Do humans have something like an instinct for music? The musicologist Michael Spitzer thinks so. As he points out, every person is born with an innate ability to recognize rhythm, beat in time to it, and to recognize and recall melody.

Music-related abilities may be universal, but musical preferences and styles can differ greatly from culture to culture.

In this Big Think video, Spitzer explores why cultures interpret music differently, and also whether the internet will have a homogenizing effect on music.

0:00 The musical instinct

1:13 How music is colonized and counter-colonized

3:58 Why music will never homogenize

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About Michael Spitzer:

Michael Spitzer is the author of The Musical Human and professor of music at the University of Liverpool, where he leads the department’s work on classical music. A music theorist and musicologist, he is an authority on Beethoven, with interests in aesthetics and critical theory, cognitive metaphor, and music and affect. He organized the International Conferences on Music and Emotion and the International Conference on Analyzing Popular Music and currently chairs the editorial board of Music Analysis Journal.

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