Joseph Jordania
Encyclopedia
Joseph Jordania is an Australian-Georgian
ethnomusicologist and evolution
ary musicologist. In some early publications his name was spelled as Zhordania. He is a Honorary Fellow of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne
, Professor, Head of the Foreign Department of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
at Tbilisi State Conservatory
, and is known for his model of the origins of human choral singing in the wide context of human evolution
. He was one of founders of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
in Georgia. From 1995 he lives in Australia, maintaining close professional contacts with his native Georgia and the polyphonic centre.
Jordania’s academic interests include study of worldwide distribution of choral polyphonic traditions, origins of choral singing, origins of rhythm
, origins of human morphology
and behaviour, cross-cultural prevalence of stuttering
, dyslexia
and acquisition of phonological system in children, study of the cognitive threshold between animal and human cognitive abilities. His primarily expertise is Georgian and Caucasian traditional music and vocal polyphony. From the middle of the 1980s he started cross-cultural comparative study of the phenomenon of vocal polyphony and came to the conclusion that polyphony is not a late cultural invention, but rather an extremely ancient phenomenon, designed by the forces of natural selection
as a part of the defense system for early hominids on African Savannah. He advocates that natural selection, not sexual selection, was the central force in human evolution, including the evolution of human musical abilities. His 1989 technical book "Georgian Traditional Polyphony in an International Context of Polyphonic Cultures (published in Russian) was dedicated to the comparative study of world distribution of vocal polyphonic traditions. His 2006 book "Who Asked the First Question?
" was dedicated to the problems of the origins of human intelligence and language (the ability of asking questions is suggested as the central cognitive ability of Homo sapiens, and the decisive element of forming of human language
), articulated speech (Jordania suggested that after leaving African cradle and settling in different regions of the Old World, different populations of early humans shifted to articulated speech in different epochs), stuttering
and dyslexia
(Jordania suggested that the existing differences in the prevalence of stuttering and dyslexia might have genetic nature and might be the result of the shift to articulated speech among different human populations in different epochs). Jordania also studied the evolutionary function of humming (humming as human contact calls
designed to maintain audio contact within the group and to warn members of group about predators), and the distribution of singing behaviour in animal species in different natural environments (he suggested that only arboreal and aquatic
species sing, but no terrestrial
species apart from humans, sing). His 2011 book "Why do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution
" is dedicated to the evolution of human
morphology and behavior
.
(former Soviet Union
). He received a BA
degree in ethnomusicology
from Tbilisi State Conservatory
in 1978. During 1979-1983 he was elected as the President of the Board of Creative Youth of Tbilisi. In 1982 he received his PhD
degree in musicology
-ethnomusicology
from Tbilisi Theatrical Institute, and served as lecturer, senior lecturer, assistant professor, and professor at the Department of Georgian Traditional Music at Tbilisi State Conservatory
. For one year (in 1984) he served as a dean of the Faculty of Musicology. In 1991 he received the title D.Mus from Kiev Conservatory
. From 1988 until 1995 Jordania was the head of the Musical Sector of the Centre of the Mediterranean Studies at the Tbilisi State University. He published his first monograph on choral polyphony in 1989. In 1984 he was instrumental in organizing the conference "Problems of Folk Polyphony". This conference became the beginning of the series of biannual international conferences (1984, 1986, 1988, 1998, 2000) and symposia (2002, 2004, 2006, 2010) on traditional polyphony, and led to establishing the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
at Tbilisi State Conservatory in 2003
In 2009, in recognition of "his contribution to systematic analysis of folk polyphonies of the world, proposing a new model for the origins of traditional choral singing in a broad context of human evolution" Jordania was awarded the Fumio Koizumi Prize for ethnomusicology
.
