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• Published: 12 February 2019

Cultural evolution of music

• Patrick E. Savage   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6996-7496 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  5 , Article number:  16 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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• Cultural and media studies
• Social anthropology

The concept of cultural evolution was fundamental to the foundation of academic musicology and the subfield of comparative musicology, but largely disappeared from discussion after World War II despite a recent resurgence of interest in cultural evolution in other fields. I draw on recent advances in the scientific understanding of cultural evolution to clarify persistent misconceptions about the roles of genes and progress in musical evolution, and review literature relevant to musical evolution ranging from macroevolution of global song-style to microevolution of tune families. I also address criticisms regarding issues of musical agency, meaning, and reductionism, and highlight potential applications including music education and copyright. While cultural evolution will never explain all aspects of music, it offers a useful theoretical framework for understanding diversity and change in the world’s music.

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Introduction.

The concept of evolution played a central role during the formation of academic musicology in the late nineteenth century (Adler, 1885 / 1981 ; Rehding, 2000 ). During the twentieth century, theoretical and political implications of evolution were heavily debated, leading evolution to go out of favor in musicology and cultural anthropology (Carneiro, 2003 ). In the twenty first century, refined concepts of biological evolution were reintroduced to musicology through the work of psychologists of music to the extent that the biological evolution of the capacity to make and experience music ("evolution of musicality") has returned as an important topic of contemporary musicological research (Wallin et al., 2000 ; Huron, 2006 ; Patel, 2008 ; Lawson, 2012 ; Tomlinson, 2013 , 2015 ; Honing, 2018 ). Yet the concept of cultural evolution of music itself ("musical evolution") remains largely undeveloped by musicologists, despite an explosion of recent research on cultural evolution in related fields such as linguistics. This absence has been especially prominent in ethnomusicology, but is also observable in historical musicology and other subfields of musicology Footnote 1 .

One major exception was the two-volume special edition of The World of Music devoted to critical analysis of Victor Grauer's ( 2006 ) essay entitled "Echoes of Our Forgotten Ancestors" (later expanded into book form in Grauer, 2011 ). Grauer proposed that the evolution and global dispersal of human song-style parallels the evolution and dispersal of anatomically modern humans out of Africa, and that certain groups of contemporary African hunter-gatherers retain the ancestral singing style shared by all humans tens of thousands of years ago. The two evolutionary biologists contributing to this publication found the concept of musical evolution self-evident enough that they simply opened their contribution by stating: "Songs, like genes and languages, evolve" (Leroi and Swire, 2006 , p. 43). However, the musicologists displayed concern and some confusion over the concept of cultural evolution.

My goal in this article is to clarify some of these issues in terms of the definitions, assumptions, and implications involved in studying the cultural evolution of music to show how cultural evolutionary theory can benefit musicology in a variety of ways. I will begin with a brief overview of cultural evolution in general, move to cultural evolution of music in particular, and then end by addressing some potential applications and criticisms. Because this article is aimed both at musicologists with limited knowledge of cultural evolution and at cultural evolutionists with limited knowledge of music, I have included some discussion that may seem obvious to some readers but not others.

What is “evolution”?

Although the term “evolution” is often assumed to refer to directional progress and/or to require a genetic basis, neither genes nor progress are included in some contemporary general definitions of evolution. Furthermore, while it is true that the discovery of genes and the precise molecular mechanisms by which they change revolutionized evolutionary biology, Darwin formulated his theory of evolution without the concept of genes.

Instead of genes, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection contained three key requirements: (1) there must be variation among individuals; (2) variation must be inherited via intergenerational transmission; (3) certain variants must be more likely to be inherited than others due to competitive selection (Darwin, 1859 ). These principles apply equally to biological and cultural evolution (Mesoudi, 2011 ).

Evolution did often come to be defined in purely genetic terms during the twentieth century. However, recent advances in our understanding of areas such as cultural evolution, epigenetics, and ecology (Bonduriansky and Day, 2018 ) have led to new inclusive definitions of evolution such as:

'the process by which the frequencies of variants in a population change over time', where the word ‘variants’ replaces the word ‘genes’ in order to include any inherited information….In particular, this…should include cultural inheritance. (Danchin et al., 2011 , p. 483–484)

While there remains some debate about how central a role genes should play in evolutionary theory (Laland et al., 2014 ), few scientists today would insist that the term evolution applies only to genes. Note also that there is nothing about progress or direction contained in the above definition: evolution simply refers to changes in the frequencies of heritable variants. These changes can be in the direction of simple to complex—and it is possible that there may be a general trend towards complexity (McShea and Brandon, 2010 ; Currie and Mace, 2011 )—but the reverse is also possible (Allen et al., 2018 ), as are non-directional changes with little or no functional consequences (Nei et al., 2010 ).

Does culture “evolve”?

From the time Darwin ( 1859 ) first proposed that his theory of evolution explained “The Origin of Species”, scholars immediately tried to apply it to explain the origin of culture. Indeed, Darwin himself explicitly argued that language and species evolution were "curiously parallel…the survival or preservation of certain favored words in the struggle for existence is natural selection" (Darwin, 1871 , p. 89–90). Scholars of cultural evolution have tabulated a number of such “curious parallels”, to which I have added musical examples (Table 1 ).

Theories about cultural evolution quickly adopted assumptions about progress (e.g., Spencer, 1875 ) linked with attempts to legitimize ideologies of Western superiority and justify the oppression of the weak by the powerful as survival of the fittest (Hofstadter, 1955 ; Laland and Brown, 2011 ; Stocking, 1982 ) Footnote 2 . It is no accident that Zallinger's iconic “March of Progress” illustration (Fig. 1 ) showed a gradual lightening of the skin from dark-skinned, ape-like ancestors to light-skinned humans: evolution was used to justify scientific racism by eugenicists (Gould, 1989 ). Although both the lightening of skin and the linear progression from ape to man are inaccurate (Gould, 1989 ), this image unfortunately remains extremely enduring and is commonly adapted to represent all kinds of evolution, including musical evolution (e.g., http://www.mandolincafe.com/archives/spoof.html ).

The classic example of an inaccurate but widespread representation of evolution as a linear “march of progress” (from Howell, 1965 )

Ideas of linear progress through a series of fixed stages continued to dominate cultural evolution for over a century (see Carneiro, 2003 for an in-depth review). It was not until late in the 20th century that several teams of scholars including Charles Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson ( 1981 ), L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman ( 1981 ), and Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson ( 1985 ) began making attempts to model and measure changing frequencies of cultural variants (aka “memes”; Dawkins, 1976 ), as scientists such as Sewall Wright and Ronald Fisher had done for gene frequencies since the 1930s.

The theoretical and empirical work of cultural evolutionary scholars that emerged from this tradition has been crucial in demonstrating that evolution occurs "Not by Genes Alone" (Richerson and Boyd, 2005 ). Scholars have applied theory and methods from evolutionary biology to help understand complex cultural evolutionary processes in a variety of domains including languages, folklore, archeology, religion, social structure, and politics (Mesoudi, 2011 ; Levinson and Gray, 2012 ; Whiten et al., 2012 ; Fuentes and Wiessner, 2016 ; Henrich, 2016 ; Bortolini et al., 2017 ; Turchin et al., 2018 ; Whitehouse et al., In press ). The field has now blossomed to the extent that researchers founded a dedicated academic society: the Cultural Evolution Society (Brewer et al., 2017 ; Youngblood and Lahti, 2018 ). Its inaugural conference in September 2017 at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History was attended by 300 researchers from 40 countries (Savage, 2017 ) Footnote 3 .

Language has proven to be particularly amenable to evolutionary analysis. For example, applying phylogenetic methods from evolutionary biology to standardized lists of 200 of the most universal and slowest-changing words (e.g., numbers, body parts, kinship terminology) from hundreds of existing and ancient languages has allowed researchers to reconstruct the timing, geography, and specific mechanisms of change by which the descendants of proto-languages such as Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Austronesian evolved to become languages such as English, Hindi, Javanese, and Maori that are spoken today (Levinson and Gray, 2012 ). These evolutionary relationships can be represented as phylogenetic trees or networks (with some caveats, c.f. Doolittle, 1999 ; Gray et al., 2010 ; Le Bomin et al., 2016 ; Tëmkin and Eldredge, 2007 ). Such phylogenies can in turn be useful for exploring more complicated evolutionary questions, such as regarding the existence of cross-cultural universals (including universal aspects of music, cf. Savage et al., 2015 ]) or gene-culture coevolution (e.g., the coevolution of lactose tolerance and dairy farming, Mace and Holden, 2005 ).

Although modern cultural evolutionary theories have made many of the earlier criticisms about cultural evolution obsolete (e.g., assumptions of progress or of memetic replicators directly analogous to genes; cf. Henrich et al., 2008 ), there is still an active debate about the value of cultural evolution, with critics coming from both the sciences and the humanities. For example, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker ( 2012 ) still maintains that cultural evolution is simply a “loose metaphor” that “adds little to what we have always called ‘history’", echoing similar criticisms made by historian Joseph Fracchia and geneticist Richard Lewontin ( 1999 , 2005 ). Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks has also strongly criticized cultural evolution as being based on “false premises” (Marks, 2012 , p. 40) and adding little value beyond traditional explanations from cultural anthropology. It seems fair to say that, while cultural evolution is making a comeback and the basic idea that culture changes over time is beyond dispute, the idea that evolutionary theory and its methods can enhance our understanding of cultural change and diversity has yet to unambiguously prove its value. Perhaps music might be one area that could help?

Musical evolution and early comparative musicology

I have previously outlined some modern cultural evolutionary theory as part of one of five major themes in a "new comparative musicology" (Savage and Brown, 2013 ), including the relationships between cultural evolution and the other four themes (classification, human history, universals, and biological evolution) Footnote 4 . Early comparative musicologists, however, relied on Spencer's notion of progressive evolution rather than Darwin's of phylogenetic diversification (Rehding, 2000 ) Footnote 5 . Two assumptions were fundamental to much of the work of the founding figures of comparative musicology:

1. Cultures evolved from simple to complex, and as they do so they move from primitive to civilized.

2. Music evolves from simple to complex within societies as they progress. (Stone, 2008 , p. 25)

For example, in The Origins of Music , Carl Stumpf wrote of "the most primitive songs, e.g., those of the Vedda of Ceylon…. One may label them as mere preliminary stages or even as the origins of music." (Stumpf, 1911/ 2012 , p. 49). As late as 1943, Curt Sachs wrote of "the plain truth that the singsong of Pygmies and Pygmoids stands infinitely closer to the beginnings of music than Beethoven’s symphonies and Schubert’s lieder…the only working hypothesis admissible is that the earliest music must be found among the most primitive peoples" (Sachs, 1943 , p. 20–21). Scholars from the “Berlin school” of comparative musicology such as Stumpf, Sachs, and Erich von Hornbostel created the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, the first archive of traditional music recordings from around the world, motivated in part by the belief that they could use these recordings to reconstruct the cultural evolution of complex Western art music from the simpler music of hunter-gatherers (Nettl and Bohlman, 1991 ; Nettl, 2006 ).

