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Ethnomusicology Forum
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Is Music an Adaptation or a Technology?

Ethnomusicological Perspectives from
the Analysis of Chinese Shuochang
Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson
Published online: 03 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson (2014) Is Music an Adaptation or a Technology?
Ethnomusicological Perspectives from the Analysis of Chinese Shuochang, Ethnomusicology Forum,
23:1, 3-26, DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2013.875786

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 Ethnomusicology Forum, 2014
Vol. 23, No. 1, 3–26, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2013.875786

Is Music an Adaptation or a
Technology? Ethnomusicological
Perspectives from the Analysis of
Chinese Shuochang
Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson
Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 23:48 09 October 2014

This paper examines two opposing perspectives on the debate about whether music is a
biological adaptation or a technology. Those who espouse the first perspective claim that
recent explorations into the intrinsic musical nature of human communication suggest
an adaptive function for ‘communicative musicality.’ The main proponent of the second
perspective argues that music is not an adaptation, but considers it biologically
significant as a transformative technology. Based on my research into northern Chinese
shuochang (‘speaking-singing’), I support the notion that musilanguage—an evolu-
tionary antecedent of communicative musicality—is an adaptive trait, and consider
shuochang a modern example that displays some of the characteristics of musilanguage,
reflecting a difference between semanticity and musical play as the two ends of the
musilinguistic spectrum. At the same time, I also suggest that shuochang has been
technologised by written orthographies, making it an example of a transformative
technology. In addition to recognising the significance of play on the musical side of the
musilanguage gamut, I argue that humans are predisposed to technologising
musilanguage, particularly in using some kind of visual orthography. I also suggest
that neophilia—a biological instinct to search for the novel—may well be the root of
musical play as well as the proclivity to technologise it.

Keywords: Shuochang; Chinese Narratives; Musilanguage; Biological Adaptation;

Communicative Musicality; Transformative Technology of the Mind; Neophilia

Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson, an associate professor, is the Humanities Professor of Ethnomusicology in the
Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University. Correspondence
to: Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson, 3034 JFSB, Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature at
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA. Email: Francesca_Lawson@byu.edu

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 4 F. R. S. Lawson
Introduction
Scholars in cognitive science, ethology, psychology, paleoanthropology and biomu-
sicology are at odds about the origin of music: is it an adaptation or a technological
spin-off of another cognitive function? For the most part, ethnomusicologists have
not weighed in as part of this research, and Brown, Merker, and Wallin have even
charged that ethnomusicologists have simply ignored questions about the origins of
music.1 As a response to this charge, this paper examines two opposing perspectives
on the debate about whether or not music is a product of natural selection from
the standpoint of an ethnomusicologist. The first perspective is summarised in
the introduction to the seminal compendium Communicative Musicality: Exploring
the Basis of Human Companionship (CM), where editors Malloch and Trevarthen
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argue that recent explorations into the intrinsic musical nature of human commun-
ication suggest an adaptive function for ‘communicative musicality’ as the capacity
for making music and developing language; this perspective is substantiated in each
of the subsequent chapters by scholars in a variety of fields (Malloch and Trevarthen
2010). The second perspective is articulated by neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel in his
groundbreaking work Music, Language, and the Brain (Patel 2008), and later refined
and restated in a chapter published in another interdisciplinary compendium,
Emerging Disciplines (Patel 2010). In contrast to Malloch and Trevarthen, Patel
does not believe music is an adaptation, but considers it biologically significant as a
transformative technology. After evaluating these two positions in light of my
research into language–music relationships in Chinese narrative performance, I
demonstrate how these seemingly conflicting viewpoints about music and musicality
might be reconciled.

Music as Adaptation: Communicative Musicality and Musilanguage

Over the past 50 years, researchers have made some remarkable discoveries in
studying mother–infant communication, detecting melodic gesture, vocal timbre and
rhythmic timing in the delicate exchanges between mothers and their infants.2 The
melodic and rhythmic patterns of engagement are described as musical and dance-
like, and are equally reinforced by both infant and maternal behaviour. In particular,
the exaggerated prosody characteristic of the way mothers speak to their infants is
surprisingly universal in its musical elements (Mithen 2006: 72). Moreover, research
also demonstrates that infants encourage their mothers to speak to and act with them
in a way that mutually reinforces these vocal and bodily movements. As Dissanayake
explains, ‘such reinforcement would have been adaptive for both maternal
reproductive success and infant survival’ (2010: 23). And this is a key point:
Dissanayake argues that mother–infant communication—what Malloch and

1
Brown, Merker and Wallin (2000: 21, n. 2) and Dissanayake (2010: 19) offer explanations for such reticence.
2
A good introduction to and synopsis of this research is found in Malloch and Trevarthen (2010).
 Ethnomusicology Forum 5

Trevarthen have coined ‘communicative musicality’—has been essential for the

survival of the human species and is, therefore, a trait produced by natural selection.3
Furthermore, the research documented in CM suggests that maternal–infant
interaction not only represents the foundation for music but for all human
communication (Dissanayake 2010: 17). And Steven Mithen, a cognitive archaeolo-
gist, takes the idea of mother–infant communication a step further. Mithen believes
that studies of vocal communication with pre-linguistic children demonstrate that
music has ‘a developmental, if not evolutionary, priority over language’ (2006: 69–70).
Building on the work of Brown and Wray, Mithen believes that the communication
between modern mothers and their pre-linguistic infants is a remnant of an ancient
protolanguage that existed early in the hominid line (2006: 276), a protolanguage that
ultimately diverged into what we know today as music and language in modern
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humans.
The notion of a protolanguage that synergistically embodied both linguistic and
musical antecedents is, in my view, one of the most provocative ideas for
ethnomusicologists interested in the neuroscientific and biomusicological study of
music. According to Brown (2000), this ‘musilanguage’ was a precursor for both
music and language that had the characteristics which are now shared by music and
language; the distinctive features of music and language occurred evolutionarily later.
Brown explains that modern music and language ‘are specializations that evolved out
of a common precursor and are like the various digits that develop out of a common
limb bud during ontogeny of the hand’ (2000: 277).
Linguist Alison Wray (2002, 2008) also proposes the idea of a protolanguage as a
precursor to modern human language, and Steven Mithen expands further on
Brown’s and Wray’s insights, claiming that neither ‘musilanguage’ nor ‘protolan-
guage’ appropriately describes this precursor. Instead, Mithen prefers to use the
acronym ‘Hmmmmm,’ which stands for a ‘holistic, manipulative, multi-modal,
musical and mimetic communication system,’ strongly emphasising bodily gesture
(2006: 172)—a more elaborate form of communication than those proposed by Wray
or Brown.
While Mithen’s book-length discussion of ‘Hmmmmm’ in the lives of early
hominids makes the case persuasively for this communication system as a precursor
for both language and music, Brown’s chapter in The Origins of Music addresses some
specific points about the precursor that are helpful for ethnomusicologists,
particularly those who study orally performed traditions. Brown contends that music
and language ‘differ more in emphasis than in kind, and are better represented as
fitting along a spectrum instead of occupying two discrete, but partly overlapping
universes’ (2000: 279). If this hypothesis was true, it would explain the ubiquity of
human oral communication that features both language and music as descendants of