, together with most of their relatives. His father, Mindia Jordania (1929–1979) survived repressions only for being of a young age in 1937, gradually becoming one of the leading Georgian ethnomusicologists. His mother, Neli Imedashvili (b. 1931) is a noted piano teacher with internationally performing students. He has a younger brother, Nugzar Jordania, also an ethnomusicologist. During 1981-1995 he was a guitar performer of Georgian State Philharmonic Society (concerts, TV, radio appearances, recordings). He has two daughters (Megi and Nana), one son (Alexander) and two grandchildren (Niko and Manana). From 1988 he is married to ethnomusicologist Nino Tsitsishvili, author of the book National Unity and Gender Differences in Georgian Traditional Music (2010). From 1995 Jordania lives in Australia, Melbourne, maintaining close contacts with Georgia.
for his theory of the origins of choral singing and polyphony
and his criticism of the widely accepted theory of the late cultural origins of choral polyphony. In Who Asked the First Question?
Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech he suggested that human choral singing is an adaptation, created through the forces of natural selection
during the millions of the years of competition with the African lions in African Savannah. He suggested that early humans took a tradition of loud rhythmic dissonant polyphony to different regions of the world (where it still survives in the most isolated mountainous places like in Nuristan, Tibet
, Papua New Guinea
, North Vietnam
, Ainus, Balkans
, Caucasus
, Andes
, among Pygmies. After the shift of human communication to articulated speech, which according to Jordania happened in different populations in different epochs, choral singing lost its primary survival importance and started to disappear.
, not sexual selection
. He suggested that rhythmic laud singing and drumming, together with the threatening rhythmic body movements and body painting, was the core element of the ancient audio-visual intimidating display, which was used to scare away predators (primarily lions) and competitors. Audio-Visual Intimidating Display (or AVID) was a key factor also to put hominid group into an altered state of consciousness
which he calls "battle trance
" where they would not feel fear and pain, and would be religiously dedicated to group interests. Jordania suggests that listening and dancing to the sounds of loud rhythmic rock music, used in many contemporary combat units before the combat missions is directly connected to the primordial evolutionary function of music as an important psychological factor of defense. Apart from the defense from predators, Jordania suggested that this system was the core strategy to obtain food via confrontational, or aggressive scavenging.
species, or gibbons
), some live in the water (whale
s, dolphin
s, seal
s, sea lion
s), and there are no animal species who live on the ground and sing except for human
s. He suggested that this uneven distribution of singing is crucial for our understanding of the origins of the singing behavior in animals and humans. Jordania explains this fact as the result of the pressure from natural selection
. Singing is a very costly behavior, not only because of the energy to produce sounds, but primarily for the security
reasons, as all the possible predators can easily learn the whereabouts of a singing animal. Singing species that live on the trees are in a much more favourable situation, as trees allow different species to live according to their body weight. So different animals with different body weight live on different "levels" of the tree branches. Therefore tree living (or arboreal) species feel quite secure to sing or to communicate with a wide range of vocal signals. On the other hand, all the ground living (or terrestrial
) animal species, despite the huge weight differences between them (ranging from rabbit
s to lion
s and elephant
s) live on the same "ground level", and maintaining silence is crucially important for them. Even most of the birds, the most ardent singers, stop singing and producing other sounds when they sit on the ground. Therefore, predator threat might be a primary reason why tree living species are generally much noisier than ground living species.