As the previous section made clear, old assumptions about the roles of progress and genes in evolution have been discarded by modern cultural evolutionary scholars. Nevertheless, ethnomusicologists still often equate ideas about the cultural evolution of music with those of the early comparative musicologists. Rahaim opens his response to Grauer by noting that his use of “the unfashionable language of human genetics and evolutionary biology” would lead many ethnomusicologists to be suspicious:

Would the "echoes of forgotten ancestors" turn out to be echoes of Social Darwinism? Was this to be a retelling of the story of modern Europe's heroic musical ascent above the rest of the world? (Rahaim, 2006 , p. 29)

Similarly, Mundy’s response to Grauer states that "the conception of progress inherent in evolution creates its own hierarchies" (Mundy, 2006 , p. 22). Elsewhere, Kartomi ( 2001 , p. 306) rejected the application of evolutionary theory in classifying musical instruments because "the concepts of evolution and lineage are not applicable to anything but animate beings, which are able to inherit genes from their forebears" Footnote 6 . Overall, since changing its name from comparative musicology to ethnomusicology during the middle of the 20th century, the field has largely avoided discussion of musical evolution, and recent advances in our understanding of cultural evolution have yet to make a substantial impact on musicology.

Macroevolution and Cantometrics

One striking exception to the general tendency to avoid theories of musical evolution in the second half of the twentieth century was Alan Lomax's Cantometrics Project (Lomax, 1968 , 1989 ; Lomax and Berkowitz, 1972 ). Although mostly (in)famous for its claims for a functional relationship between song style and social structure, another controversial aspect was Lomax's evolutionary interpretation of the global distribution of song style itself (for detailed critical review of the Cantometrics Project, see Savage, 2018 and Wood, 2018 a, 2018 b).

Through standardized classification and statistical analysis of 36 stylistic features from approximately 1800 traditional songs from 148 societies Footnote 7 , Lomax classified the world's musical diversity into 10 regional styles. Although this classification was not itself based on any evolutionary assumptions, Lomax proceeded to organize and interpret these 10 styles in the form of a crude phylogenetic tree:

This tree of performance style appears to have two roots: (1) in Siberia and (2) among African Gatherers. The Siberian root has two branches: one into the Circum-Pacific and Nuclear America, thence into Oceania through Melanesia and into East Africa, the second branch to Central Asia and thence into Europe and Asian High Culture... the main facts of style evolution may be accounted for by the elaboration of two contrastive traditions…. As their cultural base became more complex, these two root traditions became more specialized: the Siberian producing the virtuosic solo, highly articulated, elaborated, and alienated style of Eurasian high culture, the Early Agriculture tradition developing more and more cohesive and complexly integrated choruses and orchestras. West Europe and Oceania, flowering late on the borders of these two ancient specializations, show kinship to both. (Lomax, 1980 , p. 39–40)

Although this tree retains some aspects of progressivism (e.g., contemporary African gatherers occupying the "roots" while other traditions "became more complex", West Europe "flowering late"), it also shows more sophisticated concepts such as the possibility of multiple ancestors (polygenesis) and of borrowing/merging between lineages (horizontal transmission). With some modifications, it can be converted into a phylogenetic model as a working hypothesis for future testing/refinement (see Fig. 2 ) Footnote 8 .

A simplified phylogenetic model of global macroevolution of 10 song-style regions. Adapted from Fig. 2 of Lomax ( 1980 , p. 39), which is based on an analysis of ~1800 songs from 148 cultural groups using 36 Cantometric features. Lomax originally placed cultures at different stages along the vertical axis, but here all cultures are represented at the present time and the distance along the phylogenetic branches instead represents approximate time since diverging from a shared ancestral musical style. Dashed arrows represent horizontal transmission (borrowing/fusion) between lineages. Lomax's song-style region names varied—here I chose the most geographically descriptive names from Lomax's 1980 and 1989 publications (e.g., "Eurasian High Culture" instead of "Old High Culture")

Cantometrics provided the major point of departure both for Grauer's essay Footnote 9 and for a series of recent scientific studies exploring parallels in musical and genetic evolution. Some of these studies have directly compared patterns of musical and genetic diversity among populations of certain regions (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa [Callaway, 2007 ], Eurasia [Pamjav et al., 2012 ], Taiwan [Brown et al., 2014 ], Northeast Asia [Savage et al., 2015 ]). All of these studies found that musical similarities between populations tend to be moderately correlated with genetic similarities, suggesting that both music and genes preserve histories of human migration and cultural contact.

Others have analyzed musical change using theories and methods from evolutionary biology. For example, Zivic et al. ( 2013 ) linked traditional periodization boundaries in Western classical music (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, 20 th century) to changes in pitch distribution patterns, while Serrà et al. ( 2012 ) and Mauch et al. ( 2015 ) both quantified the evolution of diversity in Western popular music, with the former concluding that musical diversity was decreasing while the latter rejected this conclusion in favor of a more complex “punctuated evolution” model (see further discussion below in the section on “Reductionism”). Although the details differ greatly, these studies share a common thread in arguing that musical evolution follows patterns and processes that can be usefully understood using theories and methods adapted from the study of biological evolution (see also Bentley et al., 2007 ; Interiano et al., 2018 ; Brand et al., 2019 ).

Like Cantometrics, most of these studies are more interested in the macroevolutionary relationships between cultures/genres than in microevolutionary relationships among songs within cultures/genres Footnote 10 . This makes them more amenable to broad cross-cultural comparison with domains such as population genetics and linguistics, as focusing on ethnolinguistically defined populations has proved useful in other fields of cultural and biological evolution. However, one drawback to such studies is that it is difficult to reconstruct the precise sequence of small microevolutionary changes that may have given rise to these large cross-cultural musical differences (Stock, 2006 ).

Microevolution and tune family research

One area of research strikingly absent from the discussion of musical evolution surrounding Grauer's essay was the extensive research on microevolution of tune families (groups of melodies sharing descent from a common ancestor or ancestors). Tune family research was particularly influenced by the realization in the early twentieth century that many traditional ballads that had become moribund or extinct in England were flourishing in modified forms far away in the US Appalachian mountains (Sharp, 1932 ). Cecil Sharp's folk song collecting led him to formulate a theory of musical evolution incorporating essentially the same three key mechanisms recognized by modern evolutionary theory: (1) continuity, (2) variation, and (3) selection (Sharp, 1907 ; note that Sharp used the term “continuity” rather than the modern term “inheritance” discussed above). These three principles were later developed by Sharp’s disciple, Maud Karpeles, who helped draft an official definition of folk music adopted in 1955 by the International Folk Music Council (the ancestor of today's International Council for Traditional Music Footnote 11 ) that explicitly invoked evolutionary theory:

Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives. (International Folk Music Council, 1955 , p. 23, emphasis added)

The general mechanisms proposed by Sharp and Karpeles for British-American tune family evolution were explored more thoroughly by scholars such as Bertrand Bronson ( 1959 –72, 1969 , 1976 ), Samuel Bayard ( 1950 , 1954 ), Charles Seeger ( 1966 ), Anne Shapiro ( 1975 ) Footnote 12 , Jeff Titon ( 1977 ), and James Cowdery ( 1984 ; 2009 ). In some cases, the melodic parallels were made explicit by aligning notes thought to share descent from a common ancestor and by verbally reconstructing the historical process of evolutionary changes. For example, Bayard used a series of melodic alignments to illustrate the "process, often conceived but seldom actually observed... of a tune's having material added onto its end and also losing material from its beginning", giving "evolution of one air out of another by variation, deletion, and addition" (Bayard, 1954 , p. 25). Charles Boilès ( 1973 ) even proposed a formal method for reconstructing ancestral proto-melodies, based on the linguistic comparative method for reconstructing proto-languages. Bronson attempted to automate such attempts on a vast scale. His attempts to use punch-cards to mechanically sort thousands of melodic variants of Child ballads and other traditional British-American folk melodies into tune families (Bronson, 1959– 72 , 1969 ) represented one of the first uses of computers in musicology, even preceding Lomax’s Cantometrics Project Footnote 13 .

During my own studies in Japan, I learned that scholars of Japanese music had developed similar approaches based on alignment of related melodies to understand musical evolution, although without explicit reference to tune family research. For example, Kashō Machida and Tsutomu Takeuchi ( 1965 ) traced the evolution of the famous folk songs Esashi Oiwake and Sado Okesa from their simpler, unaccompanied beginnings in the work songs of distant prefectures, and Atsumi Kaneshiro ( 1990 ) developed a quantitative method that he used to test proposed relationships within Esashi Oiwake 's tune family. Meanwhile, Laurence Picken and colleagues traced the evolution of modern Japanese gagaku melodies for flute and reed-pipe back over a thousand years to the simpler and faster ancient melodies of China's Tang court (Picken et al., 1981 –2000; Marett, 1985 ).

Tune family scholarship has not been limited to British-American and Japanese music—those just happen to be the two traditions I am most familiar with. Elsewhere, scholars such as Béla Bartók ( 1931 ) and Walter Wiora ( 1953 ) studied tune family evolution in European folk songs, Steven Jan ( 2007 ) studied the evolution of melodic motives in Western classical music, and Joep Bor ( 1975 ) and Wim van der Meer ( 1975 ) made detailed arguments for treating North Indian ragas as evolving "melodic species" (Bor, 1975 , p. 17).

Recently, scientists have attempted to apply microevolutionary methods to a variety of Western and non-Western genres in the form of sequence alignment techniques adapted from molecular biology (Mongeau and Sankoff, 1990 ; van Kranenburg et al. 2009 ; Toussaint, 2013 ; Windram et al., 2014 ; Savage and Atkinson, 2015 ). Such techniques make it possible to automate things like quantifying melodic similarities and identifying boundaries between tune families (Savage and Atkinson 2015 ; Jan, 2018 ), making analysis possible on vast scales that would be impossible to perform manually.

In addition, some scientists have explored musical microevolution in the laboratory, using techniques originally designed to explore controlled evolution of organisms and languages. Thus, one group mimicked sexual reproduction by having short audio loops recombine and mutate, then used an online survey to allow listeners to mimic the process of natural selection on the resulting music, finding that esthetically pleasing music evolved from nearly random noise over the course of several thousand generations solely under the influence of listener selection (MacCallum et al., 2012 ) Footnote 14 . Using a different experimental paradigm similar to the children's game Telephone, other groups found that melodies and rhythms became simpler and more structured in the course of transmission, paralleling findings from experimental language evolution (Ravignani et al., 2016 ; Jacoby and McDermott, 2017 ; Lumaca and Baggio, 2017 ). Like biological evolution and language evolution, our knowledge of musical evolution can be enhanced by combining ecologically valid studies of musical evolution in the wild (i.e., in its cultural context) with controlled laboratory experiments.

