![]() Finally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics informs that artists, including musicians, are becoming a larger portion of the U. In addition, of the adults who participated in the performing arts, 62% reported that they do so to spend time with family and friends. In their Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA, 2020) reported a number of statistics that underscore the pervasiveness of music in everyday life: In 2017, 175 million adults in the United States used electronic media to access artistic or arts-related content 128 million adults attended artistic, creative, or cultural activities-with live music performance being the most frequent-and 128 million adults created or performed art, with singing being the most frequent form of expression. Plato believed that music could bypass reason and penetrate into the core of the self, thus affecting the development of a person’s character (Popular Beethoven, n.d.). Aristotle believed that music could promote moral behavior, thus creating model citizens for the ideal state. The benefits of music for a society have been proclaimed since the time of the ancient Greeks through to the present. Music is a means of enriching one’s sensory experience and serves as a socializing agency that influences many behaviors (Hodges, 2020). Most humans seem to be able to create it in some form and are susceptible to its influence. It has been present in all civilizations around the world since their beginning. Music is so prevalent in human societies that its presence in everyday life could easily be taken for granted. Implications for the role of music in promoting the well-being of a culture are examined. Music may thus occasion similar values-consistent behavior (i.e., within the values system of the community) across groups of people. The aggregate product of this cooperation is then assigned meaning and selected by the contingencies of a particular sociocultural community. Music is proposed to be a complex symbolic inheritance system, or an advanced form of relational responding, that required cooperation to develop and further facilitated unity and affinity among groups of people. This article explores the selection mechanisms responsible for the retention and transmission of music-related behaviors. ![]() A more recent perspective that is consistent with today’s evolutionary science framework suggests that music is a cultural-level adaptation because of the survival advantages it affords members of a community. One position suggests that evolution favored music-related behaviors because such behaviors were linked to sexual selection and reproduction. Music is a pervasive cultural practice that has been present in ancient civilizations through to the present, yet its evolutionary significance has not been unequivocally determined.
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