. Many social animals produce seemingly haphazard and indistinctive sounds (like chicken cluck) when they are going about their everyday business (foraging
, feeding). These sounds have two functions: (1) to let group members know that they are among kin and there is no danger, and (2) in case of the appearance of any signs of danger (suspicious sounds, movements in a forest), the animal that notices danger first, stops moving, stops producing sounds, remains silent and looks in the direction of the danger sign. Other animals quickly follow suit and very soon all the group is silent and is scanning the environment for the possible danger. Charles Darwin
was the first to notice this phenomenon on the example of the wild horses and the cattle (Darwin, Descent of Men, 2004:123). Jordania suggested that for humans, as for many social animals, silence can be a sign of danger, and that's why gentle humming and musical sounds relax humans (see the use of gentle music in music therapy
, lullabies
)
" Jordania suggested that prehistoric cannibalism
could have a function of predator control. Readily available human corpses during the epidemics and wars are known to increase the number of man-eating animals and also the number of the predator attacks on humans, so the practice of cannibalism could be a strategy to deprive predators chances to eat and to get used to human flesh as a part of their diet. According to Jordania, even after the fatal attacks of predators on hominids or humans, being superb at aggressive scavenging, hominids and early humans would attack the predators in groups and fight back for the dead body of the killed member of their group. Later they would cannibalize the body of the dead fellow member in a ritualistic manner. Although very costly and risky behavior
, this behavior eventually taught predators that it was very costly to prey on hominids and humans.
ary history reaching the state of the "battle trance
" or a specific state of collective identity
was crucial for the physical survival of hominids and early humans. He argued that as individual hominids were too weak and slow to survive predators on their own, in the most critical for survival moments (predator attacks, combat situations, mortal danger to your children) humans enter the altered state of consciousness
where they do not feel fear and pain, do not question the behavior of other members of their group, and are ready to sacrifice their lives for evolutionary more important goal (like the survival of their children or the group). According to Jordania
, human ability to follow the rhythm in big groups, to sing together in harmony
, to dance for many hours and enter the ecstatic state, as well as the tradition of body painting
, were all developed as the parts of first ritual practices in order to reach the state of collective identity. In the state of collective identity the needs for the group (keen
) survival are overriding the instincts of individual survival.
s is the central cognitive element that distinguishes human and animal cognitive abilities. Enculturated apes Kanzi
, Washoe
, Sarah
and a few others who underwent extensive language training programs successfully learned to answer quite complex questions and requests but they so far failed to learn how to ask questions themselves. Jordania suggested that the ability to ask questions is often assessed in relation to comprehension of syntactic structures
, and this is not justified, as (1) questioning is primarily a cognitive ability, and (2) questions can be (and are) asked by young children without the use of syntactic structures (with the use of specific question intonation
only, at the pre-syntactic, one word stage of language development
). Jordania suggested a Latin motto Interrogo ergo Cogito (I ask questions, therefore I think) and considers the origin of questioning behaviour in human evolutionary history as the beginning of human cognition and language.
and dyslexia
), as well as the acquisition of phonological system by young children. He argued that there is a positive correlation between the presence of strong traditions of vocal polyphony (like in sub-Saharan Africa and some regions of Europe) and the higher rate of stuttering and dyslexia. He argues that these differences between populations might have innate character. He initiated studies of some understudied regions (for example study of stuttering prevalence among Chinese populations).
, not an ancient pre-cultural phenomenon. Big part of the speech pathologists consider that stuttering prevalence is same in every human population, and that there can not be any genetic differences between different populations in predilection towards stuttering. Expert of dyslexia
consider that the reasons for the existing cross-cultural differences is the differences between the writing systems, not the differences in genetic predilection of different populations towards dyslexia. Most of the experts of educational system also consider that the reasons of the notable differences in higher literacy achievements of East Asian school students in comparison of many underachieving western (European, North American, Australian) students is the difference in cultural attitudes and educational system, not the genetic factor, as Jordania suggested.
Georgian people
The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....
ethnomusicologist and evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
ary musicologist. In some early publications his name was spelled as Zhordania. He is a Honorary Fellow of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
, Professor, Head of the Foreign Department of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
The International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony is an academic organization focused on the study of the phenomenon of traditional vocal polyphony. It is a part of Tbilisi Vano Sarajishvili State Conservatory...
at Tbilisi State Conservatory
Tbilisi State Conservatory
Tbilisi State Conservatoire is the State Conservatoire of Georgia, located in the capital Tbilisi.-History:The Tbilisi Conservatoire was founded on 1 May 1917. It was formally recognised by the Russian Musical Society as a conservatoire later that year. A rival conservatoire was also founded in...