So far, the microevolution of tune families has been investigated largely independently in a variety of cultures and genres, without much attempt at comparing them to explore general patterns of musical evolution. One reason for this is that a broader cross-cultural comparison would require standardized methods for analyzing and measuring musical evolution in different contexts. I proposed such a method and applied it to several of the cases studies discussed above (Savage and Atkinson, 2015 ; Savage, 2017 ). Figure 3 shows an example of this method using an example of melodic microevolution in a well-known folk song: Scarborough Fair .

An example of analyzing tune family microevolution through melodic sequence alignment. The opening two phrases of Simon and Garfunkel's phenomenally successful 1966 version of Scarborough Fair (bottom melody) and its immediate ancestor, Martin Carthy's 1965 version (top melody) are shown, transposed to the common tonic of C (cf. Kloss, 2012 for a detailed discussion of the historical evolution of this ballad). In b , the melodies are shown using standard staff notation, while in c they are shown as aligned note sequences, with letters corresponding to notes as shown in a (following Savage and Atkinson, 2015 ). See Savage ( 2017 ) for a detailed explanation of how this evolution can be quantified (percent melodic identity = 81%; mutation rate = 0.25 per note per year) and discussion of the mechanisms of note substitutions (red arrows) and deletions (blue arrows) shown here

By demonstrating consistent cross-cultural and cross-genre trends in the rates and mechanisms of melodic evolution, I showed that musical evolution, like biological evolution, follows some general rules (Savage, 2017 ). For example, notes with stronger structural function are more resistant to change (e.g., rhythmically accented notes more stable than ornamental notes), and notes are more likely to change to melodically neighboring notes (e.g., 2nds) than to distant ones (e.g., 7ths; cf. Fig. 3 ). This suggests that a general theory of evolution may prove a helpful unifying theory in musicology, as it has in biology.

Musical evolution applications: education and copyright

All musicology is in some sense applied through our research, teaching, and outreach, but some is more explicitly applied for the benefit of those outside of academia (Titon, 1992 ). In this article, I argue that cultural evolutionary theory can provide a useful unifying theoretical framework to apply to research on understanding and reconstructing musical change at multiple levels (both macro and micro) across cultures, genres, and time periods. I now briefly discuss two other ways it can be more directly applied: education and copyright.

The world's musical diversity is woefully underrepresented at all levels of education. Often the job of correcting this falls to ethnomusicologists teaching survey courses on "World Music". As Rahaim ( 2006 , p. 32) notes, "as teachers, we often find ourselves in situations that require us to say something in short-hand about [musical] origins, and have few models at hand apart from evolution". Evolutionary models like Lomax's world phylogenetic tree of regional song style (Fig. 2 ) provide a simple and convenient starting point for teaching about similarities and differences in the world's music, and are flexible enough to adapt to diverse contexts such as conservatory classrooms, instrument museums, or pop music recommendation websites. Such coarse models can be further improved and/or nuanced by following them with microevolutionary case studies of musical change in specific cultures. An evolutionary approach further provides the chance to teach about connections beyond music to other domains in order to understand the ways in which the global distribution of music may be related to the distributions of the people who make it and to other aspects of their culture such as language or social structure (Lomax, 1968 ; Savage and Brown, 2013 ; Grauer, 2006 ).

Since almost all music is influenced by the past in at least some way, whether such influence is within norms of creativity and tradition or amounts to plagiarism is connected to an understanding of processes of musical evolution. US copyright law resembles concepts of tune family evolution in that the core copyrightable essence of a song consists of its representation in musical notation, and that the degree of overall melodic correspondence at structurally significant places between two tunes is a primary criterion for deciding whether the level of similarity constitutes plagiarism (Cronin, 2015 ; Fruehwald, 1992 ; Müllensiefen and Pendzich, 2009 ; Fishman, 2018 ) Footnote 15 . Thus, one famous case concluded that the melody of George Harrison's My Sweet Lord (1970) was similar enough to the Chiffons' He's So Fine (1962) as to constitute subconscious plagiarism (Judge Owen, 1976 ). I used new evolutionary methods involving sequence alignment of melodies to confirm that not only do the two tunes share over 50% identical notes, but the differences that do exist are consistent with the most common types of melodic change (e.g., insertion/deletion of ornamental notes, substitution to melodically neighboring notes; Savage, 2017 , cf. Fig. 3 ). Using a sample of 20 court cases, including He’s So Fine , I showed that this melodic sequence alignment method is a strong predictor of copyright infringement decisions, accurately predicting 16 out of the 20 cases (Savage et al., 2018 ).

However, the concept of individual ownership by composers in copyright law differs from concepts of folk song tune families, where traditional tunes are usually considered to be general property of the community. They are also different from conceptions in many non-Western cultures in which the essence of song ownership may be considered to lie not in its notated melody but in the performance style, performance context, or other extra-melodic features (A. Seeger, 1992 ). Even within US copyright law the question of what types and degrees of copying should be regarded as legitimate borrowing versus copyright infringement is hotly debated and dynamically interpreted, with musicians and lawyers commonly invoking evolutionary principles of continuity and variation to argue for the legitimacy of certain degrees of borrowing, as well as the principle of selection to argue against the deleterious effects on musical creativity if certain types of inspiration are overly restricted (Fishman, 2018 ).

The interpretation of copyright law can dramatically affect the livelihoods of musicians and communities around the world. Thus, a holistic understanding of general dynamics of musical evolution (including the many aspects beyond melodic evolution) and their specific manifestations in various musical cultures and genres may prove crucial to a more cross-culturally principled interpretation of concepts of creativity and ownership.

Objections to musical evolution: agency, meaning, and reductionism

Musical evolution has been and continues to be of interest to musicologists and non-musicologists alike. In fact, many of the processes I discuss are immediately recognizable to many under the terminology of musical change, for which musicologists have long sought a rigorous theory. Merriam ( 1964 , p. 307) argued that ethnomusicology "needs a theory of change". Over a half century later, Nettl ( 2015 , p. 292) summarizes that "there have been many attempts to generalize about change but no generally accepted theory". Why have musicologists interested in general theories of change not adopted the framework of evolution (which is, simply put, a formal theory of change)?

I have presented versions of this argument at international musicology conferences in the USA and Japan, receiving a variety of responses. Most objections to the use of evolutionary theory focused on three issues: implications of progress, individual agency, and reductionism. Since I have already clarified misconceptions about progress at length above Footnote 16 , I will focus here on agency and reductionism.

Building on arguments against cultural evolution by the evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, Rahaim ( 2006 , p. 36) argues: "Perhaps most importantly for ethnomusicologists, metaphors of both situated and progressive evolution turn attention away from the agency of individuals". But does the concept of musical evolution negate the agency of individuals to create their own music any more than the concept of biological evolution negates individual free will? In each case, our cultural/genetic inheritances are the product of long evolutionary processes shaped by historical factors, but cannot be simply reduced to or wholly explained by such factors.

Musicians are often free to compose their own music or modify the existing repertoire in whatever ways they see fit (within the physical limits imposed by acoustics, neurobiology, etc.). But whether their creations will appeal to others and be passed on through the generations depends on a variety of factors beyond their control, including the sociopolitical context and the perceptual capacities of the audience. Thus, the role of the individual musicians in this process and their relationships with other actors (audiences, composers, accompanists, producers, judges, etc.) are in fact central to understanding the cultural evolution of music. As Seeger put it:

musical traditions depend on transmission, continuity, change, and interested audiences, but…these take place in a context of emerging mass media, the involvement of outsiders, and the often unpredictable actions of local and national governments. (Anthony Seeger, foreword to Grant, 2014 , p. 9)

Seeger's summary succinctly captures the three key evolutionary mechanisms of "continuity [inheritance], change [variation], and interested audiences [selection]", as well as their dynamic relationships with individual agency and cultural context.

My research has focused on identifying general constraints that apply across many individuals, but this does not mean that other studies must do so. For example, one potentially productive area for exploring the role of individual agency in musical evolution might involve comparing different performers attempting to create their own signature versions of music originally composed and/or performed by others. This could easily apply to a variety of cultures and genres, including art (e.g., the same symphony performed by different orchestras), popular (e.g., cover songs, hip-hop sampling; Youngblood, 2018 ), and folk (e.g., folk song variants; cf. the Scarborough Fair example in Fig. 3 ).

In fact, the presence of human agency and the intentional innovation that comes with it is one of the most interesting aspects about studying cultural evolution. In genetic evolution, natural selection provides the major explanatory mechanism due to the fact that genetic variation is arbitrary (i.e., genetic mutations are not directed towards particular evolutionary goals). However, in cultural evolution, both selection and variation can be directed consciously and unconsciously through a much broader range of mechanisms than typically found in genetic evolution. To accommodate this complexity, cultural evolutionary theorists have proposed a dizzying array of mechanisms to expand the terminological framework of evolutionary biology to cultural evolution (e.g., transmission biases based on prestige, aesthetics, or conformity/anti-conformity; guided variation driven by cognition and/or emotion; cultural attraction through processes of reconstructive rather than replicative transmission; Richerson and Boyd, 2005 ; Mesoudi, 2011 ; Claidière et al., 2014 ; Fogarty et al., 2015 ). The relative strengths of these different types of evolutionary mechanisms and their implications for musical evolution in particular and cultural evolution in general are hotly debated (Claidière et al., 2012 ; Leroi et al., 2012 ). Thus, this is an area where musicologists and cultural evolutionary theorists could both learn much from one another.

An anonymous reviewer of an earlier iteration of this article flatly stated that my cultural evolutionary approach “is not compatible with an anthropological understanding of culture, and seems instead to describe changes in the surface structures of music (tune families and the like)…”. This criticism seems to echo Rahaim’s concerns about agency discussed above, but also goes even further into the longstanding debate regarding the roles of sound vs. behavior, process vs. product, etc. in musicology (Merriam, 1964 ; Rice, 1987 ; Solis, 2012 ). In particular, it follows criticisms by Blacking ( 1977 ) and Feld ( 1984 ) of Lomax’s attempts to use Cantometrics to understand cultural evolution. As Blacking ( 1977 , p. 10) puts it: “Lomax compares the surface structures of music without questioning whether the same musical sounds always have the same "deep structure" and the same meaning”.