3
For more on the argument that the origin of human music lay in the evolution of affiliative interactions
between mothers and infants, not male competition and courtship, see Dissanayake (2000). She considers
bipedalism, expanded brain size in human infants and greater infant altriciality as some of the compelling
reasons for the adaptive potential of maternal–infant communication.
 6 F. R. S. Lawson
the musilanguage that diverged but later recombined as vocal performance among
modern humans. Brown’s hypothesis also resonates with ethnomusicological research
on language–music spectra, notably work by Herzog (1934), List (1963), Lieberman
(1975) and Agawu (1995).
Neuroscientific research also reinforces the notion that modern language and
music are cognitively inter-related, thereby indirectly supporting the protolanguage
model as an evolutionary prototype for the inextricable relationship between music
and language in modern human brains. As Falk, a paleoanthropologist, explains:
‘Results from brain imaging studies … [imply] that music and language are part of
one large, vastly complicated, distributed neurological system for processing sound in
the largest-brained primate’ (2000: 212). Thus, the exciting research presented in CM
argues that musicality is adaptive, and Mithen further suggests that the research on
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mother–infant communication (considered the basis for communicative musicality

by Malloch and Trevarthen) is modern empirical evidence for the protolanguage
theory as the origin of both language and music (2006: 275–7).

Music as Technology: A Transformative Technology of the Mind

Not all scholars subscribe to the theory of a protolanguage, however, nor do they all
agree that music is a biological adaptation. Psychologist William James articulated his
view about the biological insignificance of music in the late nineteenth century (1890:
419), which was echoed by psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker a century later in
his evaluation that music is but an example of ‘pure pleasure technology’ (1997: 528).
In his book Music, Language, and the Brain, neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel also
argues that music is not adaptive (2008: 367 and 400), but he refutes Pinker’s notion
that music is biologically useless (2008: 400–1). Instead, Patel believes that music is a
transformative technology, and he reiterates this point and strengthens his argument
in his chapter in Emerging Disciplines (Patel 2010), a point to which I return below.
While he does not believe there is sufficient evidence to support music as an
adaptive trait, Patel does believe that language is adaptive, citing ten lines of evidence
to substantiate his position: babbling; anatomy of the vocal tract; vocal learning;
precocious learning of linguistic sound structure; critical periods for language
acquisition; commonalities between spoken and signed language; robustness of
language acquisition; the ability to add complexity to impoverished linguistic output;
the fixation of a language-relevant gene; and the biological cost of failure to acquire
language (2008: 358–67). After reading Patel’s first six lines of evidence for language,
however, one might conceivably use the same evidence to support the notion that
communicative musicality (rather than language) is the adaptive trait. Patel prefers to
move away from adaptationist conjectures and focus on empirical research in living
organisms (2008: 368), but is that not what the body of evidence in CM provides—
the empirical evidence on which the hypothesis of communicative musicality is
based? Although Patel refers to previous work by many of the same contributors to
CM, the cumulative weight of the evidence provided in CM is compelling and
 Ethnomusicology Forum 7

deserves, in my opinion, a reassessment. Perhaps the problem in approaching this

question lies, in part, in the apparent inextricability of music and language both as an
evolutionary antecedent and in human infant development. By prematurely trying to
separate the two without fully understanding their evolutionary relationship, one
obscures important information that might lead to a better understanding of both
phenomena inside and outside the laboratory.
Although Patel concludes that there is insufficient evidence to support an
adaptationist hypothesis for music, he is emphatic that music is not simply a ‘frill,
a hedonic diversion that tickles our sense and that could easily be dispensed with’
(2008: 400). Rather, Patel insists that the choice is not between adaptation and
superfluous indulgence, but between adaptation and technology. His explanation of
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technology is particularly interesting, and I would like to highlight it as a key point in

this paper.

Homo sapiens is unique among all living organisms in terms of its ability to invent
things that transforms its own existence. Written language is a good example: This
technology makes it possible to share complex thoughts across space and time and
to accumulate knowledge in a way that transcends the limits of any single human
mind … I believe music can sensibly be thought of in this framework … as
something that we invented that transforms human life. Just as with other
transformative technologies, once invented and experienced, it becomes virtually
impossible to give it up. (Patel 2008: 400–1)

If written language is a good example of a transformative technology (assuming that

spoken language is a biological adaptation), could notated music or written language
used as a prescription for a vocal performance be a comparable technology (assuming
communicative musicality is an adaptation)?
In his classic work Orality and Literacy, Walter Ong uses the word ‘technologize’ to
describe the influence of writing on spoken language, explaining that ‘[t]echnologies
are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness, and
never more than when they affect the word. Such transformations can be uplifting.
Writing heightens consciousness’ (2006: 81). Thus, Ong claims that writing enhances
and restructures consciousness, thereby enriching the human psyche, a point with
which Patel might agree. But the effect of a visual orthography on musical cognition
has not been explored to the same degree as the influence of writing on oral
language.4 Without investigating the role of technology in transforming communic-
ative musicality into music, the debate about music as an adaptation or technology is
seriously compromised.5

4
For a brief selection of research on the influence of writing on oral language, see Finnegan (1979), Goody
(1993), Foley (2002), Ong (2006) and Lawson (2010).
5
There are many different ways music is ‘technologized,’ but I am limiting this discussion to the role of written
orthographies as one of the oldest ways of technologising music. Considering the added complexity of electronic
and digital technologies is well beyond the scope of this paper.
 8 F. R. S. Lawson
I agree with Patel that most music, especially that created using a written
orthography, is an example of a transformative technology, not unlike the writing of
spoken language. However, I would also argue that recent evidence suggests that
musilanguage, as the precursor to music and language, is a biologically rooted human
capacity, evidenced by its continued presence in the well-documented interaction
between modern human mothers and their pre-linguistic infants. And, most
importantly for this paper, modern examples of musilanguage, the evolutionary
antecedent of communicative musicality, are highly susceptible to technological
transformation, particularly through the use of written orthographies. The example I
highlight in this paper is a modern Chinese form of musilanguage, which has been
technologised through visual orthographies, creating what Patel calls a transformative
technology of the mind (2010: 3). Before discussing the influence of writing on a
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specific example of modern musilanguage, however, I demonstrate how the

implications of the musilanguage theory are generally beneficial for ethnomusicolo-
gists who study the relationship between language and music, particularly in oral
performance.

