sion supplement each other: while the singer-to-singer allows the tradition to be spread, the
father-to-son helps the younger generation not go astray.
20.  It is almost as if humans found it easier to recognize in non-human animals a com-
municative (or even linguistic) ability than a music-making ability, perhaps because of the
Romantic notion that art ranks highest among cognitive endeavours.
21.  I am thinking, for instance, of the current trend among young female English speakers
to add an “uptick” to the end of sentences, and how the phenomenon called “vocal fry” (a
low guttural vibration typically found at the end of sentences), once considered a speech
disorder, has become a habit among young women who take it from pop culture figures like
Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears.

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174 2012 yearbook for traditional music

ries concerning the origins of music deal with its close relationship with language.
Such was the case with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottfried Herder, Richard
Wagner, and Herbert Spencer. Darwin thought song preceded speech (Kivy 1959);
Carl Stumpf thought precise intonation was developed out of a need to communi-
cate over distance (1911:22–33); Siegfried Nadel suggested that music was devel-
oped as a special form of language capable of communicating with the supernatural
(1930:540); Steven Pinker believes, on the contrary, that speech preceded music
(1997:534); Steven Mithen maintains they developed at the same time (2005:234
and passim); Steven Brown’s “musilanguage theory” suggests that they might both
have a common ancestor (2000:279–85). Bruno Nettl, recently observed that we
should not necessarily look for the origin of a complex phenomenon such as music
in only one single type of human activity (2010:215–27). Any way one looks at
the question, one thing is clear: music (however defined) and language are inter-
connected or, at least, interacting phenomena, seldom totally independent of one
another. In other words: speaking and singing are not always, and necessarily, sepa-
rate things. Tone languages exist in our time (Chinese, Vietnamese, Hausa, etc.).
Talking drums in Africa imitate word intonation with very musical results (Herzog
1945; Beier 1954; Hill and Podslavsky 1976). In many languages, such as Arabic,
articles are varied, depending on context, for the sake of producing more agreeable
sonic patterns. In the Canary island of Gomera, a whistled language is still in use
(Sarmiento Pérez 2007).22 Finally, in many societies, forms of discourse exist that
can be placed between speech and song.23 In the West, composers of commercial
music well know how a “catchy tune,” even when produced instrumentally, is one
that could be given words and be sung, and so retains the rhythmic character of the
spoken word.
Students of animal behaviour, however, do also examine sonic utterances
from the standpoint of communication alone, sometimes with astounding results.
Constantine Slobodchikoff, who has been studying prairie dogs in Arizona,
Colorado, and New Mexico, gives us a thought-provoking example. He maintains
that prairie dogs actually possess a set of different words or alarm calls to indi-
cate different types of predators, including humans; the words contain descriptive
information. Slobodchikoff further maintains that prairie dogs exhibit geographical
variation in their lexicon, a result of learning that undergoes a process of adaptive
change. Maybe, after all, “language” exists in the animal world (Slobodchikoff,
Perla, and Verdolin 2009)!24

22.  Of course, some people whistle better than others and are more pleasant to listen to.
23.  Slogans, proverbs, greeting formulae, military orders and incitements, magic spells and
formulae, prayers, ritual speech, nursery rhymes, street-cries, and also theatrical declama-
tion and poetic discourse, are all utterances where the sonic character takes an important
role, at times predominant, in relation to the specific semantic content. It is not always easy
to determine to what extent frequency range, timbre, intensity, and melodic contour play a
merely “prosodic” (linguistic) function or take a “musical character.”
24.  The most amazing, according to Slobodchikoff, is that prairie dogs could refer to indi-
viduals or events not present (i.e., that occurred in the past or may show up in the future),
which is thought to be unique to human language. Also mind-boggling is the contention that
prairie dogs could create new words to refer to new things or events, which is, once again,

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 175
Epilogue

The contention that there may be “music” or “language” in the animal world,
should it at some point be generally accepted, would challenge the assumption
that humankind is positioned at the highest level in the Great Chain of Being—that
powerful visual metaphor for a divinely inspired universal hierarchy ranking all
forms of higher and lower life.25 Because of an emotional attachment to the idea
of human superiority and the residual influence of Romantic attitudes (ideas such
as “creativity” and “genius”), Western composers are usually the least inclined to
consider non-human animals as music makers. Stravinsky in his Poetics of Music
unequivocally stated that animals make no such thing, saying:

I shall take the most banal example: that of the pleasure we experience on hearing
the murmur of a breeze, the rippling of a brook, the song of a bird. All this pleases
us, diverts us, delights us. We may even say: “What lovely music!” Naturally we are
speaking only in terms of comparison. But then, comparison is not reason. These
natural sounds suggest music to us, but are not yet themselves music. If we take
pleasure in these sounds by imagining that on being exposed to them we become
musicians, we must admit that we are fooling ourselves. They are promises of
music; it takes a human being to keep them: a human being who is sensitive to
nature’s many voices, of course, but who in addition feels the need of putting them
in order and who is gifted for that task with a very special aptitude. In his hands all
that I have considered as not being music will become music. From this I conclude
that tonal elements become music only by virtue of their being organized, and that
such organization presupposes a conscious human act. (Stravinsky 1942:23)

To be sure, much of what we know today about the sonic behaviour of species
other than Homo sapiens was unknown at the time Stravinsky gave his celebrated
lectures, later published in what is arguably the most widely read book on “poetics”
written in modern times. Moreover, Stravinsky was not a scholar—he was “sim-
ply” a great composer. Sadly, however, his opinion remains largely mainstream to
this day in music circles. Musical reference works make that apparent. Only here

something commonly ascribed only to humans.

25.  It is the ancient idea describing the universe as a ladder, with God at the top, then
archangels, then various ranks of angels, then human beings, then animals, then plants, then
down to stones and other inanimate creations. The idea goes back to a time when racism
was pervasive. So it hardly needs to be added that human beings themselves were not all
sitting on the same rung (men were above females, and whites above non-whites). Blows
such as these, that question the high position of human kind, right below the angels, have
come with remarkable regularity over the course of time. Even political scientist Maurice
Duverger, who in one of his better known works devoted a significant paragraph to “Politics
in animal societies,” denied the idea that humankind is by definition the “political species”
(1964). Ultimately, the only statement that can be safely made about the difference between
humankind and non-human animals, was formulated by Berger and Luckmann in their very
influential book on The Social Construction of Reality: “Man occupies a peculiar position in
the animal kingdom. Unlike the other higher mammals, he has no species-specific environ-
ment, no environment firmly structured by his own instinctual organization” (1991:65).

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176 2012 yearbook for traditional music

and there a different attitude is beginning to emerge.26 In this sense the 2001 edi-
tion of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians signals a turning point:
it carries a substantial entry on birdsong (Harley 2001), concerned only with its
use in human music, but it also carries another entry devoted to “Animal music”
by ethologist Peter J. B. Slater (2001). Even more of a turning point is the 2002
bilingual encyclopaedia (French and Italian), edited by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, that
carries a very substantial chapter on “La musica degli animali” (Marler 2002; also
see Marler 2000).
Ethnomusicologists do not need to be reminded that the point is not to maintain
that non-human animals make “music” in the same sense that Homo sapiens does.
There are things that non-human animals apparently never do. For instance, it is
not yet fully determined whether some non-human animals are capable of tap-
ping, pecking, or moving in synchrony with an auditory beat; but the embedding of
words in a melody, following a metrical pattern, appears to be uniquely human.27
Now, it may seem like a digression (but it leads me to the final cadence) if I
remind my readers that in ancient Rome, Marcus Cato (234–149 BCE), commonly
referred to as “the Censor,” would often speak up in the Senate and, regardless of the
topic under discussion, start out with words such as: “Carthage must be destroyed!”
(Carthago delenda est). He was obsessed with the idea that Rome’s great rival for
dominance in the Mediterranean should be annihilated. Similarly, though not quite
as obsessively, Alan Merriam used to declare, whenever the opportunity allowed,
that ethnomusicology “belongs” to anthropology. I am not terribly sure about that.
But I feel confident saying, with perseverance equal to Cato and Merriam, that zoo-
musicology is a legitimate and very promising field to keep within the horizon of
ethnomusicology. Between the two, a marriage should be arranged—and, ideally,
celebrated in heaven.

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26.  The tenth edition of the Oxford Companion to Music by Percy A. Scholes carries an
entry devoted to “Bird music,” remarkably well informed for the time (1974). The 1979
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of 1980, regrettably, the same topic only receives minimal attention, solely from the point of
view of Western composers making use of birdsongs.
27.  Whether the Lipizzaner horses in Vienna really do that or not is questionable.