Unlike language, music generally lacks clear referential semantic meaning (Meyer, 1956 ; Patel, 2008 ), and this crucial difference is one reason we must be cautious about uncritically borrowing linguistic concepts wholesale to apply to music (Feld, 1974 ). While I agree that a full understanding of the cultural evolution of music will require integrating understanding of both sound structures and their meanings, I can not accept the implication that the study of musical structures such as tune families are not an appropriate subject of musicological inquiry. Here I can only respond by quoting the final sentence published by Alan Merriam ( 1982 ): “ethnomusicology for me is the study of music as culture, and that does not preclude the study of form; indeed we cannot proceed without it.".

Reductionism

Another critique I would like to mention is a broader but related one regarding reductionism and science. This criticism was levelled at cultural evolution in general by Fracchia and Lewontin ( 1999 , p. 507): "the demand for a theory of cultural evolution is really a demand that cultural anthropology be included in the grand twentieth-century movement to scientize all aspects of the study of society, to become validated as a part of ‘social science'".

One version of this criticism appeared in response to one of the studies cited in this review entitled “Measuring the Evolution of Contemporary Western Popular Music” (Serrà et al., 2012 ). In response, Fink ( 2013 ) made a persuasive refutation of the paper’s central finding of decreasing musical diversity and the newspaper headlines touting it (“Modern Music too Loud, All Sounds the Same”), pointing out that the analyses failed to detect increasing rhythmic diversity because the methods ignored rhythm. Or, as Fink put it: "Music isn’t getting stupider, it’s getting funkier.”

Nevertheless, Fink argues that the same reductionistic science that made the study’s conclusion misleading was also a reason it made headlines:

as reporters rush to assure us, they are newsworthy because, for the first time, the conclusions are backed with hard data, not squishy aesthetic theorizing. The numbers do not lie. But research can only be as good as the encoded data it’s based on; look under the surface of recently reported computer-enabled analyses of pop music and you’ll find that the old programmer’s dictum—“garbage in, garbage out”—is still the last word. (Fink, 2013 )

Not long after Serrà et al. published their study, Mauch et al. ( 2015 ) also measured the evolution of Western popular music over a similar time period, but using less reductionistic methods that importantly included rhythmic features. Mauch et al. came to the opposite conclusion: musical diversity actually increased after a brief decline during the 1980s. This provides quantitative support for Fink’s criticism above. Overall, this case highlights both the value of quantifying the cultural evolution of music and the importance of critical thinking in interpreting the reductionism inherent in such studies. Although science does generally require some level of reductionism, the goal is to be “as simple as possible, but not simpler” Footnote 17 .

Charges of reductionism were also leveled directly at my own (Savage and Brown, 2013 ) proposal that included cultural evolution as one of five major themes in a new comparative musicology. In a thorough and nuanced review entitled "On Not Losing Heart", David Clarke approved of the call for more cross-cultural comparison, but worried about its "strongly empiricist paradigm":

Lomax's particular mode of integration "between the humanistic and the scientific" [was] fueled by a politics that had an emancipatory motive. In the metrics and technics of the new comparative musicology proposed by Savage and Brown, traces of any such informing polity melt into air….A political neutrality that is the correlate of an unalloyed empiricism is problematic….My own predilections here are perhaps more attuned to ethnomusicologists who are interested in the particularities of a culture and the actual experience of encounter in the field. By contrast, Savage, Brown, et al. advocate different epistemological values with a different ethos, based on the abstraction of music and people into data. To characterize that ethos as a recapitulation of Lomax, only without the heart, might be an unfair caricature. For the various statistical representations and correlations emerging from their research may well be sublimating a lot of passion, and Savage and Brown’s own day-to-day dealings with musicians and musicking may be no less affective than anyone else’s (it’s just that they exclude this from their research) Footnote 18 . (Clarke, 2014 , 6, pp. 11–12)

While Clarke argues that a "political neutrality that is the correlate of an unalloyed empiricism is problematic", I believe it may be valuable to maintain a relatively neutral political stance, in large part to avoid the problems of confirmation bias that were leveled at Lomax. With Cantometrics, Lomax sought to scientifically validate his strong political views regarding "cultural equity" (Lomax, 1977 ). One of the concerns that doomed Cantometrics was that Lomax's analyses were viewed as being too strongly biased by his political views (Savage, 2018 ; Szwed, 2010 ; Wood, 2018a , 2018b ). Personally, I strongly share Lomax's views about the value of cultural equity, and I, too, see quantitative data as a helpful tool in arguing for the value of all of the world's music. However, I believe it is legitimate to try to limit political aspects in one's published work, and it may well be a more effective long-term strategy for the types of applications described in the previous section Footnote 19 .

Certainly, neither a purely qualitative, ethnographic approach nor a purely quantitative, scientific approach alone will succeed in advancing our knowledge of how and why music evolves. But by combining the two approaches through cross-cultural comparative study, we can achieve a better understanding of the forces governing the world's musical diversity and their real-world implications (Savage and Brown, 2013 ). For instance, the My Sweet Lord plagiarism case mentioned above gives a clear example where quantitative measurements of the degree of melodic similarity (56%) between two tunes and its qualitative interpretation in the context of copyright law has major practical implications in which millions of dollars are at stake. Although perhaps less easily quantified in terms of dollar values, an understanding of the mechanisms of evolution of traditional folk songs may be just as valuable to traditional musicians struggling to protect their intangible cultural heritage.

Music evolves, through mechanisms that are both similar to and distinct from biological evolution. Cultural evolutionary theory has been developed to the point that it shows promise for providing explanatory power from the broad levels of macroevolution of global musical styles to the minute microevolutionary details of individual performers and performances. Musical evolution shows potential for applications beyond research to such disparate domains as education and copyright.

However, I am aware that my review is inevitably incomplete and I have only been able to highlight a tiny fraction of the types of situations and methodologies through which the evolutionary framework can be fruitfully applied to music. To me, that incompleteness highlights the broad explanatory power of evolutionary theory, and broad explanatory theory is something that musicologists such as Timothy Rice ( 2010 ) have argued is sorely needed.

Scientific interest in musical evolution is already growing rapidly, and will continue with or without the involvement of musicologists. Here again, we can learn from language evolution. Several high-profile articles on language evolution were published by teams of scientists without close collaboration with linguists, resulting in bitter disputes and accusations of "naïve arrogance" (Campbell, 2013 , p. 472) that have limited what could have been mutually beneficial collaboration (Marris, 2008 ). A similar pattern seems to be playing out in the recent controversy regarding a team of Harvard scientists analyzing ethnographic recordings around the world to construct a “Natural History of Song” (Mehr et al. 2018 a, 2018 b; Marshall, 2018 ; Yong, 2018 ). I share concerns about scientists studying music and evolution without collaborating with musicologists, but I believe that ultimately both musicology and cultural evolution stand to benefit from productive interdisciplinary collaboration. I have chosen to try to avoid such pitfalls by being proactive in initiating collaborations on musical evolution with cultural evolutionary scientists to combine our knowledge and skills (e.g., Savage et al. 2015 ; Savage and Atkinson, 2015 ).

I do not intend by any means to imply that the predominantly quantitative approach I have presented here—strongly informed by my collaborations with scientists studying cultural and biological evolution, as well as my own earlier training in psychology and biochemistry - is the only way to study musical evolution. One reason I focused in my dissertation on a rigorously quantitative approach modeled on molecular genetics is that such quantitative approaches have shown success in rehabilitating cultural evolutionary theory after much criticism of earlier incarnations such as memetics as lacking in empirical rigor (Laland and Brown, 2011 ; Mesoudi, 2011 ). But I believe that one of the strengths of evolutionary theory is that it is flexible enough to be usefully adapted to a variety of scientific and humanistic methodologies, with plenty of room to coexist productively with non-evolutionary theories. As Ruth Stone ( 2008 , p. 225) has noted, "there is no such thing as a best theory. Some theories are simply more suited for answering certain kinds of questions than others" (emphasis in original). Even if the concept of cultural evolution cannot provide all the answers, I believe it helps to answer enough musical questions of abiding interest that it should be ignored no more.

Data availability

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

For reasons of space and expertise, I will focus here primarily on the ethnomusicological literature, but the concept of cultural evolution of music should also be applicable to other sub-fields, not least the evolution of contemporary Western classical music from medieval Gregorian chant over the course of the second millennium AD.

Although this movement came to be known as “Social Darwinism”, it was in fact not very reflective of Darwin′s ideas, but rather the ideas of Herbert Spencer ( 1875 ), who coined the term "survival of the fittest". While the historical relationship between evolutionary theory and Social Darwinism is debated, today′s scholars of cultural evolution unequivocally reject such political misappropriation of evolutionary theory (Laland and Brown, 2011 ; Mesoudi, 2011 ; Richerson and Boyd, 2005 ; Wilson and Johnson, 2015 ).

Two of these presentations were about music: my own about the evolution of British-American and Japanese folk song melodies and one by Aurélie Helmlinger

about the evolution of steelpan instrumental layouts in Trinidad and Tobago. The 2018 Cultural Evolution Society conference featured an entire panel with four presentations devoted to music.

Due to space limitations this article will not delve into the areas of biological evolution and gene-culture evolution of musicality (Honing, 2018 ; Tomlinson, 2013 , 2015 ; Patel, 2018 ; Savage et al., In prep.).

Of the musicologists responding to Grauer′s essay, only Rahaim ( 2006 , p. 29) carefully distinguished between these two, using the terms "progressive" and "situated" evolution, respectively.

Kartomi has since changed her views, writing "I now think that music has evolved in a measurable way, as long as ′evolved′ is not defined as ′improved′" (personal communication, June 10th 2016 email to the author).

Discrepancies in published numbers and further details are explained by Savage ( 2018 ).

Although not shown here, finer-scale relationships within and among groups can also be modeled using evolutionary methods (cf. Fig. 3 of Lomax, 1980 , p. 41; Rzeszutek et al., 2012 ; Savage and Brown, 2014 ).

Grauer was heavily involved in the Cantometrics Project as both the co-inventor of the Cantometric classification scheme and primary coder of the Cantometric data.

Macroevolution generally refers to changes among populations (e.g., species, cultural groups), while microevolution generally refers to changes within populations.

Lineages of organizations, composers, performers, etc. are a potentially productive area of studying musical evolution, but I will not discuss them in detail here due to limitations of space and expertise.

Unfortunately, Shapiro′s dissertation was never published and is not available for interlibrary loan.

The research leading to the articles republished in book form in Bronson ( 1969 ) was begun several decades earlier, with one article laying out the basic idea of “Mechanical Help in the Study of Folk Song” published as early as 1949.

Note that this finding is conceptually distinct from the “sound-to-music illusion” (Simchy-Gross and Margulis, 2018 ). The sound-to-music illusion involves the same sound being perceived as more musical after repeated listening by a single listener, whereas MacCallum et al.′s study experimentally evolved new and more pleasing music over time.

Note, however, that Fishman ( 2018 ) in particular has argued that the traditional emphasis on melody may be changing, as evidenced by recent high-profile cases such as the dispute over Blurred Lines .

