Music as a Spandrel of Evolutionary Adaptation for Speech

Book excerpt: Some forms of human behavior make no sense in the light of evolution. Music is one of them, and it is the main subject of this book. Here, it is interpreted from a holistic perspective; music is embedded in our nature, it is embodied in our organisms, and it is emergent, a language that opens the doors of imagination for us. The first half of the book is dedicated to cognitive aspects of acoustic signalization: of learned bird song, of automatic mammal calls, and of speech and music in humans. The second part of the books deals with the culture of music in European modernity. The question of the relation of music and imagination is also addressed. The book posits that music makes it easier for us to depart from paramount reality and become creative – not bad for something that started as a spandrel of speech.