Music evolution in the enchanted universe

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dor Shilton (Tel Aviv University)
• Wednesday 17 December 2025, 17:00-18:00
• Online.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact jbf43.

Abstract

Music evolution theories in the past two decades have mostly focused on human communication and social bonding. But a notable fact about music is that it is cross-culturally used to communicate with invisible beings and in religious contexts. What does this mean for a cultural evolutionary theory of music, and for the role of music in human evolution? I will present several theoretical perspectives that can help incorporate the religious dimension into existing socio-functional theories. I will argue, first, that the structural features of music encourage a “participatory mentality” and displays of collective synchrony that are beneficial for making invisible beings and collective representations feel real and present, and second, that this can explain the remarkable prevalence and persistence of music across human societies.

Biography

Dor Shilton is a postdoctoral fellow at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University, a research affiliate of the School of Anthropology at Oxford University, and a Fulbright fellow. His doctoral thesis, co-supervised by Ian Cross, concerned the culturally-driven emergence of music as a participatory interaction in human evolution.

Zoom link

https://zoom.us/j/99433440421?pwd=ZWxCQXFZclRtbjNXa0s2K1Q2REVPZz09 (Meeting ID: 994 3344 0421; Passcode: 714277)

This talk is part of the CMS seminar series in the Faculty of Music series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Online
• CMS seminar series in the Faculty of Music

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.