Unfortunately, the association of evolution with progress is particularly entrenched where I live in Japan, where the characters used to translate evolution (進化 [ shinka ]) literally mean "progressive change" (the English word evolution itself evolved from the Latin evolutio , meaning "unfolding"). In my opinion, those avoiding the term "evolution" because of misconceptions about its meaning are contributing to this popular misconception. Instead I believe concerted effort to correct this misconception for future generations is in order.

Anonymous quote attributed to Einstein (cf. Anonymous, 2011 ).

Personally, I do feel a lot of passion for the world′s musicians and see one of my life′s goals as being advocating for their value. My interest in folk song evolution was motivated not only by theoretical concerns about mechanisms of cultural microevolution, but on my own experiences learning and performing British-American and Japanese folk songs and my hopes that my (Japanese-New Zealand-American) children will be able to sing these songs that have been handed down to them over the course of hundreds of years from their ancestors on opposite sides of the world. I have won trophies in a number of Japanese folk song competitions, so questions about agency in performance and what types of musical (and extra-musical) variation are selected for or against are not merely academic but affect me personally. Do I think that all of these factors can be perfectly quantified? Absolutely not. But I do believe that theories of musical evolution informed by quantitative data could have a positive influence on musicology and beyond. As Clarke ( 2014 , p. 12) later admits: “in fairness, the empirical and the metric have as much potential as any other paradigm to work to humanistic ends”.

Language evolution provides another good analogy. Much work in language evolution focuses on the evolution of basic vocabulary due to its resistance to change and amenability to evolutionary analysis (Pagel, 2017 ). However, broader theories of language evolution incorporate many complex cognitive and social factors, including race, gender and class (Labov, 1994 –2010).

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Acknowledgements

I thank my PhD supervisory committee (Yukio Uemura, Yasuko Tsukahara, Atsushi Marui, and Hugh de Ferranti) for guidance and feedback on this article and my dissertation, and thank Steven Brown, Victor Grauer, Thomas Currie, Quentin Atkinson, Andrea Ravignani, and Jamshid Tehrani for comments on earlier versions of this article. This research was supported by a Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) scholarship, a Keio Research Institute at SFC Startup Grant, and a Keio Gijuku Academic Development Fund Individual Grant.

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Chinese folk music: Study and dissemination through online learning courses

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The use of online learning courses can have a positive effect in the context of the study and dissemination of Chinese folk music. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of an innovative teaching model of massive open online courses to assess the possibility of changes in the approaches to the study of Chinese folk music in higher education. The study used Massive Open Online Courses and a survey of respondents. The study, which took place from January to July within the framework of the 2020–2021 academic year, involved second-year students from four educational institutions of the People's Republic of China: Zhengzhou Sias College, China Conservatory of Music, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Fujian Normal University. A total of 419 people participated in the experiment. Comparison of the academic performance in folk music in the two groups of students suggests that the use of online courses in the context of teaching Chinese folk music is effective. The difference is 12.1% compared to the control group. The students noted that working on MOOC platforms helped them better master performance skills. The respondents also appreciated the fact that online courses with developed curricula can be an effective means of popularizing Chinese culture. This study has both practical and scientific value as it demonstrates the effectiveness of the impact of distance learning courses in the context of studying Chinese folk music. The results can be implemented in the development of training programs, the scope of application includes higher educational institutions.

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1 Introduction

With the development of science and technology, computer technology has become widely used in an increasing number of areas of knowledge (Chen, 2013 ). The use of modern technology in the study of music implies a combination of science and art. At the same time, the principles of creation, reproduction and distribution in music can change (Yang, 2015 ). From the perspective of music education, the computer can penetrate the area in which folk music can be involved. Meanwhile, the current computer is a powerful practical tool that can provide a new stage for the folk music development (Yi, 2009 ). A composer can use computer music technology, professional music software, audio materials of a better quality, various sound sources and music creation techniques to compose their own musical works.

With the development of society, the education system also evolves through reforms. Chinese higher education of the twenty-first century has evolved through traditional student-centered teaching (Bai & Li, 2017 ). And the whole society realized the importance of students in the learning process and the accumulation of knowledge. When teaching music in educational institutions, modern teaching and learning methods are widely used (Bai & Li, 2017 ; Yang, 2015 ). The traditional mode of teaching folk music is gradually changing. The current application of multimedia and computer technologies in music education improves the effect and removes some limitations in traditional music learning. This allows students to study folk music more effectively and appreciate its charm with the help of modern teaching methods (Petersen & Camp, 2016 ; Wang, 2011 ; Xing et al., 2015 ).

The introduction and popularization of Asian culture is becoming a trend in all countries around the world (Zhang, 2018 ). The problem of preserving and popularizing cultural and musical heritage of China on the Internet is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers (Chen, 2014 ; Clothey et al., 2015 ; Williams et al., 2020 ). Multimedia teaching has a good effect and has become a widely used teaching method today. But classroom learning also has shortcomings in the context of teaching Chinese folk art, in particular music, as performing Chinese folk music is only partly part of the scope of music education (Jiang, 2017 ). In addition, the learning content is not interesting for students. The learning process is dominated by the teacher and students passively acquire knowledge; the learners are less proactive and do not show much interest in learning Chinese folk music (Han & Leung, 2015 ; Zhang, 2014 ). Due to these problems, multimedia environments can be used for extensive learning; they can meet the learning needs of students in accordance with the basic foundations of studying Chinese folk music.

While addressing the challenges of learning caused by the pandemic, this study aims to develop a multimedia method of teaching Chinese folk music to students based on an online learning course. This research is an original study of the effect of modern technology on learning Chinese folk music. An analysis of the development of Chinese folk music performance skills using modern instruments and technologies is relevant as it can provide ways to increase the cultural capital of the People's Republic of China and suggest methods that will improve the quality of teaching and popularize Chinese culture.

This research is of practical and scientific importance as it can contribute to the introduction of innovations into the system of modern music education in the People's Republic of China. Teaching Chinese folk music can be considered not only in the context of classroom learning but also in distance learning, which makes personal contact impossible. This refers to the COVID-19 pandemic.

1.1 Literature review

In the musical life of the twenty-first century, computer technology has become increasingly common (Chen, 2014 ). In addition, music uploaded onto a computer can create, enhance, and enrich sound effects and expression that conventional instruments cannot do (Wang, 2011 ). The continuous development of computer music technology is making great changes to the study of popular music changing the way it is created and transmitted over thousands of years (Zhang, 2008 ).

Over the past decades, the Internet has become an indispensable tool for communication, study and work, shopping, leisure and entertainment (Zhu et al., 2021 ). As of January 2021, there are 4.66 billion active Internet users worldwide (59.5% of the world's population) (Johnson, 2021 ). In the last decade, the growth and prosperity of Chinese media content have been observed (Feng, 2015 ). At the same time, Chinese music is quite popular (Feng & Liao, 2020 ; Heang & Khan, 2015 ; Liao et al., 2018 ). The development of the Internet has led to significant changes in the music market: firstly, the variety of music that people can afford to listen to has expanded, and secondly, the territory of music sales is no longer limited to national borders but is measured on a planetary scale (Shen et al., 2019 ).

From the perspective of the current issue related to Chinese folk music teaching, there is a link between computer technology and music teaching (Chen, 2014 ). Moreover, musical theory, historical context, and folk music performance skills are varied and complex. Thus, only long-term study and research can ensure some success (Bai & Li, 2017 ).

The use of computer technology can significantly improve the learning effect (Chen, 2013 ). When computer information technologies are not applied in music education, traditional teaching methods can suggest professional pedagogical knowledge and sheet music; therefore, students cannot feel certain specifics and sound effects. The use of computer technology in music education can form a system of the process of studying Chinese folk music, which includes the analysis of harmony, polyphony, playing, and singing. It can be said that the application of computer technology in music education is a kind of teaching reform, as well as the embodiment of the current spirit of education and innovation in learning, which can greatly contribute to improving the quality of teaching (Jiang, 2017 ).

Folk song is the most popular musical genre in traditional Chinese culture (China Culture, 2021 ). There are dozens of folk music styles in the People's Republic of China. Along with Han folk music, ethnic folk music, which includes Tibetan, Uyghur and Dong folk music, is popular. Han folk music is the music of ordinary people living in the village. Han people have several languages and many dialects, as well as many regional styles of folk music. The most common instrument is the suona, also called laba or heidi, which is a Chinese horn with two reeds. Also in Han folk music, gong ringing is used. It has several regional styles (Jiang, 2021 ).

The musical directions of the Northern regions have their own unique features. Their popular ensembles are characterized by the active use of wind (sheng and dizi, sounah and others) and percussion (drums, gong) instruments. In the Siyan region, which is located in the north of Central China, has existed and was widespread a special genre of drumming, accompanied wind instruments dizi and sheng (Jiang, 2021 ). Folk music in Eastern countries is characterized by a large variety of string instruments such as gu zheng, erhu, and gao hu. A special place here is occupied by gu zheng—a traditional Chinese musical instrument, which was usually made of wood, the number of strings ranged from 21 to 25 and they were made of silk. Instruments have been used for both solo performances and performances in ensembles or groups. For the musical culture of Fujian province, the most widespread genre were traditional ballads with a melancholy mood, which were called Nanyin and Nangun. Traditionally, this song was sung by girls, and they were accompanied by playing traditional string or wind instruments (Jiang, 2017 ). A particular importance in the formation of the musical tradition has the folk language. It has strongly influenced the culture of folk music in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, where the Hakka language became the basis of singing rhythm. The region of Tibet and its traditional music is characterized by a high religiosity and a style similar to storytelling, where the musician performs a story or legend through music (Jiang, 2021 ).

Uighur folk music originates from the great deserts and highlands of Xinjiang province. This music is characterized by funny motives. For example, the composition Uyghur Muqam was included by UNESCO in the list of the intangible heritage of humanity (Chen, 2012 ; Jiang, 2021 ). The compositions are performed by an orchestra playing many traditional Uyghur instruments. These instruments differ from traditional Chinese instruments (Küssner, 2013 ; Zheng et al., 2017a ). Unlike Tibet and Xinjiang, Dong villages occupy a small area. The Dong people live in southwestern China between Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi. The Dong people are known for their polyphonic choir. Dong folk music uses a lusheng flute, which is an important dong musical instrument (Jiang, 2021 ; Zheng et al., 2017b ).

Chinese folk music is marked with unique characteristics fundamentally differing it from the musical art of other countries both in terms of performance and notation ways (Dong, 2015 ). Hence, it is the individual style of Chinese music that forms the basis of its subjectivity (Hoene, 2017 ). All in all, the folk music of China has undergone a long historical evolution that has contributed to its original sound. However, if the aesthetic value of music is lost, there will be no point in its existence, which proves the need for performance and entrenchment of the traditional Chinese musical themes in modern society (Zhou, 2019 ).