Implications of Musilanguage and Transformative Technology of the Mind for

Ethnomusicology
One of the primary benefits of the musilanguage theory for ethnomusicologists and
scholars in orality studies is recognising the parity of language and music in oral
performance. With the exception of a few landmark studies on the musical
dimensions of orality (Austerlitz 2005; Erdeley 1995; Nettl 1998; Reichl 2000;
Tokumaru and Yamaguti 1986; Treitler 2003), most orality research has heretofore
favoured the linguistic dimension over the musical dimension in understanding this
cognitive phenomenon (Lawson 2010: 429). However, by recognising the complex
interdependency of language and music in current evolutionary musicological and
neuroscientific research, one now finds substantial justification for changing the
research paradigm to include a balance between the linguistic and the musical in
orality studies.
Although an emphasis of the synergistic relationship between music and language
might initially appear to complicate orality research, I submit that understanding the
role of music in oral communication will ultimately expose an inherent weakness of
the oral–literate paradigm that has continually obscured our understanding of orality.
Instead of merely considering a uni-dimensional phenomenon reflecting oral versus
literate elements, the oral–literate spectrum (shown in Figure 1 as the y axis) can be
expanded to include a dissecting ‘musilinguistic’ (linguistic–musical) spectrum (the
x axis) on a Cartesian coordinate system,6 creating a two-dimensional model that
allows for graphing all the different possibilities for music and language in all of its

6
As mentioned, the idea of music–language spectra has already been raised in Herzog (1934), List (1963),
Lieberman (1975) and Agawu (1995). To my knowledge, a musilinguistic spectrum has not been considered in
conjunction with an oral–literate one.
 Ethnomusicology Forum 9
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Figure 1 Two-dimensional model for orality research.

oral and literate forms into four quadrants, beginning with the top-right quadrant
and moving counter-clockwise in Cartesian fashion: I, the musical–oral; II, the
linguistic–oral; III, the linguistic–literate; and IV, the musical–literate.
Most significantly, this proposed model has the advantage of illustrating the literate
dimensions of musicality. McLuhan has intimated that there are significant
‘complications of operations’ in moving from an oral–aural to a visual–literate
perspective in language (2003: 93), but scholars have only barely begun to assess the
cognitive impact of using visual notation in musical performance,7 let alone in
performance traditions that feature both language and music. With an appreciation
for the musical and linguistic bases for oral performance, researchers are in a position
to address the cognitive activity of orality in a more comprehensive way by discussing
the degrees of musicality and language as well as the degrees of literacy and orality.
What has heretofore been considered oral performance may now be re-examined as a
product that reflects stubborn traces of the ancient musilinguistic phenomenon—a
modern rebinding of music and language that seems to persist despite the divergence
of language and music in modern humans. Thus, we appear to be evolutionarily
predisposed to musilanguage as well as to technology, and exploring the different
ways musilanguage may be technologised is a fertile area for future research.

7
See Falk (2000: 202) for a fascinating discussion about the different areas of the brain that are activated in
listening to as opposed to reading a musical score.
 10 F. R. S. Lawson
Ong states that writing is a deeply interiorised technology that enhances human
expression (2006: 82), and Patel argues that music is also a technology that is
profoundly transformative, but how do scholars begin to unpack the technology from
the musilanguage? This is a gargantuan task well beyond the scope of this essay, but I
submit that one of the first hurdles in understanding the relationship between
musilanguage and music is recognising the role of visual orthographies as one of the
most basic technologies used in creating, performing and disseminating music. A
related difficulty is the fact that the most researched music in academia is Western
European and North American art music (WENAM), which happens to be unique
among world music cultures because it has been more technologised through
notation than virtually any other musical tradition. Without explaining exactly why
WENAM is different, Molino argues that WENAM should not be considered in
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research about the evolutionary origins of music. He explains that ‘[o]ur conception
of music, based on the production, perception, and theory of “great” European
classical music, distances ourselves irremediably from the anthropological founda-
tions of human music in general’ (Molino 2000: 170). But how can one simply excise
WENAM from a discussion of the biological roots of music? Surely a theoretical
model for understanding human music must explain WENAM.
The answer to this dilemma may be in recognising that WENAM is an extreme
example of a musical–literate tradition—a clear case of music that has been deeply
transformed by a written technology. WENAM has over a thousand years of
notational history, representing a notational technology that does for music what
literature has done for language. As the vast majority of languages are oral and only a
certain percentage have ever been written (Ong 2006: 7), the situation with music is
even more dramatic. There are even fewer musical traditions that involve notation to
the same degree as WENAM; most are primarily oral/aural. And what is the effect of
notation on the cognitive processes used in learning and transmitting notated music?
Historical musicologists who study the medieval period are in the best position to
address the earliest documented connections between oral performance and the use
of notation. Treitler (2003), Boynton (2003), Levy (1998), Jeffery (1992) and other
medievalists have written extensively on the changes from oral/aural to written
traditions. Busse Berger’s (2005) Medieval Music and the Art of Memory explains this
fundamental shift in musical performance due to the emergence of visual notation.
She writes that ‘Rhythmic notation led to a new way of composition. It led to what
Jack Goody would call “visual perception of musical phenomena” … just as writing
led to word games and crossword puzzles, notation led to notational games’ (Busse
Berger 2005: 250). The transition from oral/aural performance to performance that
utilises notated scores began a process whereby musical notation became increasingly
detailed in terms of visual data presented and, therefore, the learning and
transmitting of music was fundamentally changed. While we cannot scan the brains
of monks who learned to sing with notation and compare them with those who sang
without it, one can assume that the auditory processes involved in learning and
transmitting music were affected when the technology of notation was introduced.
 Ethnomusicology Forum 11

Mithen furthers this argument by paraphrasing Blacking’s (1973) statement that

technological development in music also leads to exclusion:

When the technical level of what is defined as musicality is raised, some people will
become branded as unmusical, and the very nature of music will become defined to
serve the needs of an emergent musical elite … who have mistakenly come to
believe that this type of musical activity is music, rather than just one type of
musical activity. (Mithen 2006: 270–1)

Thus, the musical activity of WENAM is an example of a transformative technology

that has been deeply interiorised because of notation and reserved primarily for
musical elites, making it unique as a relatively extreme form of a ‘literate–musical’
phenomenon on the proposed model.
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Despite the unusual role of notation in WENAM, however, visual orthographies do

influence many musical traditions to varying degrees. What is the significance of
using notation in learning and performing music? How are performances using
notated music different from performances without visual notation or with only a
bare-bones visual notation? What happens cognitively when vocal music is performed
using a text with musical information orally embedded, but not specifically notated,
in the lyrics of a poem? These are some of the initial questions that need to be
addressed in order to understand the intricacies of how a musilinguistic genre
becomes a transformative technology. The next three sections of the paper follow up
on such issues as I make the case that a modern Chinese example of narrative song
reflects many aspects of the ancient musilanguage phenomenon explained by Brown,
and I describe some of the different cognitive processes used by performers as they
employ varying forms of visual orthographies in learning and performing Chinese
narrative song.

