Evolution is drawing attention in understanding the diversity of modern culture.Folk music is culturally universal, but it is also a variable that is repeatedly transmitted between individuals over a long period of time.The research team analyzed the music of Japanese and British and American folk songs to see if the melody would follow similar evolutions in different cultural environments.

　The research team manually converted the melody of 10,062 songs (4,125 English and American folk songs, 5,937 Japanese folk songs) including famous folk songs such as "Scarborough Fair" and "Soran Bushi" into strings of staff notation, and gene. Create a tone row similar to an array.An alignment algorithm designed for molecular genetics was used to identify 328 sets of relevant melodies that could be used for detailed analysis.

　In addition, observe the changes in the song between recordings.As a result, it was found that the notes that play an important role in the rhythm of the song are less likely to change than the purely decorative notes, and the notes that are emphasized after the last note of the song are also less likely to change.On the other hand, we also found that unemphasized and decorative notes are the most variable, and that notes tend to be added or removed rather than replaced, and that replacements are more likely to be adjacent notes. rice field.

　Now it becomes clear that creative art forms are constrained by similar evolutionary mechanisms found in biology, genetics, and other cultural areas.In the future, it will be necessary to explore the relative effects of multiple factors on the evolution of tunes and the interactions at the micro-macro level.

Paper information:[Current Biology] Sequence alignment of folk song melodies reveals cross-cultural regularities of musical evolution