Modern music education in the People's Republic of China is intensely involved in the promotion of national identity and national culture through traditional musical art. Within such a patriotic upbringing, national sentiment refers to emotional attachment, while national consciousness is derived from shared traditions, values, and cultures of the past (Ho & Law, 2020 ). In accordance with this, values refer to beliefs or ideas shared by members of the same community and culture, while the term "national values," connotes beliefs and standards of a certain nation concerning what is good and what is bad, what is pleasant, and what is not. On the whole, values have a considerable influence on human behavior and attitudes as they serve as general guidelines for human conduct in all situations. The current mass introduction of traditional Chinese music in the educational process is a sign of how nationalization has begun to manifest itself in music instruction and how the concept of patriotism has affected the entire pedagogical process (Lee, 2014 ).

1.2 Setting objectives

The key motive for conducting the study is the desire to obtain new experimental data on the influence of modern technologies on the process of teaching Chinese folk music performance skills as the results obtained can affect the implementation of online learning systems in traditional curricula. This will contribute to the improvement of the quality of education and the dissemination of the cultural heritage of the People's Republic of China through the Internet. In addition, such measures can be a response to the challenges associated with the impossibility of the internal study mode faced by modern society. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the innovative teaching model of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to assess the possibility of reforming the study of Chinese folk music in higher educational institutions of the People's Republic of China.

Also, the purpose of this research is to identify the impact of open online courses on the study of Chinese folk music in comparison with the control group, which mastered the skills of performing without the use of additional instruments. The research objectives are as follows:

To analyze the effectiveness of the use of massive open online courses in teaching the skills of Chinese folk music performance while comparing two groups: control group A (studied in accordance with the institution curriculum) and group B (additionally used MOOCs), as well as to identify the impact of traditional lessons and massive open online courses on learning progress.

To identify the impact of MOOCs on teaching Chinese folk music performance skills in the context of the dissemination of the cultural heritage of the People's Republic of China by conducting an online survey among students.

2 Methods and materials

The study used Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which are online learning courses designed for a large number of geographically dispersed students. The course may include filmed or recorded video lectures, readings, problem sets, online quizzes and exams, interactive training modules, interaction with other students through forums. MOOCs are usually used in the context of higher education and continuing education, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, many school districts and undergraduate programs have implemented them as a new standard (Chai, 2021 ).

MOOCs have a relatively complete structure and the objectives of the curriculum, coordinator, topic, schedule, and assignments. In addition, MOOCs do not have restrictions on the number of persons enrolled, time, and place. All course resources and information are open and distributed through the Internet. Students can use various tools or platforms to participate in training in accordance with their preferences; for example, wikis, blogs, social networking sites. Students mainly discuss a specific topic and have group sessions in the field of knowledge, thinking, and communication (Lu, 2015 ).

It should also be noted that the creator of MOOCs does not act as a stakeholder in the research and no personal benefit from mentioning the name of the courses was obtained. The use of MOOCs is determined exclusively by the scientific interest in the research topic and is not an advertising stunt.

Thus, an educational program was developed specifically for the study. It consisted of group seminars, views of the lessons given by masters playing traditional Chinese folk musical instruments, group activities, and improvisations. The educational approach based on MOOCs was aimed at motivating students, encouraging their self-expression, raising cultural awareness, informing learners about the cultural base and special components of folk music.

The majority of online lessons have been developed by teachers who have tried to include a wide variety of compositions. The focus was placed on the historical context of the creation of each training course episode, its general historical value, characteristics, cultural features, artistic techniques that are used in Chinese folk music and are the cultural foundation and property of the People's Republic of China were described.

The developed training course was based on seven types of Chinese folk music – each to be studied in one month:

Haozi: Work Songs. The compositions included "Weed-pulling Song of Gong and Drum", "Flailing Song", "Ox-Driving Songs", "Sailing to the South Sea", "Rice Pounding" and "Spinning Wheel". The musical forms of these works have strong melodic motives.

Shan'ge: Mountain songs. The music is characterized by free rhythms, a wide range, and a sublime melody. The following compositions: "Hu'aer", "Xintianyou", "Mountaineering Song", "Zhengjinghong".

Tian'te: Field songs. Typical performances are performed to the accompaniment of gongs, drums, suona, and other instruments. This music is characterized by a large structure and numerous interconnected melodies. The compositions included "Jiashan Field Song" and "Rice Sapling".

Xiaodiao: Small Tunes. Music is characterized by fixed melody and lyrics, ordered structure, and tunefulness. The compositions included "Jasmine Tune" and "Mengjiangnu Tune"

Bu're: Dance songs. The music is characterized by strong rhythms. Dance songs are mainly sung during festivals, celebrations or gatherings. The compositions included "Song of the Lantern", "Song of the Collection of Tea" and "Flower Drum Song".

Narrative songs. The music includes heroic epics, folklore and folk tales in the form of folk songs. The following compositions were used: "Brother Mawu and Sister Gadou", "Erip and Senam", "Saliha and Saman", "Gesar", "Manas".

Religious songs. Songs in the form of prayers. The following compositions were used: "Shamanic Melody", "Sacrificial Song" and "Song of Buddha".

All MOOC activities were thoroughly prepared and planned by the research teacher of the small group based on professional choices that gave students the right to study various folk music. The ideas were based on professional experience. Most materials were created and uploaded to the MOOC platform specifically for this study.

The factor analysis method was used to manage the research data. Fisher's exact test (p) was used to validate the data collected; it allows conclusions to be drawn as to whether there is a significant difference between the two groups (A and B). The data obtained were considered satisfactory in accordance with the benchmark criteria. When using the test, the adequacy and reliability of the results obtained were ensured.

2.1 Participants

The study, which took place from January to July within the framework of the 2020–2021 academic year, involved second-year students from four educational institutions of the People's Republic of China: Zhengzhou Sias College, China Conservatory of Music, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Fujian Normal University. The introduction of MOOC in the study of Chinese folk music took seven months. Each student received an email to take part in the study. The total number of students involved in this process in three educational institutions is 428. As a result, 419 students were interviewed; the rest of the participants could not complete their participation in the study for some reason and their answers are not presented in the sample. More detailed information on the number of participants from each educational institution is presented in Table 1 .

The total number of respondents is 419 people. The age of the students ranged from 19 to 20 years. Participation in the experiment was voluntary. The students were included in group B in accordance with their desire to take additional lessons when using the MOOC, the rest of the learners were assigned to the control group (group A). None of the students or teachers were forced to take part in the study, the involvement was voluntary. An hour-long MOOC was given by a teacher of Chinese folk music to the small groups (group B) and the students were informed about their possibility of contacting teachers (curators of the course) to obtain any information of interest and ask questions related to the functionality of the application.

2.2 Research design

Group B was divided into small groups of 10 students per 1 teacher for convenient online work; thus, 16 teachers took part in the study and gave marks. The study lasted seven months. All learners attended standard folk music classes in accordance with the curriculum, and Group B had two one-hour and a half lessons per week within the MOOC, thus forming eight groups; there were two groups in each of the institutions.

At the end of the study, the performance of students was assessed by the teachers in accordance with the curriculum. Student progress was assessed on a 100-point scale involving 5 levels: 100–90—excellent, 89–80—good, 79–70—mediocre, 69–60—satisfactory, below 60—unsatisfactory. The assessment criteria were as follows: work in the classroom, independent work, module test, group work, final test.

In addition, in order to assess the impact of the MOOC on folk music performance skills in the context of the dissemination of the cultural heritage of the People's Republic of China, an online survey was conducted among students (Appendix 1 ). All the respondents' questionnaires were properly filled in and there were no irrelevant answers. The questionnaire contained 10 questions to assess the effectiveness of the MOOC. The respondents were required to indicate how much they agree with the statements on a 4-point Likert scale, where 1—Strongly agree (SA); 2—Agree (A); 3—Disagree (D); 4—Strongly disagree (SD).

2.3 Research limitations

This study involved four higher educational institutions in the People's Republic of China so the results cannot reflect the impact of online learning on the study of Chinese folk music nationwide. The research participants were randomly selected and grouped regardless of their academic progress in the music mastery course. It is also worth noting that although the assessment criteria were the same across the study, there were different assessors in each institution. Another possible limitation is that this paper provides no intra-participant results. That is, it does not evaluate the same student with and without the use of MOOCs in the learning process.

The paragraphs below describe each research question results. As research question No. 1 aimed to analyze the effectiveness of massive open online courses in learning Chinese folk music, when comparing two groups, it is necessary to consider the results of the assessment according to the selected criteria. Table 2 shows the average music progress of second-year students from four universities in accordance with the selected assessment criteria in the context of each small group at the end of the study (July 2021). All p-values are below 0.05, which is a threshold; thus, the differences between the scores are significant in this study.

The lowest marks were obtained by small groups A that followed traditional curriculum without the use of an online platform in all educational institutions: 68.0, 68.8, 67.6, and 67.8 points with an average of 68.0. In contrast, small groups B in each educational institution performed better. Thus, students from small groups B, who also used the MOOC platform, received the following marks: 78.2, 78.4, 76.8 and 79.2; the average indicator was 78.1, which is 12.9% higher than that of the control groups. Based on these data, it can be concluded that the use of computer applications in the context of teaching Chinese folk music performance skills is effective.

The second objective of this study was to identify the effect of the MOOC on teaching Chinese folk music performance skills in the context of the dissemination of the cultural heritage of the People's Republic of China by conducting an online survey among the respondents from group B. The results of the survey related to student experience and the subsequent effectiveness of the MOOC introduction in the learning process are presented in Table 3 .

The survey results clearly demonstrate that the students were satisfied with their participation in the Chinese folk music performance course using the MOOC (statement No. 1). Thus, the total percentage of SA and A options among the students is 88.1%. In addition, online lessons helped 90.0% of students master the skills of performing Chinese folk music (statement No. 2). Statement No. 3 shows that 82.5% of students prefer learning with the use of modern technologies to traditional classroom learning. It is worth noting that 86.9% of students believe that the MOOC has had a positive impact on their knowledge of the history of folk music of the People's Republic of China (statement No. 4). At the same time, 87.5% of students think that MOOCs contribute to the improvement of folk music teaching methods (statement No. 5).

It was interesting to investigate whether the respondents believe that the use of MOOCs can attract people not only from the PRC but also from other countries to the study of Chinese folk music (statement No. 6). Thus, 91.9% of students agreed with this statement. It was extremely important to find out whether the respondents believe that the further use of MOOCs to study Chinese folk music will expand their knowledge and improve musical skills and professional abilities (statement No. 7). Thus, 88.1% believe that the use of modern technologies has a positive effect not only on the skills of performing musical compositions but also on other areas of knowledge.

