The tastes for certain musical chords are not innate. According to the populations, the notion of dissonance varies. Biological predisposition does not exist.
Tastes and colors are indisputable. Even the most delicate ears were put to the test during the traditional firefighters’ ball on July 13. May they be consoled: the notes do not scratch everyone’s ears. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, in the United States) confirms this in Nature : it is culture that structures the way our brain analyzes melodies.
Various profiles
The MIT team did not skimp on the means to obtain these results: they met 24 American musicians, 25 non-music lovers. Its members also traveled to Bolivia where they carried out tests on 24 inhabitants of La Paz, the capital, and 26 inhabitants of San Borja, a village near the Amazon rainforest. In the heart of this forest, the researchers joined forces with an anthropologist, Ricardo A. Godoy. For several years, he has worked with an isolated tribe in the Amazon: the Tsimané.
This community of cultivators and gatherers is made up of some 12,000 people, some of whom have had very little contact with modern civilization. “It’s pretty hard to find someone who hasn’t been exposed to much western pop music because it’s widely distributed around the world,” says Josh McDermott, co-author of the study.
Monophone music
All these very different profiles were exposed to different musical chords widely used in Western melodies. European and American criteria have set the rules for consonance, supposedly pleasing to the ear, and dissonance. But the results of the study suggest that the brain is getting used to the sounds it knows best. The chords deemed perfect by American music lovers and simple amateurs are not necessarily to the taste of other societies.
The Tsimané compose a very different music: it combines songs and instruments. But each musician plays alone. “The Tismané were particularly interesting because harmony, polyphony and group performances are absent from their music,” write the authors.
No innate taste
As part of two studies, carried out in 2011 and 2015, the researchers played several chords to the different participants, who divided them between consonance and dissonance. The differences are obvious: “Among the Tsimane, (the preference) is undetectable and in the two Bolivian groups, the preference is weak but significant,” explains Josh McDermott. In American groups, it is higher and widens further between musicians and non-musicians. “
The taste for music is therefore not innate but is indeed a matter of education, the authors conclude. The biological explanation has lead in the wing if one follows their observations. Especially since to note non-musical sounds, such as laughter or gasping, the responses of the different populations were strictly similar.
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