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SUMMARY:Is music the most important thing we ever did? (Part II) - Profess
 or Ian Cross (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20211012T170000Z
DTEND:20211012T180000Z
UID:TALK163750@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Stephen Wilford
DESCRIPTION:Over twenty years ago I wrote a piece that became a keynote pr
 esentation and a book chapter with the hyperbolic title  "Is music the mos
 t important thing we ever did? Music\, development and evolution". It was 
 spurred by a chapter in Steven Pinker's 1997 book "How the mind works" tha
 t infamously suggested that music is simply "auditory cheesecake"\, a plea
 sant diversion but absolutely inessential for human life.  On reading Pink
 er I had felt that he was not only trivialising something very important t
 o me\, but also that he was showing a profound and ethnocentric ignorance 
 of music —and\, indeed\, of the very idea of culture— mistaking a cont
 emporary and culturally particular idea of "music" for a universal human c
 apacity.  In my original chapter I concluded that music could have been ad
 aptive in human evolution\, playing significant roles in human cognitive d
 evelopment and\, secondarily\, in processes of managing social relationshi
 ps\; music was thus likely to have been functional in the emergence of mod
 ern humans.\n\nI have since explored aspects of music\, its likely evoluti
 onary significance\, and its roles in human sociality in essays and in exp
 eriments\, detailing the results in over fifty papers\, chapters and the o
 dd book and have considerably revised my earlier ideas\; I now think that 
 music\, unambiguously\, was indeed one of the most important things humans
  ever did — and still do.  In this talk I shall present new theoretical 
 considerations and experimental evidence that reveal music and key aspects
  of language to be intrinsically interlinked\, and that imply that the hum
 an capacity for music is integral to the flexible sociality that enables h
 umans to be human. I'll suggest that without music\, the future of humanit
 y is likely to be both bleak and brief.
LOCATION:Hybrid (Lee Hall and on Youtube)
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