Shuochang: Modern Example of Musilanguage

While there is no way to prove whether the complex stages of the musilanguage
model did indeed evolve as Brown explains it (2000: 278–91), one can look at musical
and linguistic evidence of modern and historically documented performance
traditions and surmise whether the model seems convincing.8 The example I use to
ascertain the credibility of the musilanguage theory comes from my own research on
language–music relationships in northern Chinese narrative forms known as
shuochang,9 which literally means ‘speaking-singing.’ Although shuochang is an
especially interesting example of a descendant of musilanguage, Chinese narrative
traditions are certainly not the only modern offspring of the musilanguage precursor.

8
Another modern example that substantiates Brown’s (2000) research is Campbell’s (1998) work in studying
what might be termed the musilanguage of children.
9
The name for these genres since the 1950s is actually quyi (vocal arts), but I prefer to use the pre-1950
nomenclature because the name so aptly describes the language–music relationship that is at the heart of these
genres. See Lawson (2011: 23) for more on the name change.
 12 F. R. S. Lawson
As Nettl suggests, all societies apparently have some kind of ‘sound communication
that they distinguish from ordinary speech … [which] could be a kind of baseline for
music’ (2000: 466).
The speech–music continuum implied by the very name, shuochang, and many of
shuochang’s features are congruent with what Brown claims to be the ancient
prototype of modern music and language. Shuochang represents a northern variety of
a pan-Chinese narrative tradition that has over 150 variants, each differing according
to a geographical (and therefore linguistic/musical) area. Two particularly important
counterparts to shuochang from other parts of China are pingtan, from the Shanghai–
Suzhou area, and nanyin, from Guangzhou, but there are scores of other varieties
throughout the country (Zhang 1983: 11–13). In each Chinese narrative genre, the
emphasis is on the interplay between the local dialect and indigenous popular
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melodies, an aesthetic manipulation of music and language that entertains through

the telling of stories and appreciating the sonic and structural beauty of the musical
rendition, since most of the genres are sung. Brown’s suggestion that musilanguage
would be best understood on a music–language spectrum (2000: 278) applies equally
well to shuochang.
Brown’s discussion of the musilanguage model becomes even more interesting
when he describes the first of three phases of musilanguage that involved lexical tone
or the use of pitch to convey semantic meaning (2000: 279). While it is difficult to
prove Brown’s suggested sequence—from intonation to combinatoriality to expressive
phrasing—in the development of his musilanguage model, his comments about the
importance of lexical tone as the first step in the development of musilanguage is
significant with regard to Chinese narrative traditions. Brown suggests that:

language evolved as a tonal system from its inception, and that the evolutionary
emergence of nontonal languages (intonation languages) occurred due to loss of
lexical tone. In other words, this hypothesis states that tonality is the ancestral state
of language. (2000: 284–5)

Furthermore, Brown stresses that ‘the notion of lexical tone implies that pitch can
and does play an essential role in language, not just as a prosodic or paralinguistic
device, but as a semantic device’ (2000: 281). Moreover, ‘the notion of lexical tone,
with its underlying level tones and semantically meaningful pitch movements,
satisfies the criterion for being a joint feature of language and music’ (2000: 284–5).
Since all Chinese narrative forms are based on tonal languages, Tianjin, China
might be a good place to find modern evidence for musilanguage. As the centre for
the narrative arts in northern China, Tianjin traditionally has had one of the largest
professional troupes of narrative artists in the country and currently houses the
Academy for the Northern Chinese Narrative Arts, a regional school that teaches all
of the narrative forms performed throughout northern China (Lawson 2011: 4, 25
and 28). Significantly, northern Chinese shuochang performed in Tianjin is not only
based on a tonal language (Mandarin), but the various genres also feature both the
semanticity of language and the melodic play of music. It is no surprise that Chinese
 Ethnomusicology Forum 13

—as both an ancient and a living language—has preserved this primordial feature of
lexical tone by conjointly featuring both language and music in performance. As such,
shuochang is one of many possible examples that lends credence to Brown’s theory by
demonstrating the tenacity of lexical tone and its musical play in the language–music
relationships of a modern genre.
However, shuochang challenges Brown’s idea that ‘concepts such as musical
language … and speech melody are never taken beyond the domain of metaphor into
the domain of mechanism’ (2000: 272). Shuochang clearly demonstrates how
speaking and singing operate within the domain of mechanism in a living tradition
that reveals inextricable, synergistic relationships between music and language. For
example, many of the northern shuochang genres are divided into two major
categories: those that use a written poetic text to generate the melodic rendering of a
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story, and those that use melody to generate a text. The first category is banqiangti, a
system in which singers employ adaptable musical formulas to a newly written text,
and the second category is qupaiti, which refers to the way a pre-existing tune dictates
lyrics (Lawson 2011: 62–76 and 82–95). The permeability of language and music in
the minds of performers and aficionados is evident in frequently heard descriptive
phrases such as ‘singing while speaking’ (changzhe shuo) and ‘speaking while singing’
(shuozhe chang). Chinese audiences delight in the ways in which language
manipulates music and music modifies language in the telling of a story (Lawson
2011: 7–14).
Given the fact that the Mandarin Chinese dialect used in shuochang is a tonal
language, my primary research question entering the field was how much musical
play was allowed in rendering any given story—if, indeed, the communication of
stories was the pre-eminent feature of these genres. The short answer to that question
is that every genre offers a unique example of the interplay between language and
music, each genre differing primarily according to which of the two text-setting
processes is employed. Each of these two processes (banqiangti and qupaiti)
represents the complement to the other, and yet each process preserves the dynamic
relationship of both the shuo (spoken element) and the chang (musical element).
Plotting these genres in Figure 1, the qupaiti genres are graphed within the musical–
oral quadrant. The banqiangti genres, while still musically oriented, are graphed near
the x axis in Figure 1 (to the left and below the qupaiti genres) because of the greater
importance of lyrics and textual prescriptions. Other genres that are more akin to
spoken language would be plotted even further towards the linguistic end of the
continuum.