It can also be noted that 86.9% of students indicated that the introduction of modern technologies in the learning process has a beneficial effect (statement No. 8). In addition, 86.9% of respondents believe that online courses with specially designed curricula are an effective means of popularizing Chinese culture (statement No.9). It should be noted that only 32.5% of respondents believe that such a learning practice could be more effective if implemented in classroom studies while 67.5% disagree with this and consider the online sphere to be quite effective (statement No. 10).

To more clearly demonstrate the factors under study, we can consider the data presented in the form of a figure by the criteria that relate to the positive effect of introducing online lessons for studying Chinese folk music on the MOOC platform (Fig.  1 ).

Group B results reflecting the positive effect of introducing online lessons for studying Chinese folk music on the MOOC platform

Based on the analysis of the data obtained, it can be concluded that the students noted that the MOOC helped them master the skills of performing Chinese folk music and that the online platform can attract people not only from the PRC but also from other countries to the study of Chinese folk music. The respondents also appreciated the possibility that online courses with specially designed training programs can become an effective means of popularizing Chinese culture (statements No. 2, 6, 9). The students were slightly less likely to note that they prefer learning with the use of modern technologies to traditional classroom learning (82.5%), which proves that online lessons cannot fully replace the traditional classroom lessons, but their combination may provide a good effect.

4 Discussion

Research confirms that the application of computer technology in the context of music education can combine scientific strength and pedagogical power, increase student interest and enthusiasm, and promote reform and development of music teaching (Wang, 2011 ; Zhiqiang, 2017 ). The development of science and technology will promote the combination of scientific and technological potential, and some scientific advances related to music learning are demonstrating their effectiveness in practical learning (Zhiqiang, 2017 ), which is also confirmed by the present paper.

Moreover, the results of scientific studies prove that the study of music based on the traditional learning method is less effective compared to the multimedia method with the use of online platforms (Yang, 2015 ). The application of computer technology introduces innovation in music teaching and combines theory and practice, which helps to stimulate students' interest in learning and contributes to improving the quality and level of teaching. A change in the method of teaching folk music also promotes and optimizes the technology for popularizing folk music; thus, the two aspects are mutually reinforcing each other (Wang, 2011 ). A number of these studies support the data highlighted in the present paper.

Current research confirms the possibility of popularizing Chinese folk music through an online platform. Similar findings are demonstrated by the research highlighting that Chinese musical heritage is primarily promoted through the Internet (Wang, 2021 ). Moreover, such areas as instrumental music, vocal music and dance performance are of particular interest to the whole world. In addition, the use of the Internet and multimedia platforms can contribute to the development of Chinese composers and musicians, both professional and non-professional ones, as it allows them to freely familiarize themselves with the work of all generations of musicians from their native country and other countries (Wang, 2021 ).

Understanding and accepting music education play a critical role in promoting culturally diverse music education (Cain, 2015 ). Another study has shown that specialized computer applications expand understanding of the culture and traditions of the Chinese people, enhance the perception of national musical identity, increase interactivity and interest in new knowledge, as well as can serve as a basis for inspiration (Hong & Wu, 2021 ). This is confirmed by the results obtained in this study.

In the scientific world, there are results demonstrating that the combination of music and technology contributes to the enthusiasm and initiative of students, as well as the growth of their interest, which is partially confirmed by the present paper. The integration of music and technology into folk music teaching methods can deepen its understanding to some extent (Wu, 2018 ). In the learning process, teachers should promote student initiative, thereby contributing to their learning through literature and modern electronic technology in order to find new ways to understand the history underlying folk music (Wang-Shu, 2014 ). As an important part of the musical heritage, Chinese traditional and folk music not only takes on the hereditary task of developing musical literacy in students but also plays a role in promoting national culture and cultural capital (Shi, 2021 ).

Also, the MOOC platform has already demonstrated its effectiveness in the context of learning to play the Chinese traditional Gu zheng instrument. The data obtained make it possible to state that online platforms can positively influence the educational process in music education (Lu, 2015 ).

5 Conclusions

As the conducted experiment unveiled, the lowest marks in the folk music course were obtained by small groups A (control groups), with an average of 68.0. In contrast, small groups B (experimental) were marked with far better results – the average mark for them was 78.1, which is 12.9% higher than that of the control. These outcomes testify to the effectiveness of using computer applications in teaching Chinese folk music.

This study has both practical and scientific value as it demonstrates the effectiveness of the impact of distance learning courses in the context of studying Chinese folk music. This research clearly demonstrates that by using additional multimedia tools, higher quality and better results can be achieved. In addition, the present paper sheds light on the impact of the introduction of the MOOC platform, which involves organized and planned training, which is relevant for international education and can be useful for further research on this topic.

There are several broad areas of application of the results obtained, namely educational programs of higher institutions and scientific research. An important aspect is the popularization of modern technologies for their further official inclusion in educational programs as in a global sense, society is faced with new challenges, for example, with the pandemic that has affected the whole world. For further research, it is important to study the long-term effects of the influence of modern technologies on the learning process, as well as the possibility of a full transition to distance learning in the future.

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Questionnaire

Please assess the statements by expressing your agreement / disagreement on a four-point scale:

Strongly agree (SA)

Disagree (D)

Strongly disagree (SD)

I am generally pleased with my participation in the Chinese folk music performance training program using MOOCs.

○ 1. Strongly agree ○ 2. Agree ○ 3. Disagree ○ 4. Strongly disagree

Participation in online lessons helped me master the skills of performing Chinese folk music.

I prefer studying Chinese folk music with the use of modern technology to traditional classroom learning.

I believe that the MOOC has had a positive impact on increasing my knowledge of the history of folk music of the People's Republic of China.

I believe that MOOCs contribute to the improvement of Chinese folk music teaching methods and make the process more interesting.

I believe that the use of MOOCs can attract people not only from the PRC but also from other countries to the study of Chinese folk music.

1. Strongly agree ○ 2. Agree ○ 3. Disagree ○ 4. Strongly disagree

Further use of MOOCs to study Chinese folk music will expand knowledge and improve musical skills and professional abilities.

The introduction of modern technologies in the process of teaching folk music performance skills has a beneficial effect on learning.

I believe that online courses with specially designed curricula are an effective means of popularizing Chinese culture.

I believe that this teaching practice would be more effective when introduced into classroom training.

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Li, R. Chinese folk music: Study and dissemination through online learning courses. Educ Inf Technol 27 , 8997–9013 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11003-w

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Bonnie Koloc, a Chicago folk music icon, is back for an exhibition of her art at Tony Fitzpatrick's gallery

Koloc, 80, who moved to chicago in 1968 and stayed for almost two decades, is best known for her singing. but she’s also been an artist for most of her life and has a new exhibition at the dime..

Bonnie Koloc in Chicago in the late 1960s. The folk music icon returns to the city for two events next week.

Charles Osgood Photography

A year after her contributions to Chicago’s burgeoning folk scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s were highlighted in a book tracing Chicago’s role in country and folk music, folk singer and artist Bonnie Koloc is back in Chicago for an art exhibition and music performance Friday and Saturday.

Koloc, who recently turned 80, will be at The Dime on Friday for the opening of an exhibition of her artwork that will run through the end of the month.

On Saturday, Koloc will be at the Hideout for a question-and-answer session with Mark Guarino, author of the book “Country and Midwestern: Chicago in the History of County Music and the Folk Revival’’ that spotlighted Koloc’s key role in the city’s folk scene that also included greats like Steve Goodman and John Prine .

Both events were the idea of Guarino, who interviewed Koloc at her home in Iowa for the book and wanted to pay tribute to her, noting many of her contemporaries have died in recent years.

“We tend to celebrate these people after they are dead, so my point is to celebrate them while they are alive. She’s the last one left, and I wanted her to be in front of a different audience,” said Guarino said, noting that Koloc usually plays the Old Town School of Folk Music once a year.

• John Prine dies at 73; acclaimed folksinger, songwriter created classics of lyricism and storytelling
• Singer Jim Post, Chicago folk music star who hit big with ‘Reach Out of the Darkness,’ dead at 82

Koloc, who moved to Chicago in 1968 and stayed for almost two decades, is best known for her singing. But she’s also been an artist for most of her life. She’ll be displaying pieces that span three decades at The Dime, 1513 N. Western Ave.

Bonnie Koloc’s piece titled “Space in the Place.”

Koloc, who will be at the show’s opening and at the gallery every weekend that her work is on display there, said she largely selected block prints or linoleum cuts, including one titled “Space in the Place” that shows a woman holding a piece of paper bearing the lyrics to her song of the same name. That’s not the only connection between her art and her music.

“I’ll come up with a theme and do 13 to 14 pieces,” Koloc said. “When I do a concert, there are usually 13 to 14 songs sung. Also, music can be translated to a line that you’re drawing. And, in music, some notes are dark, just like some paintings are dark.”

Artist Tony Fitzpatrick — who owns The Dime and plans to close the gallery and move his studio to Wicker Park in September — said of Koloc’s exhibition: “I was happy to get the show. It’s very much in keeping with who she is as a singer. She’s a really serious artist. I thought: Wouldn’t it be a nice way to sign off with one of my last shows being for Bonnie Koloc. We come from the same tribe.”

Bonni Koloc’s “self portrait as an a cappella” brush drawing.

For the interview at the Hideout, Koloc said she’s planning to talk about her career and her role in the folk music scene that flourished in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s and also included Goodman, whom she befriended in 1968, and Prine, someone she got to know soon after.

“There must have been a dozen folk clubs in Old Town back then,” Koloc said. “It was music for everyday people. And it was important because it was involved with social justice.”

Bonnie Koloc.

Koloc said she picked up one of her most important skills while playing clubs in Waterloo, Iowa, during college.

“I worked five shows a night, 45 minutes on with 15 minutes off and did that until 2 a.m.,” she said. “That taught me how to handle a crowd. And, when I got to Chicago, the folk clubs were used to people being shushed, but I wasn’t because I knew how to handle an audience.”

Koloc was playing at the old Quiet Knight — once one of Chicago’s preeminent folk clubs — in the summer of 1968 during that year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“I remember they closed the door because the police were chasing people on Wells Street,” she said. “I was looking out the window and saw police beating some guy.

“And now a lot of these protests are reminding me of it,” she said of recent pro-Palestinian protests.

Over the years, she not only was a headliner but also performed on Broadway. Still, national fame largely eluded her — which she attributes to bad luck.

“In 1973, I had a hit single called ‘You’re Going to Love Yourself in the Morning,’ but my record company didn’t have it in stores because they didn’t have the distribution,” Koloc said. “So it fell off the charts. Also, before Jim Croce was killed in a plane crash, I played with him at Ravinia and was slated to tour with him, and that would have introduced me to a lot of people.”

