Music
A music area is a cultural area defined according to musical activity, and may or may not conflict with the cultural areas assigned to a given region. The world may be divided into three large music areas, each containing a "cultivated" or classical musics "that are obviously its most complex musical forms," with, nearby, folk styles which interact with the cultivated, and, on the perimeter, primitive styles:
- Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa
- based on shared isometric materials, diatonic scales, and polyphony based on parallel thirds, fourths, and fifths.
- North Africa, Southwest Asia, South Asia, and Indonesia.
- based on shared small intervals in scales, melodies, and polyphony.
- American Indian, East Asia, Northern Siberian, and Finno-Ugric music
- based on shared large steps in pentatonic and tetratonic scales.
However, he then adds that "the world-wide development of music must have been a unified process in which all peoples participated," and that one finds similar tunes and traits in puzzlingly isolated or separated locations throughout the world.
Read more about this topic: Cultural Area
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