Music and Language Poles in Shuochang: Semanticity and Play

In discussing the nature of the two ends of his musical–linguistic gamut for the
musilanguage model, Brown explains that the music pole represents emotional
expression and the language pole represents linguistic meaning (2000: 278–9). He
argues that the purpose of his model is:
 14 F. R. S. Lawson
to describe a system containing both rudimentary referential and sound emotion
properties such that it might be a reasonable precursor for the evolution of both
music and language, and such that divergence from this precursor stage can be seen
as an intensification of emphasis rather than the creation of new worlds. (Brown
2000: 279)

While shuochang genres can be easily plotted on such a gamut, I beg to differ with
Brown concerning the two ends of the continuum presented in his musilanguage
model. Although I agree that the language end certainly favours the idea of
semanticity, the evidence I have from studying the more musically oriented genres
demonstrates the significance of creative play with musical form.
Indeed, the aesthetic manipulation of musical form is one of the most important
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features of shuochang For example, in the genre known as Tianjin Popular Tunes
(Tianjin Shidiao) the complexity involved in using certain melodies in standard and
abbreviated forms demonstrates a mathematically precise sophistication in setting
texts of different lengths (Lawson 2011: 64–7). And while most consultants are not
consciously aware of the level of formal complexity in the setting of texts, aficionados
clearly know the difference between a skilled artist and an amateur performer
(Lawson 2011: 10–11). If anything, the expression of emotion is experienced as much
in the appreciation of the semanticity of beautifully written lyrics as in the musical
rendering of a piece; and emotionally commanding performances occur in genres on
both ends of the spectrum. Hence, I would argue that the two poles of the shuochang
gamut represent semanticity and aesthetic play rather than semanticity and emotion.
The play of musical form is powerful precisely because it is the opposing
complement to semanticity on the shuochang spectrum. As Cross and Morley
explain, ‘Music embodies and exploits an essential ambiguity, and in this respect,
language and music may be at complementary poles of a communicative continuum’
(2010: 69). The delight of musical play lies in an ambiguity that allows melody and
rhythm to play with the semanticity of lexical tone within the bounds of
comprehension. Any musical manipulation that distorts lexical tone to the point of
miscomprehension has gone too far; however, musical play of lexical tone within the
limits of comprehension represents the highest form of artistry. As a group of
musilinguistic genres, shuochang embodies both the ‘semantically decomposable
propositions’ of language (2010: 69) and the essential ambiguity of music within one
multi-modal experience. Thus, the play between language’s semanticity and music’s
ambiguous, ‘floating intentionality’ (2010: 70)—Cross and Morley’s description of the
way music can gather meaning from contexts as it simultaneously contributes
meaning to those contexts—is a source of pleasure for shuochang aficionados.
Scholars who study the biological origins of music also discuss the notion of play as
a feature of human communication that satisfies a deeply rooted need for novelty
known as ‘neophilia.’ Dissanayake explains that:

[b]oth human and primate young show ‘neophilia,’ or attraction to the novel. Even
from birth, the human infant begins actively to seek sensory and cognitive
 Ethnomusicology Forum 15

stimulation. In humans and in some animals, mild fear and frustration may even be
welcomed or sought. (1988: 125)

She continues by suggesting that humans regularly seek ways to enliven an ordinary
routine, often endowing it with spiritual values. The resulting creativity is ‘one
consequence of the desire for adventure, even though the corresponding desire for
familiarity and predictability is equally strong. The oscillation between these two
poles of being and becoming may in itself be creative …’ (Dissanayake 1988: 125).
Whittall’s description of the aesthetic manipulation of form in music also suggests the
artistic balancing of play with predictability (2002: 92), and the following examples of
the way music plays with semantic knowledge in shuochang also support the creative
oscillation Dissanayake describes in her explanation of neophilia. It appears that the
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desire to play is also biologically significant, and perhaps even adaptive.

Cross and Morley add a different dimension to the argument by explaining that a
salient feature of the mother–infant bond, due to increasing hominid altriciality, was
the vocal play associated with juveniles (2010: 73). Citing research on vocal play
among pygmy marmosets (Elowson, Snowdon and Lazaro-Perea 1998), Cross and
Morley compare the kind of babbling among juvenile pygmy marmosets and their
caregivers with the kinds of vocalisations between mothers and infants in early
hominids, explaining that ‘an association between vocal play and a positive caregiving
response privilege[d] the social function of these types of play’ (2010: 74).
Furthermore, Cross and Morley argue that, given its survival value, group behaviours
such as babbling between juveniles and caregivers are likely to have some adaptive
value: ‘Music can be interpreted as one of those mechanisms, emerging under
the selection pressures of the progressive extension and stage-differentiation of the
juvenile period in the later hominid lineage’ (2010: 74). Thus, the potential to
rehearse and refine social interactions through vocal play was ‘built on subsequently
to become part of music and language in the fully symbolic culture that emerged in
modern humans’ (2010: 76). Hence, these ‘rehearsals’ of early proto-musical and
proto-linguistic vocalisations were essential to the survival of both mother and infant,
and, according to Cross and Morley, may well have been the precursor of human
music and language. Similar assertions by Dissanayake point to the same conclusion
about the role of dyadic communication between mothers and infants in shaping
human music (2000: 389–90, 2010: 20–3).
Consequently, whether it may be explained as a biologically significant desire to
seek novelty or an adaptive behaviour to rehearse essential social interactions in a
risk-free environment, play appears to have adaptive value in and of itself. Perhaps
the biological significance of play may even be related to Patel’s idea about
transformative technologies—the apparent need to invent something to transform
human existence. Thus, the desire to technologise may emerge from a primordial
neophilic instinct designed to provide opportunities to rehearse critical social
behaviours; therefore, modern music could well be a technology that, in itself, may
reflect the adaptive trait of play.
 16 F. R. S. Lawson
Finally, play may also fulfil yet another biological function. Martinelli, an ethologist
and zoomusicologist, asserts that Funktionlust—the pleasure taken in what one does
best—may also signal a biological advantage (2009: 191 and 206). Instead of looking
at music as merely a means of stimulating pleasure circuits in the brain (Pinker 1997:
528), Martinelli argues that aesthetically driven activities in animals and humans
provide an endless source of well-being in the way they use acoustic channels as a
pleasurable form of interaction with the environment (2009: 191). Funktionlust
celebrates creativity, playfulness and jouissance, which are, as he claims, biological
advantages.
In the particular case of shuochang, musical play may be seen as a kind of
jouissance in witnessing and perceiving the aesthetic manipulation of form and style
in a performance; when the aesthetic play particularly complements the commun-
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ication of semantic meaning, the jouissance is further enhanced. The following brief
examples demonstrate the two processes for creating pleasure through aesthetic
manipulation of music and language in shuochang. The first example features the
beauty of an elegantly written text, aesthetically rendered by a musical style that only
mildly challenges semanticity; and the second features the overpowering beauty of a
melody, which clearly dominates and sometimes even obscures the text and its
message. The pleasure in listening comes from simultaneously appreciating the
melody that emerges from and plays with the lexical tonality of the language and the
semanticity of the language that inspires the musical setting of the lyrics.