, and is known for his model of the origins of human choral singing in the wide context of human evolution
Human evolution
Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
. He was one of founders of the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
The International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony is an academic organization focused on the study of the phenomenon of traditional vocal polyphony. It is a part of Tbilisi Vano Sarajishvili State Conservatory...
in Georgia. From 1995 he lives in Australia, maintaining close professional contacts with his native Georgia and the polyphonic centre.
Jordania’s academic interests include study of worldwide distribution of choral polyphonic traditions, origins of choral singing, origins of rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
, origins of human morphology
Morphology (biology)
In biology, morphology is a branch of bioscience dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features....
and behaviour, cross-cultural prevalence of stuttering
Stuttering
Stuttering , also known as stammering , is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...
, dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
and acquisition of phonological system in children, study of the cognitive threshold between animal and human cognitive abilities. His primarily expertise is Georgian and Caucasian traditional music and vocal polyphony. From the middle of the 1980s he started cross-cultural comparative study of the phenomenon of vocal polyphony and came to the conclusion that polyphony is not a late cultural invention, but rather an extremely ancient phenomenon, designed by the forces of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
as a part of the defense system for early hominids on African Savannah. He advocates that natural selection, not sexual selection, was the central force in human evolution, including the evolution of human musical abilities. His 1989 technical book "Georgian Traditional Polyphony in an International Context of Polyphonic Cultures (published in Russian) was dedicated to the comparative study of world distribution of vocal polyphonic traditions. His 2006 book "Who Asked the First Question?
Who Asked the First Question?
Who Asked the First Question? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech is a book on human evolution and the origins of human choral singing. It was written by Joseph Jordania, ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist, Honorary Fellow of the University of...
" was dedicated to the problems of the origins of human intelligence and language (the ability of asking questions is suggested as the central cognitive ability of Homo sapiens, and the decisive element of forming of human language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
), articulated speech (Jordania suggested that after leaving African cradle and settling in different regions of the Old World, different populations of early humans shifted to articulated speech in different epochs), stuttering
Stuttering
Stuttering , also known as stammering , is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...
and dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
(Jordania suggested that the existing differences in the prevalence of stuttering and dyslexia might have genetic nature and might be the result of the shift to articulated speech among different human populations in different epochs). Jordania also studied the evolutionary function of humming (humming as human contact calls
Contact calls
Seemingly haphazard sounds made by many social animals are known as contact calls. Contact calls are very different from many other types of calls , as contact calls are not a specific signal, designed to communicate some specific information...
designed to maintain audio contact within the group and to warn members of group about predators), and the distribution of singing behaviour in animal species in different natural environments (he suggested that only arboreal and aquatic
Aquatic animal
An aquatic animal is an animal, either vertebrate or invertebrate, which lives in water for most or all of its life. It may breathe air or extract its oxygen from that dissolved in water through specialised organs called gills, or directly through its skin. Natural environments and the animals that...
species sing, but no terrestrial
Terrestrial animal
Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land , as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water , or amphibians, which rely on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats...
species apart from humans, sing). His 2011 book "Why do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution
Why do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution
Why do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution is a book on human evolution by Australian/Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist Joseph Jordania, published in 2011 by “Logos”...
" is dedicated to the evolution of human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
morphology and behavior
Behavior
Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...
.