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 177
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Mâche, François-Bernard
1983 Musique, mythe, nature ou les dauphins d’Arion. Paris: Klincksieck.
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Marler, Peter R.
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Merker, Björn
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1930 “The Origins of Music.” Musical Quarterly 16: 531–43.
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1979 “Paradigms in the History of Ethnomusicology.” College Music Symposium 19/1:
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Patel, Aniruddh
2006 “Musical Rhythm, Linguistic Rhythm, and Human Evolution.” Music Perception
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1979 “Their Mysterious Songs.” National Geographic 155/1: 18–25.
1995 Among Whales. New York: Scribner.
Payne, Roger, and Scott McVay
1971 “Songs of Humpback Whales.” Science 173/3997: 585–97.
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1994 The Music of the Heavens: Kepler’s Harmonic Astronomy. Princeton: Princeton
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1955)

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
(music studies)

Cohen, Dalia
1983 “Birdcalls and the Rules of Palestrina: Towards the Discovery of Universal
Qualities in Vocal Expression.” Israel Studies in Musicology 3: 96–123.
Curtis, H. S., and H. Taylor
2008 Olivier Messiaen and the Albert’s Lyrebird: From Tamborine Mountain to Eclairs
sur l’au-delà. International Conference of Messiaen Studies. University of
Southern Queensland.
de la Motte-Haber, Helga
2000 Musik und Natur. Laaber: Laaber Verlag.
Fitch, William T.
2005 “The Evolution of Music in Comparative Perspective.” Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences 1060/1: 1–21.
Herzog, George
1945 “Drum Signalling in a West African Tribe.” Word 1: 217–38. (Reprinted in:
Language in Culture and Society, ed. Dell Hymes, 312–23. New York: Harper
and Row, 1964).
Lehmann, Christian
2010 Der genetische Notenschlüssel: Warum Musik zum Menschsein gehört. München:
Herbig. (paragraph: “Tierische Musik,” pp. 25–36)
Mâche, François-Bernard
2000 “La musique n’est pas le propre de l’homme.” La Recherche, Hors-Série 4:
76–77.
2001 Musique au singulier. Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob.
2002 “Les oiseaux musiciens.” Sciences et Avenir 131: 62–68.
Martinelli, Dario
2001 “Symptomatology of a Semiotic Research: Methodologies and Problems in
Zoomusicology.” Sign Systems Studies 29/1: 1–12.
2002 How Musical Is a Whale? Towards a Theory of Zoömusicology. Helsinki: Acta
Semiotica Fennica.

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 181
2007 Zoosemiotics: Proposals for a Handbook. Imatra: International Semiotics
Institute.
2009 Of Birds, Whales, and Other Musicians: An Introduction to Zoomusicology.
Scranton: University of Scranton Press.
Nollman, Jim
1997 “Fowl Play: Creating Interspecies Music.” Orion 16/2: 12–15.
1999 The Charged Border: Where Whales and Humans Meet. New York: Henry Holt
and Company.
Soldier, Dave
2002 “Eine kleine naughtmusik: How Nefarious Nonartists Cleverly Imitate Music.”
Leonardo Music Journal 12: 53–58.
Wallin, Nils L., Björn Merker, and Steven Brown
2000 Eds. The Origins of Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
(psychology, biology, zoology, animal behavioUr)

This is indeed highly selective. They are, nonetheless, publications that appear to me as
especially intriguing from the point of view of ethnomusicology.

Armstrong, Edward A.
1973 A Study of Bird Song. 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications.
1975 Discovering Bird Song. Bucks, UK: Shire Publications Ltd.
Baptista, Luis Felipe, and Robin A. Keister
2005 “Why Birdsong Is Sometimes Like Music.” Perspectives in Biology and
Medicine 48/3: 426–43.
Benítez-Bribiesca, Luis Benítez, Patricia M. Gray, Roger Payne, Bernie Krause, and Mark
J. Tramo
2001 “The Biology of Music.” Science 292/5526: 2432–33.
Bonner, John T.
1980 The Evolution of Culture in Animals. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Catchpole, Clive K., and Peter J. B. Slater
2008 Bird Song: Biological Themes and Variations. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Constantine, Mark
2006 The Sound Approach to Birding: A Guide to Understanding Bird Sound. Poole,
UK: The Sound Approach.
Craig, Wallace
1902 “Song in Birds.” Science, n.s. 15/380: 590–92.
1943 The Song of the Wood Pewee Myiochanes virens linnaeus: A Study of Bird music.
Vol. 334. Albany: University of the State of New York.
1944 “The Twilight Ceremonies of Horseflies and Birds.” Science 99/2563: 125–26.
Dowsett-Lemaire, Françoise
1979 “The Imitative Range of the Song of the Marsh Warbler, Acrocephalus palustris,
with Special Reference to Imitations of African Birds.” Ibis 121: 453–68.
Hall-Craggs, J.
1962 “The Development of Song in the Blackbird.” Ibis 104/3: 277–300.
1984 “Inter-specific Copying by Blackbirds.” Journal of the Wildlife Sound Recording
Society 4: 1–19.