Singing While Speaking: The Role of a Logographic Script

As mentioned, banqiangti is a system in which musical play is subsidiary to linguistic
comprehension, and one of the best examples of this type of genre is Beijing
Drumsong (Jingyun dagu). The text is written by an author specialising in the genre
who writes couplets of poetry organised loosely into stanzas (Stevens 1975: 104–23).
Singers, known as second authors, musically render the linguistic tones and rhythmic
demands of the text according to the characteristic melodic movements and cadential
patterns of banqiangti (Lawson 2011: 82–93). Significantly, each successful perform-
ance is rendered by a knowledgeable singer who knows how to employ the formulas
due to years of oral/aural training as a disciple to a master performer (Lawson 2011:
82–93). Thus, singers do not rely on musical notation to perform Beijing Drumsong;
instead, written lyrics become a kind of prescriptive notation that allows singers to
interpret the lyrics according to prescribed melodic and rhythmic patterns taught to
them by their teachers within the context of an oral/aural tradition.10
Zeitlin describes a similar kind of compositional strategy. In discussing the skills of
seventeenth-century Chinese courtesans in setting lyrics to music, she explains that
performing new songs using existing written lyrics inevitably meant making prosodic
and musical adjustments, a practice that required complex skills in musical and

10
See Seeger (1977) for his classic explanation about the differences between descriptive and prescriptive
notations.
 Ethnomusicology Forum 17

poetic composition (Zeitlin 2006: 85). But this performance practice, like the modern
example of Beijing Drumsong, involved two separate processes: writing lyrics in the
Chinese logographic script and then rendering them to music according to un-
notated musical paradigms passed on within an oral/aural tradition. The significance
of the logographic script is that it does not communicate any particular phonetic
manifestation of the spoken language so the same script could be the basis of multiple
performance traditions in different Chinese dialects.11 The relevance of a non-
phonetic script was also important in seventeenth-century courtesan culture for a
somewhat different reason. Zeitlin explains:

As Wang Jide, author of an important seventeenth-century treatise on opera says

flatly: ‘The tunes of an age change every thirty years.’ The verses, on the other hand,
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were easily preserved through publication and could continue to be read (or
adapted to new melodies) long after the original music had disappeared. (2006: 84)

Thus, by technologising the verses through writing in a logographic script, at least

part of the performance practice was preserved; however, the musical (and, to a lesser
extent, spoken) renditions of the lyrics changed over time. In other words,
performative elements of language and music are more variable than the Chinese
logographic script, but the presence of a written script in a performance tradition
belies a deeply interiorised relationship between the visual orthography and the oral/
aural performance practice—a relationship that reflects ongoing musical change with
regard to the more stable variable of the logographic script. A performance of Beijing
Drumsong, then, is an example of spoken language technologised by a script that can
also dictate a musically altered rendition of the language, sung according to an oral/
aural tradition—a clear example of semanticity enhanced by musical play. How
musical play differs among performers who sing from the same script and changes
over time are questions that need to be explored in order to understand the
elusiveness of musical performance as it emerges from and is technologised by a
written script.
The particular dominance of the ‘shuo’ (speaking) over the ‘chang’ (singing) in this
genre is evident in the following transcriptions, which are descriptive notations that
enable the non-native to see the workings of the musical technology in transforming
the script. In Figure 2 each word in the piece At Break of Day demonstrates the close
correlation between word tone and the direction of the melody, marked according to
the four tones of the Mandarin dialect over each syllable.12 The four tones of
Mandarin are indicated in the pinyin romanisation as follows: using the letter ‘a’ as an
example, the first tone, which is a high-level tone, is notated as ‘ā’; the second tone,

11
Norman explains the role of the Chinese script in allowing the Chinese to consider their written language as
being more uniform than it actually is (2006: 1–2). The spoken or musical rendering of the script is, of course,
highly variable.
12
The musical examples in this article were transcribed by the author. Textual fragments were translated from
Chinese into English by Catherine Stevens (1975: 112). For a more detailed explanation of this process of text
setting, see Lawson (2011: 82–95).
 18 F. R. S. Lawson
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Figure 2 Music–language relationships in the top lines of text couplets seven to nine in
At Break of Day (Choumo Yin Chu).

which is a rising tone, is notated as ‘á’; the third tone, which is a low-rising tone, is
notated as ‘ă’; and the fourth tone, which is a falling tone, is notated as ‘à’. At Break of
Day consists of nine couplets, where the first half of the couplet is designated as a T
(top) line and the second half of the couplet is designated as a B (bottom) line. In the
following transcription of only the T lines of three couplets, the melodic rendering of
the text in T lines seven through nine is clearly subservient to the meaning of the
lyrics; the melody used to set these lines follows the lexical tone at the very beginning
of a word, leading to high linguistic comprehension, followed by more musical
freedom after the initial basic lexical information is conveyed.
For example, in T-7 the first word is fourth-tone (falling tone) niàn sung first by a
grace note on C5 that moves down to G4, musically creating the descending direction
of fourth tone. The next syllable, first-tone (high level tone) shū, goes back up to C5,
matching linguistic tone to the melody, followed by the neutral-tone syllable, de. 13
I have used the crossed note heads on the next two syllables to indicate the semi-
spoken, sprechstimme-like rendering of xuésheng—a clear rendering of second tone

13
While I am not able to discuss the linguistic implications of neutral tones in this article, the reader may refer to
Chao (1972: 26) for a discussion of the neutral tone in Mandarin. The neutral tone is usually indicated by
placing a dot before the syllable, but I have chosen to indicate the presence of a neutral tone by eliminating all
markings whatsoever in order to avoid confusion with a staccato marking in the musical analyses. What I have
surmised about setting neutral tones to music is that since performers do not have to sing according to the
speech tone of the syllable, they are able to set a neutral tone with more musical freedom than a regular stressed
syllable. The neutral tone is usually indicated by placing a dot before the syllable, but I have chosen to indicate
the presence of a neutral tone by eliminating all markings whatsoever in order to avoid confusion with a staccato
marking in the musical analyses.
 Ethnomusicology Forum 19