Career
Jordania was born in GeorgiaGeorgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
(former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
). He received a BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree in ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
from Tbilisi State Conservatory
Tbilisi State Conservatory
Tbilisi State Conservatoire is the State Conservatoire of Georgia, located in the capital Tbilisi.-History:The Tbilisi Conservatoire was founded on 1 May 1917. It was formally recognised by the Russian Musical Society as a conservatoire later that year. A rival conservatoire was also founded in...
in 1978. During 1979-1983 he was elected as the President of the Board of Creative Youth of Tbilisi. In 1982 he received his PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
degree in musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
-ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
from Tbilisi Theatrical Institute, and served as lecturer, senior lecturer, assistant professor, and professor at the Department of Georgian Traditional Music at Tbilisi State Conservatory
Tbilisi State Conservatory
Tbilisi State Conservatoire is the State Conservatoire of Georgia, located in the capital Tbilisi.-History:The Tbilisi Conservatoire was founded on 1 May 1917. It was formally recognised by the Russian Musical Society as a conservatoire later that year. A rival conservatoire was also founded in...
. For one year (in 1984) he served as a dean of the Faculty of Musicology. In 1991 he received the title D.Mus from Kiev Conservatory
Kiev Conservatory
The Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music is a Ukrainian state institution of higher music education. Its courses include postgraduate education.-History:...
. From 1988 until 1995 Jordania was the head of the Musical Sector of the Centre of the Mediterranean Studies at the Tbilisi State University. He published his first monograph on choral polyphony in 1989. In 1984 he was instrumental in organizing the conference "Problems of Folk Polyphony". This conference became the beginning of the series of biannual international conferences (1984, 1986, 1988, 1998, 2000) and symposia (2002, 2004, 2006, 2010) on traditional polyphony, and led to establishing the International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
International Research Centre for Traditional Polyphony
The International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony is an academic organization focused on the study of the phenomenon of traditional vocal polyphony. It is a part of Tbilisi Vano Sarajishvili State Conservatory...
at Tbilisi State Conservatory in 2003
In 2009, in recognition of "his contribution to systematic analysis of folk polyphonies of the world, proposing a new model for the origins of traditional choral singing in a broad context of human evolution" Jordania was awarded the Fumio Koizumi Prize for ethnomusicology
Fumio Koizumi Prize for ethnomusicology
The Fumio Koizumi Prize is an international award for achievements in ethnomusicology, presented annually in Tokyo, Japan. The prize is awarded by Fumio Koizumi Trust. This prize is to be awarded each April 4, the date of Koizumi Fumio's birthday . The recipient is to receive an award certificate...
.
Personal
Jordania family connections to the first president of independent Georgia (1918–1921) Noe Jordania were a key factor for the persecution of Jordania family members by communists. His grand-grandfather and grandfather disappeared during the 1937-1938 repressions under Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, together with most of their relatives. His father, Mindia Jordania (1929–1979) survived repressions only for being of a young age in 1937, gradually becoming one of the leading Georgian ethnomusicologists. His mother, Neli Imedashvili (b. 1931) is a noted piano teacher with internationally performing students. He has a younger brother, Nugzar Jordania, also an ethnomusicologist. During 1981-1995 he was a guitar performer of Georgian State Philharmonic Society (concerts, TV, radio appearances, recordings). He has two daughters (Megi and Nana), one son (Alexander) and two grandchildren (Niko and Manana). From 1988 he is married to ethnomusicologist Nino Tsitsishvili, author of the book National Unity and Gender Differences in Georgian Traditional Music (2010). From 1995 Jordania lives in Australia, Melbourne, maintaining close contacts with Georgia.
On the origins of choral polyphony
Jordania is known within ethnomusicologyEthnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
for his theory of the origins of choral singing and polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
and his criticism of the widely accepted theory of the late cultural origins of choral polyphony. In Who Asked the First Question?
Who Asked the First Question?
Who Asked the First Question? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech is a book on human evolution and the origins of human choral singing. It was written by Joseph Jordania, ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist, Honorary Fellow of the University of...
Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech he suggested that human choral singing is an adaptation, created through the forces of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
during the millions of the years of competition with the African lions in African Savannah. He suggested that early humans took a tradition of loud rhythmic dissonant polyphony to different regions of the world (where it still survives in the most isolated mountainous places like in Nuristan, Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
, Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
, North Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, Ainus, Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
, Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
, among Pygmies. After the shift of human communication to articulated speech, which according to Jordania happened in different populations in different epochs, choral singing lost its primary survival importance and started to disappear.