Chicago singer-songwriter Rachel Drew was tapped six years ago to pay tribute to Koloc’s first album “After All This Time,” which might have exposed her to a new audience. But Drew said those plans were dropped because she heard Koloc wasn’t interested.

Koloc said she doesn’t remember being approached about that and that a former manager might have said no.

What Koloc has achieved is remarkable no matter that she didn’t achieve widespread fame, according to Ed Holstein, a stalwart of the Chicago folk scene who teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music and has known Koloc since 1968.

“I don’t think that’s so important,” Holstein said. “She’s such an intimate artist. Sharing a room with 50 people who really like what you’re doing and who you really connect with, that’s really what it’s all about.”

Though Koloc lives in Iowa with her husband Robert Wolf, an artist and writer, she said, “I’m pretty much a Chicago thing. Even though I grew up in Iowa and live there again, Chicago is always my home.”

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DOGRI FOLK MUSIC OF JAMMU

2020, Swar Sindhu: National Peer-Reviewed/Refereed Journal of Music ISSN 2320–7175 | Volume 08, Issue 01

Folk music provides an outlet for individuals across boundaries of race, class and location. Folk music of all the three provinces (regions) of Jammu & Kashmir is thriving. But Duggar folk music has travelled itself among generations via its folklores, rituals, customs, beliefs, social relation, lifestyles and folk art. Duggar is not only world famous for the matchless bravery and valour but its culture folk exposed in the form of folklores and folk songs. There has always remained an emotional attachment with the religion among the Dogras and traditions of singing folk songs related with a belief, family deity, philosophical thought, saint or supreme soul. Even the smallest village of this state is the art centre in itself. From a school going child to the goat man, from a pharmacist to a potter and even an elderly lady making cotton strings for prayer all are involved to some art. Glimpses of art can be taken from the activities of singing song, playing some instruments or embroidery. Pasting dung in the house and making earthen pot for planting Basil is art. In Duggar "Bakh" folk song is suite well known and rich. Instruments like Ektara", King", Chang", Narsingha", Kaihal" play a vital role in the presentation of Duggar folk songs. One dance form "Khud" is also much enriched. Folk songs of Dogra land are an impure collection of live emotions. Optimum depiction of emotions specific quality of music, capturing attraction and beauty is the identity of Duggar folk music. But it is really unfortunate that this rich cultural heritage is slowly being forgotten.

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Nidhi Verma

This paper is an attempt to archive Dogra oral history through the folk songs called Bhaakhan, and it is also an effort to situate the folk songs with the living history of ordinary people rather than the leaders and the rulers only. History, as a written record, has also been created by putting together literary and oral sources, and this paper will add to knowledge about Dogra region that once upon a time comprised, Jammu region, some parts of Himachal, Punjab and some parts of Pakistan also. The history of this area is not chronicled except in the royal records, official papers, but most modern historical events are recorded through military history and military records. Folklore, it has been established by folklorists like Vladimir Prop and post-structuralism theorists, is not only a carrier of culture, but rather the expressions of strong self-reflections and deep insights accrued therein. Dogras, the major ethnic group of the Jammu region, and Himachal Pradesh have a folk literature of their own. They have preserved their age-old folk traditions in the form of songs and tales. Universality, richness and variety are prototypical characters of Dogri folk literature. It is universal in two ways. Firstly, its subjects are universal, and the strands in which these subjects are woven, are common among many folk literatures of India and the world; secondly, it appears in the same forms all over Duggar land. The present paper shall focus on the study of Bhaakh, a unique musical folk form of Dogra region. It is a song form dominated by music that too without the use of any musical instrument.

Ram Chandra राम चन्द्र 51

Prachi Mali

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Shubham Kumar

Folk music is an ancient form of music. This word comes from a German word "Volk", it means "the people". Every community or society in the whole world has their own traditional Folk music whether it is Chile, Germany or India. Especially India has a very rich and diverse culture of Folk music. Here I am writing about one of the most famous Folk music of Jharkhand that is "Khortha". This language is spoken by approximately 1.5 Crores people of Jharkhand. The objective behind writing this article is to make society aware about "Khortha's" beautiful folk music and its rich Folk culture. This article will give little bit of exposure to Khortha Folk music and it will help scholars who are working on Folk music. Descriptive research methodology has been used for writing this article. Khortha is such a beautiful and famous language of Jharkhand that it should also reach to different parts of India. And this is one authentic way of giving respect to this Language and its culture which it truly deserves.

Noé Dinnerstein

This dissertation examines the place of traditional songs in the Tibetan Buddhist culture of the former Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh. I look at how Buddhism and pre-Buddhist religion informed the texts and performance contexts of traditional songs, and how Ladakhi songs represent cultural self-images through associated musical, textual, and visual tropes. Many songs of the past, both from the old royal house and the rural Buddhist populations, reflect the socio-political structure of Ladakhi society. Some songs reflect a pan-Tibetan identity, connecting the former Namgyal dynasty to both the legendary King Gesar and Nyatri Tsangpo, the historical founder of the Tibetan Yarlung dynasty. Nevertheless, a distinct Ladakhi identity is consistently asserted. A number of songs contain texts that evoke a mandala or symbolic representation of the world according to Vajrayana Buddhist iconography, ritual and meditative visualization practices. These mandala descriptions depict the social order of the kingdom, descending from the heavens, to the Buddhist clergy, to the king and nobles, to the common folk. As the region has become more integrated into modern India, Ladakhi music has moved into modern media space, being variously portrayed through scholarly works, concerts, mass media, and the internet. An examination of contemporary representations of “tradition” and ethnic identity in traditional music shows how Ladakhis from various walks of life view the music and song texts, both as producers and consumers. Situated as it was on the caravan routes between India, Tibet, China, and Central Asia, Ladakhi culture developed distinctive hybrid characteristics, including in its musical styles. Analysis of the performance practices, musical structures, form, and textual content of songs clearly indicates a fusion of characteristics of Middle Eastern, Balti, Central Asian, and Tibetan origin. Looking at songs associated with the Namgyal dynasty court, I have found them to be part of a continuum of Tibetan high literary culture, combined with complex instrumental music practices. As such, I make the argument that these genres should be considered to be art music.

Mrinalini Atrey

Jammu Region presently forms a province in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India. The region is fortunate in having rich heritage of Oral Tradition in form of folk traditions, folk songs, folklores and folk ballads. The folk ballads are available in Local dialects such as Dogri,Pahari and Bhaderwahi. However Dogri folk ballads are more largely available, as Dogra culture is the dominant culture in the region. The Dogri folk ballads have two major forms-Karaks and Barans. Karaks are the ballads with religious themes. They are primarily the narratives connected with Brahmanical gods and goddesses, village deities and those of family deities. They have been categorized into three groups of Puranic Ballads, Ballads of the folk Deities and the Ballads of Family deities. Among the Family deities, Sati deities are specially revered in the region in form of kula devis. They have been categorized into local goddesses, Silabantis (who performed Sati) and village deities. The objective of the present paper is to discuss the ballads connected with Sati deities. so as to have a glimpse of the social status of the women in the region.

isara solutions

International Res Jour Managt Socio Human

Western Odisha a greenish area of Odisha state covers eleven district of Odisha .This area has rich folk tradition and cultural heritage .This location is unique and something special and different from other part of Odisha . Its tribal culture gives this location a new identity. This area is well known for its folklore . Folklore includes folksong, folktale, folk music, folk arts and craft ,myths, riddle, proverb, folk dance ,folk festival etc .The folk culture is the store house of traditional knowledge so it is still preserved in rural life of western Odisha . Dalkhai is a popular folksong , dance and festival of this area . Some folklorists say Dalkhai festival is observed in the month of October in western Odisha . Dalkhai songs and dance is so simple and spontaneous that anybody can sing and dance .It transmits generation to generation orally . This dance is performed both in single and group ,both male and female can take part in this song and dance but in maximum cases women are more involved more than men .Group dances especially women group(male may be included) are more common . Men join in this performance as music players. The Dalkhai song reflects many social problems , rituals, life style , gender issue, moral education ,description of nature , praying to god and goddess etc. We can find non-formal education from folksongs and dances of western Odisha . From Dalkhai song we can acquire life skills. In this paper i want to analyse the Dalkhai song and dance and how it gives impact to life and living of western Odisha as well as what is the impact of modernity on Dalkhai.

Lokogandhar

Dr. Ashis Chakraborty

DIPAK MONDAL

To discuss about the "folk culture of Uttar Dinajpur" district at first we have to know the meaning of the word 'folk'. The word 'folk' does not mean 'masses. One part of mass may be termed as folk as the extension of the word 'mass' is very wide. Basically 'folk' mean the persons of society who are dependent on agriculture. Folk culture may be defined as the exposure of these kind of persons' sorrow, poverty etc in the evening at anybody's verandas or yard after tremendous labour in daily life. The so called hi-profile person of the society treats these labour kind persons as backward. From the view of so called 'hi-profile' persons of society folk culture may be defined as the culture of so called backward class of the society.

Abrar Ahmed(Ph.D.)

Folk culture is manifest in the people of Rajasthan. The activities emerge from the very life of the masses. From gathering food to more sophisticated practices of religious, social and political life. Regional dances are also one of the transporters of culture. Gavri is one of the famous tribal dances spotted in areas of rural and tribal population. A number of narratives are interwoven in the performance of Gavri. It plays an important role in the folk life. Performance of Gavri gives us a number of messages and teaches us the values of a life in harmony with nature. It is a dance of the masses prepared indigenously by the communities in their own way and used for expression of a collective feeling of joy, sorrow, fear, anger, devotion and to send messages for mass-calling. At one level, it is a worship of Goddess Ambav. People of Rajasthan: Cultural and Religious Diversity The folk culture entertains the people in a holistic way. The life of people is full of music. It never lets anybody feel aloof and sad. The culture is attractive and elegant. There are many fairs and festivals add different colours to the culture. Padharo Mahare Desh is the slogan used by the department of tourism. The costumes of Rajasthanies are very colourful and vibrant. It is a unique state from a cultural point of view (45). The milieu of every region is built according to its climate. Every auspicious occasion starts with the blessing of deities. The culture and civilization is believed to have protected by 36 crore deities. The procession of these deities is presented in a great manner and is sung beautifully by Bhopas (Priest-singer) and other people. There are many fairs such as Gogaji fair, Ramdevji, Mallinathaji, Devnarayanji, Jambhoji, Pipaji etc. If there is no rainfall, people go to worship Bhomyaji in the form of a procession, singing songs while playing musical instruments like Harmonium and Dholak. Surprisingly, their wishes are fulfilled in due time. (Manoj23).The chief part of this folk literature is consists of folk-gods and brave warrior ladies. Although historians do not share one theory about Rajasthan or the Rajputs still they all accept and appreciate the valuable deeds and sacrifices made by these brave folk gods. The practitioners of the 1

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