(rising tone) on xué, followed by sheng as a neutral tone. As mentioned in

footnote 13, the neutral tone is not a stressed tone but—in conjunction with the
previous syllable, xué—the meaning is clear in this context: this is a young scholar
whose inexperience is further emphasised by the sprechstimme. The next phrase, zoŭ
chū liao dà mén waì, is set accurately according to each word tone; neutral-tone liao
is simply set to the same note as the previous syllable. Given the context of the
phrase, the meaning is again perfectly clear. The only portion of T-7 where the
melody does not correspond to word tone is the last phrase, wó zhĭ jiàn tā, which is a
formulaic phrase meaning ‘I see him’ or ‘look at him.’ Used throughout many Beijing
Drumsong pieces, such short formulaic phrases are useful at the beginning or ending
of phrases to fill in musical space and not to convey important lexical meaning, so
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singers are not concerned about setting those formulaic phrases with linguistic
accuracy. The musical role of formulaic phrases is discussed further in relation to the
second genre examined below, where formulaic phrases are even more prevalent.
The melodies in T-8 and T-9 similarly support word tone carefully, and only the
last two syllables of T-8 deserve a special explanation. Both syllables are third-tone
(low-rising) words whose initial melodic settings mirror the direction of third tone.
What is fascinating about these syllables is the freedom the singer uses to execute the
melody once she has initially portrayed the word tone accurately. After the important
semantic information is portrayed melodically so that the meaning is clear, the singer
invariably ornaments the melody in keeping with the adage, ‘xian nian zi, hou chang
qiang’: first say the word correctly, then sing the tune. In fact, the melodic
ornamentation on zaŏ (early) and qĭ (rises) adds another subtle emphasis on the
early hour of the day, using musical ornamentation to further enhance the linguistic
meaning, a point in keeping with Brown’s idea that pitch plays a semantic role in
language, not simply a prosodic one (2000: 281).
Finally, one should note the basic similarity in the melodic range and arch of all
these lines, where the differences in melody reflect the lexical tone of each syllable,
and the simple 4/4 metric structure characteristic of manban (literally, slow beat), the
most common metrical formula used to set most Beijing Drumsong lyrics. Rhythmic
differences from line to line further enhance the lexical meanings of the text and add
variety to the performance.
Although the T lines demonstrate a fairly straightforward and syllabic rendering of
lexical tone, the above example of a B line illustrates a longer and more ornamented
treatment than the typical T line.14 Once the lexical information is conveyed
melodically in the first part of the B lines, the remainder of the B lines exhibits a more
ornate, melismatic rendering of the text. Since the important lexical information has
already been expressed, the melodic excursions towards the end serve as an aesthetic
complement to the more syllabic rendering of the first part of the phrase. In bar 10
(Figure 3), for example, the word cāng (the first syllable of cāng huáng, which means

14
I have left in the formulaic phrase wo zhi jian ta (the end of T-7) to demonstrate how B-7 begins immediately
following the preceding T line.
 20 F. R. S. Lawson
‘hurriedly, in a panic’) is not set ‘correctly’ according to first tone: the preceding grace
note disrupts the high-level tone, and the syllable is followed by a post-lexical
repetition of the last part of the syllable in a melismatically ornate style, helping to
create the panic implied by the meaning of the word. Another interesting example of
word painting is the syllable yaó in bar 8: yaó means ‘shake,’ and the singer’s
vacillation between E4 and G4 musically depicts the insecurity of the young scholar’s
steps. In bar 14, one can also see an elaboration of the word shū, first sung on a
relatively high pitch according to first tone, followed by an ornamented downward
flourish. In bar 15, the word fáng is also sung accurately according to word tone in
order to insure the meaning of shūfáng or study—the scholar’s destination after an
uncertain start to his day (Figure 3).
Significantly, the lyrics, which are considered semi-literary, are the most important
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feature of this genre, and the lexical tone of the lyrics carefully dictates the movement of
the melody. After the basic semantic information has been conveyed, however, aesthetic
play predominates. Audiences love this genre because it represents the elegance of the
written and musically delivered Chinese language—an example of the way the
technology of the written language dictates and inspires the play of musical performance.

Speaking While Singing: The Role of Intact Melodies

When tunes dictate lyrics in the qupaiti genres, the relationship between music and
language exhibits a different kind of complexity. Instead of beginning with a written
text, performers and authors who specialise in qupaiti must first rely on using intact,
existing melodies to initiate the creative process. And these qupai or tune-models
represent what Treitler calls an aural paradigm—an internalised musical pattern,
based on a particular style or idiom (1991: 78). Although the musical and rhythmic

Figure 3 B-7 in At Break of Day (Choumo Yinchu).

 Ethnomusicology Forum 21

formulas used in banqiangti also qualify as aural paradigms in a more general sense,
the aural paradigms of qupaiti are whole melodies used as the basis for composing
new lyrics. One of several modern genres in which new lyrics are written to an
existing tune is Tianjin Popular Tunes (Tianjin Shidiao). While most of the genres
performed in Tianjin are shared with and performed regularly in other areas in
northern China, Tianjin Popular Tunes is indigenous to the city and particularly
reflects local Tianjin pride.
Tianjin Popular Tunes is also more musically (chang) oriented than Beijing
Drumsong. Using the qupaiti format for setting texts, the tunes employed in text
setting are not only native to and highly popular in Tianjin, but are also extremely
ornamented, allowing for virtuosic singing on the part of the performer. Audiences
love these melodies and cheer loudly when a local performer takes the stage and
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begins to sing one of these beloved tunes, even if the lyrics are not always clearly
understood at the outset of a performance when a singer is trying to be the most
virtuosic (Lawson 2011: 70).
Figure 4 illustrates a few bars of two pieces sung to the same tune-model or qupai
in order to demonstrate the way qupai shape texts in Tianjin Popular Tunes. The
lyrics on the upper line come from a piece entitled Dropping the Watermelon (Shuai
Xigua), and the lyrics on the bottom line come from Autumn Scenery (Qiujing). Note
that all the syllables indicated in parentheses are non-lexical syllables sung to fill up
the extra musical ‘space’ of the qupai, and are as numerous as the textual syllables (a
phenomenon that will be discussed shortly). Comparing the upper and lower lines,
one can clearly see how the word tone of different textual syllables is rendered by
using grace notes or by making slight variations in the melody to accommodate the
direction of word tone. For example, the first syllable of Watermelon is third-tone jiě
(low rising), while the first syllable of Autumn is high, level first-tone tiār. Similar
discrepancies between different word tones for different syllables of the two pieces
can be seen clearly throughout this example.
The frequent use of non-lexical syllables sung to identical segments of melody in
different pieces written according to the same qupai raises an interesting issue. In
Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries, Wray explains that formulaic language
is language that ‘operates beyond its normal scope … where language users … favour
previously assembled output over something more spontaneous … [representing] the
boundaries … of language behaviour, of communication potential, and of linguistic
theory’ (2008: 5). The non-lexical syllables in Figure 4 are examples of formulaic
language, representing a boundary between language and music that might well be
plotted towards the musical end of the musical–linguistic axis in Figure 1. In the case
of this genre, the non-lexical syllables are sung only to preserve the underlying
melody, and they are linguistically less important than the textual syllables. Indeed,
the number of non-lexical syllables can even distort the semantic intelligibility of the
lyrics (Lawson 2011: 70).
Chinese consultants unanimously proclaim that this genre is musically ‘weighty’
(yinyuexing hen qiang), and that the lyrics are generally considered subservient to the
 22 F. R. S. Lawson
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Figure 4 Comparison of two texts sung to the same tune: Dropping the Watermelon
(Shuai Xigua) and Autumn Scenery (Qiujing).