Audio-visual intimidating display
Jordania promotes the idea that music (as well as several other universal elements of contemporary human culture, including dance and body painting) are the result the forces of natural selectionNatural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
, not sexual selection
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, is a significant element of his theory of natural selection...
. He suggested that rhythmic laud singing and drumming, together with the threatening rhythmic body movements and body painting, was the core element of the ancient audio-visual intimidating display, which was used to scare away predators (primarily lions) and competitors. Audio-Visual Intimidating Display (or AVID) was a key factor also to put hominid group into an altered state of consciousness
Altered state of consciousness
An altered state of consciousness , also named altered state of mind, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart: it describes induced...
which he calls "battle trance
Battle trance
Battle trance is a term denoting a specific altered state of consciousness that characterizes the psychological state of combatants during a combat situation. In this state, combatants do not feel fear or pain , and all the individual members of group are acting as one collective organism...
" where they would not feel fear and pain, and would be religiously dedicated to group interests. Jordania suggests that listening and dancing to the sounds of loud rhythmic rock music, used in many contemporary combat units before the combat missions is directly connected to the primordial evolutionary function of music as an important psychological factor of defense. Apart from the defense from predators, Jordania suggested that this system was the core strategy to obtain food via confrontational, or aggressive scavenging.
Singing among animals species in different natural environments
Jordania suggested that singing behavior is very unevenly distributed among animal species, living in different environments (on the ground, in the water, on the trees). Most of the singing species live on the trees (like many birdBird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
species, or gibbons
Gibbons
Notable people named Gibbons include:* Alan Gibbons, a British author* Beth Gibbons , a British singer* Billy Gibbons, a guitarist for ZZ Top* Carroll Gibbons , an American-born British bandleader...
), some live in the water (whale
Whale
Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...
s, dolphin
Dolphin
Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...
s, seal
Pinniped
Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semiaquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae , Otariidae , and Phocidae .-Overview: Pinnipeds are typically sleek-bodied and barrel-shaped...
s, sea lion
Sea Lion
Sea lions are pinnipeds characterized by external ear-flaps, long fore-flippers, the ability to walk on all fours, and short thick hair. Together with the fur seal, they comprise the family Otariidae, or eared seals. There are six extant and one extinct species in five genera...
s), and there are no animal species who live on the ground and sing except for human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
s. He suggested that this uneven distribution of singing is crucial for our understanding of the origins of the singing behavior in animals and humans. Jordania explains this fact as the result of the pressure from natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
. Singing is a very costly behavior, not only because of the energy to produce sounds, but primarily for the security
Security
Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Security as a form of protection are structures and processes that provide or improve security as a condition. The Institute for Security and Open Methodologies in the OSSTMM 3 defines security as "a form of protection...
reasons, as all the possible predators can easily learn the whereabouts of a singing animal. Singing species that live on the trees are in a much more favourable situation, as trees allow different species to live according to their body weight. So different animals with different body weight live on different "levels" of the tree branches. Therefore tree living (or arboreal) species feel quite secure to sing or to communicate with a wide range of vocal signals. On the other hand, all the ground living (or terrestrial
Terrestrial animal
Terrestrial animals are animals that live predominantly or entirely on land , as compared with aquatic animals, which live predominantly or entirely in the water , or amphibians, which rely on a combination of aquatic and terrestrial habitats...
) animal species, despite the huge weight differences between them (ranging from rabbit
Rabbit
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...
s to lion
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
s and elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
s) live on the same "ground level", and maintaining silence is crucially important for them. Even most of the birds, the most ardent singers, stop singing and producing other sounds when they sit on the ground. Therefore, predator threat might be a primary reason why tree living species are generally much noisier than ground living species.