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182 2012 yearbook for traditional music
Hartshorne, Charles
1953 “Musical Values in Australian Songbirds.” Emu 53: 109–28.
1958a “The Relation of Bird Song to Music.” Ibis 100: 421–45.
1958b “Some Biological Principles Applicable to Song-behaviour.” Wilson Bulletin
70/1: 41–56.
1973 Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Hoffmann, Bernhard
1908 Kunst und Vogelgesang. Leipzig: Quelle and Meier. (Reprint 1973)
Jellis, R.
1977 Bird Sounds and Their Meaning. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kroodsma, Donald E.
2005 The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong. Book
and CD ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Lestel, Dominique
2001 Les origines animales de la culture. Paris: Flammarion.
2002 “The Biosemiotics and Phylogenesis of Culture.” Social Science Information
41/1: 35–68.
Marler, Peter R., and Hans Slabbekoorn
2004 Eds. Nature’s Music: The Science of Birdsong. San Diego: Elsevier Academic
Press.
Merker, Björn
2001 “Tuning in to a Common Beat.” BBC Wildlife Magazine 19/1: 60–64.
Merker, Björn, G. S. Madison, and P. Eckerdal
2009 “On the Role and Origin of Isochrony in Human Rhythmic Entrainment.” Cortex
45/1: 4–17.
Nice, Margaret M.
1964 Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow. 2 vols. New York: Dover
Publications.
Ouellette, Antoine
2008 Le chant des oyseaux. Saint-Laurent: Triptique.
Patel, Aniruddh
2003 “Language, Music, Syntax and the Brain.” Nature Neuroscience 6/7: 674–81.
Payne, Katharine
2000 “The Progressively Changing Songs of Humpback Whales: A Window on the
Creative Process in a Wild Animal.” In The Origins of Music, ed. Nils L. Wallin,
Björn Merker, and Steven Brown, . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Powers, Alan
2003 Bird Talk. Berkeley: Frog, Ltd.
Rogers, Lesley J., and Gisela Kaplan
2000 Songs, Roars, and Rituals: Communication in Birds, Mammals, and Other
Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rothenberg, David
2005 Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song. New York: Basic
Books.
Sacks, Oliver.
2007 Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York and Toronto: Alex Knopf.
Sebeok, Thomas A.
1968 Animal Communication. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

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sorce keller zoomusicology and ethnomusicology 183
1981 The Play of Musement. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Skutch, Alexander F.
1996 The Minds of Birds. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.
Sotavalta, Olavi
1956 “Analysis of the Song Patterns of Two Sprosser Nightingales, luscinia luscinia.”
Annales Zoologici Societatis Zoologicae Botanicae Fennicae “Vanamo” 17/4:
1–31.
Stap, Don
2005 Birdsong. New York: Scribner.
Szőke, Péter
1963 “Ornitomuzikológia.” Magyar Tudomany 9: 592–607.
Szőke, Péter, and Miroslav Filip
1977 “The Study of Intonation Structure of Bird Vocalizations: An Inadequate
Application of Sound Spectrography.” Opuscula Zoologica Budapest 14/1–2:
127–54.
2009 “Super Tweeter.” Art Monthly Australia 225: 16–19.
Thorpe, William H.
1961 Bird-song: The Biology of Vocal Communication and Expression in Birds.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge at the University Press.

DISCOGRAPHY

Due to the relatively little interest by the general public in animal sounds, few recordings are
commercially available. Among them I find the following especially intriguing:

Ambiences et curiosités de la nature. Vol. 2. Compact disc. Le Studio du Pékinois SDP

009. 1994.
Les plus beaux chants d’oiseaux. Jean C. Roche. Compact disc. Tempo A 6117. 1987.
Songs of the Humpback Whale: The Original Album of Whale Recordings, Produced by Dr.
Roger Payne. Compact disc. Earth Music Productions LD0021. CD. 1991.
Thai Elephant Orchestra. Dave Soldier and Richard Lair. Compact disc. Mulatta Records
004. 2000.
The Secret Sounds of Whale Music. Compact disc. Ellebore 55919-2. Paris, 2006.

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