popular tunes to which the lyrics are sung (Lawson 2011: 69–73). Interestingly, in
evaluating Wray’s research, Mithen posits that ‘the formulaic aspects of language
suggest a greater similarity with music than might initially be apparent’ (2006: 19),
and by extension I would argue that the presence of non-lexical syllables—an
example of formulaic language—in musically recurring sections of qupai lends
musical stability to the piece. Textual syllables demand slight melodic alterations to
accommodate lexical tone, but formulaic, non-lexical syllables allow for more musical
similarity from piece to piece written in the same qupai, thereby temporarily
 Ethnomusicology Forum 23

suspending semantic intelligibility and creating more musical interest for the listener.
Certainly in Chinese, where lexical tone is essential for semantic communication, the
absence of lexical tone denotes the dominance of musical expression that is not
otherwise possible in vocal music dictated primarily by the lexical tone of the lyrics.
The musical importance of the absence of lexical tone is best described by an
unrelated comment made by Herbert: music can offer ‘an alternative mental “space”
where the interaction between perceiver and stimulus does not have to constitute an
effortful decoding of informationally precise meaning’ (2011: 197). Within this non-
lexical space, the singer displays her most ornamented and musically elaborate
singing—a clear opportunity for creative play. This creative play also occurs after
singing each of the lexical syllables carefully according to lexical tone, since the singer
relishes the opportunity to ornament the melody once the basic lexical information is
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communicated. The ornamented melody is called the ‘wer’ or ‘flavour’ of the genre,
and is, as consultants explain, the focal point of the performance (Lawson 2011:
63–4).
By contrast, the emphasis on musical dominance in this genre is balanced by the
presence of a narrative section that often appears between the first and second
couplets of the piece (Lawson 2011: 75). Significantly, this section is rendered in a
semi-spoken delivery style in local Tianjin dialect, as opposed to the standard Beijing
Mandarin dialect used for the rest of the lyrics in the piece. To complement the
musically oriented sections, the performer also communicates in a less musically
ornate style in the local dialect to ensure complete comprehension of the lyrics.
Hence, in both the musically oriented as well as the linguistically oriented portions of
the piece, expressions of Tianjin pride are ultimately the most important meta-
messages communicated in performance: local Tianjin melodies prevail over
Mandarin lyrics for most of the piece, and Tianjin dialect predominates in the
melodically simpler narrative section (Lawson 2011: 69–76).
Most significant to the present discussion, performances in Tianjin Popular Tunes
emerge from texts that are composed according to well-known existing melodies, so
the cognitive process in composing and singing new texts is entirely different from
Beijing Drumsong. Novice singers in both the Beijing Drumsong and Tianjin Popular
Tunes traditions have to learn their trade initially by singing existing pieces in the
traditional repertoire according to the oral/aural tradition taught to them by their
teachers. After students have learned enough of the canon of existing pieces, however,
they must begin to engage in the process of composing and learning new pieces in
their respective traditions, and this is where the cognitive processes involved in
singing the two genres are most different. Where performers of Beijing Drumsong
begin the process of musical composition by reading and carefully interpreting a
written text, performers of Tianjin Popular Tunes accept newly written texts that
have been composed according to a set of tunes with which the singer is already
familiar. Consequently, for performers of Tianjin Popular Tunes, learning new lyrics
written by an author specialising in the genre will be more directly affected by the
performer’s prior musical knowledge of intact, existing melodies than the process of
 24 F. R. S. Lawson
composing a new musical piece based on applying musical and rhythmic formulas to
a written text in Beijing Drumsong.
Hence, the differing ways visual orthographies are used in shuochang offer an
opportunity to study how aural and visual learning processes influence musical
performance. Patel explains that:

the specialization of certain human brain regions for reading written orthography
demonstrates that learning can lead to neural specialization during development.
Thus the human process of invention, internalization, and transformation can
change the very organ that makes this process possible. (2008: 401)

If this is true, then one would expect that banqiangti and qupaiti would shape
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cognitive function differently. As an ethnomusicologist, I am intrigued by the

potential benefits of applying some of the conclusions reached by empirical studies to
ethnomusicological questions and by the possibility of inspiring new empirical
research based on questions raised by ethnomusicology.

Conclusion
Based on the evidence presented in CM and in Brown’s and Mithen’s research, I
argue that communicative musicality appears to be a remnant of musilanguage,
which is an adaptive trait whose vestiges are also found in oral performance traditions
throughout the modern world. I highlight my research into northern Chinese
shuochang as a modern example of musilanguage because shuochang steadfastly
maintains the lexical tonality that Brown feels is the ancestral state of musilanguage
and because it rebinds music and language in a way that re-emphasises the
musilinguistic significance of the original prototype, reflecting a difference between
what I see as semanticity and musical play as the two ends of the musilinguistic
spectrum.
In addition to recognising the significance of play on the musical side of the
musilanguage gamut, I also argue that humans seem to be predisposed to
technologising musilanguage, particularly in using some kind of visual orthography.
In other words, I believe that communicative musicality—and musilanguage as its
evolutionary antecedent—is adaptive for the reasons offered in CM, but I also believe
that many musical and musilinguistic forms today are also examples of what Patel
would call a transformative technology of the mind. I am also suggesting that the
desire to technologise musilanguage is part of the same primal, biological predisposi-
tion for musical play found in genres like shuochang—an evolutionarily significant
predisposition that anciently encouraged rehearsals of critical social behaviours in
risk-free environments. In ethological terms, I liken the instinct for musical play to
what Dissanayake refers to as neophilia, which may well be the root of musical play
as well as the proclivity to technologise it. I also believe that the underlying
importance of neophilia is evident in all forms of music—oral/aural, notated and
every technologised variant in between. And, in the end, it is the jouissance of
 Ethnomusicology Forum 25

creative imagination which suggests to me that musical play may be essential for
human welfare and well-being, which is perhaps the ultimate biological advantage.

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