Humming
Jordania suggested that humming could have played an important role in the early human (hominid) evolution as contact callsContact calls
Seemingly haphazard sounds made by many social animals are known as contact calls. Contact calls are very different from many other types of calls , as contact calls are not a specific signal, designed to communicate some specific information...
. Many social animals produce seemingly haphazard and indistinctive sounds (like chicken cluck) when they are going about their everyday business (foraging
Foraging
- Definitions and significance of foraging behavior :Foraging is the act of searching for and exploiting food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce...
, feeding). These sounds have two functions: (1) to let group members know that they are among kin and there is no danger, and (2) in case of the appearance of any signs of danger (suspicious sounds, movements in a forest), the animal that notices danger first, stops moving, stops producing sounds, remains silent and looks in the direction of the danger sign. Other animals quickly follow suit and very soon all the group is silent and is scanning the environment for the possible danger. Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
was the first to notice this phenomenon on the example of the wild horses and the cattle (Darwin, Descent of Men, 2004:123). Jordania suggested that for humans, as for many social animals, silence can be a sign of danger, and that's why gentle humming and musical sounds relax humans (see the use of gentle music in music therapy
Music therapy
Music therapy is an allied health profession and one of the expressive therapies, consisting of an interpersonal process in which a trained music therapist uses music and all of its facets—physical, emotional, mental, social, aesthetic, and spiritual—to help clients to improve or maintain their...
, lullabies
Lullaby
A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in every culture and since the ancient period....
)
Cannibalism as a predator control mechanism in hominids and early humans
In his 2011 book "Why do People Sing? Music in Human EvolutionWhy do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution
Why do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution is a book on human evolution by Australian/Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist Joseph Jordania, published in 2011 by “Logos”...
" Jordania suggested that prehistoric cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
could have a function of predator control. Readily available human corpses during the epidemics and wars are known to increase the number of man-eating animals and also the number of the predator attacks on humans, so the practice of cannibalism could be a strategy to deprive predators chances to eat and to get used to human flesh as a part of their diet. According to Jordania, even after the fatal attacks of predators on hominids or humans, being superb at aggressive scavenging, hominids and early humans would attack the predators in groups and fight back for the dead body of the killed member of their group. Later they would cannibalize the body of the dead fellow member in a ritualistic manner. Although very costly and risky behavior
Behavior
Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...
, this behavior eventually taught predators that it was very costly to prey on hominids and humans.
Collective identity and the first ritual practices
Jordania suggested that in human evolutionHuman evolution
Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
ary history reaching the state of the "battle trance
Battle trance
Battle trance is a term denoting a specific altered state of consciousness that characterizes the psychological state of combatants during a combat situation. In this state, combatants do not feel fear or pain , and all the individual members of group are acting as one collective organism...
" or a specific state of collective identity
Collective identity
The term collective identity may refer to a variety of concepts. In general however, these concepts generally pertain to phenomena where an individuals' perceived membership in a social group impacts upon their own identity in some way. The idea of a collective identity has received attention in a...
was crucial for the physical survival of hominids and early humans. He argued that as individual hominids were too weak and slow to survive predators on their own, in the most critical for survival moments (predator attacks, combat situations, mortal danger to your children) humans enter the altered state of consciousness
Altered state of consciousness
An altered state of consciousness , also named altered state of mind, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart: it describes induced...
where they do not feel fear and pain, do not question the behavior of other members of their group, and are ready to sacrifice their lives for evolutionary more important goal (like the survival of their children or the group). According to Jordania
Jordânia
Jordânia is a Brazilian municipality located in the northeast of the state of Minas Gerais. The city belongs to the mesoregion of Jequitinhonha and to the microregion of Almenara. As of 2007 the population was 10,751 in a total area of 549 km²....
, human ability to follow the rhythm in big groups, to sing together in harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, to dance for many hours and enter the ecstatic state, as well as the tradition of body painting
Body painting
Body painting, or sometimes bodypainting, is a form of body art. Unlike tattoo and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, painted onto the human skin, and lasts for only several hours, or at most a couple of weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting...
, were all developed as the parts of first ritual practices in order to reach the state of collective identity. In the state of collective identity the needs for the group (keen
Keen
- Persons :* Alan Keen* Andrew Keen* Ann Keen* Arthur Keen* Diane Keen* Geoffrey Keen* Harold Keen* Jessica Keen* John Keen * John Keen * Malcolm Keen...
) survival are overriding the instincts of individual survival.
Cognitive threshold between animal and human abilities
Jordania suggested that the ability to ask questionQuestion
A question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information may be provided with an answer....
s is the central cognitive element that distinguishes human and animal cognitive abilities. Enculturated apes Kanzi
Kanzi
Kanzi , also known by the lexigram , is a male bonobo who has been featured in several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude.- Biography :Born to Lorel and...
, Washoe
Washoe (chimpanzee)
Washoe was a chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to communicate using American Sign Language, as part of a research experiment on animal language acquisition....
, Sarah
Sarah
Sarah or Sara was the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Her name was originally Sarai...
and a few others who underwent extensive language training programs successfully learned to answer quite complex questions and requests but they so far failed to learn how to ask questions themselves. Jordania suggested that the ability to ask questions is often assessed in relation to comprehension of syntactic structures
Syntactic Structures
Syntactic Structures is an seminal book in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, first published in 1957. It laid the foundation of Chomsky's idea of transformational grammar...
, and this is not justified, as (1) questioning is primarily a cognitive ability, and (2) questions can be (and are) asked by young children without the use of syntactic structures (with the use of specific question intonation
Intonation (linguistics)
In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
only, at the pre-syntactic, one word stage of language development
Language development
Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simple to complex. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and...
). Jordania suggested a Latin motto Interrogo ergo Cogito (I ask questions, therefore I think) and considers the origin of questioning behaviour in human evolutionary history as the beginning of human cognition and language.
Stuttering, dyslexia, acquisition of phonological system
Jordania proposed that the asynchronous shift to the articulated speech in different populations resulted in significant cross-cultural differences in different speech- and reading-related pathologies (like stutteringStuttering
Stuttering , also known as stammering , is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...
and dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
), as well as the acquisition of phonological system by young children. He argued that there is a positive correlation between the presence of strong traditions of vocal polyphony (like in sub-Saharan Africa and some regions of Europe) and the higher rate of stuttering and dyslexia. He argues that these differences between populations might have innate character. He initiated studies of some understudied regions (for example study of stuttering prevalence among Chinese populations).
Controversies
Some of Jordania's ideas are considered controversial by experts of different disciplines. Big part of musicologists considers polyphony as a relatively late cultural inventionCultural invention
- Definition :A Cultural invention is any innovation developed by people that is not of a physical construct. Cultural inventions include sets of behaviour adopted by groups of people. They are perpetuated by being passed on to others within the group or outside it. They are also passed on to...
, not an ancient pre-cultural phenomenon. Big part of the speech pathologists consider that stuttering prevalence is same in every human population, and that there can not be any genetic differences between different populations in predilection towards stuttering. Expert of dyslexia
Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid...
consider that the reasons for the existing cross-cultural differences is the differences between the writing systems, not the differences in genetic predilection of different populations towards dyslexia. Most of the experts of educational system also consider that the reasons of the notable differences in higher literacy achievements of East Asian school students in comparison of many underachieving western (European, North American, Australian) students is the difference in cultural attitudes and educational system, not the genetic factor, as Jordania suggested.
Books
- Georgian Traditional Polyphony in the International Context of Polyphonic Culture (the Problem of Origins of Polyphony) Tbilisi State University Press (in Russian with English Summary. 1989)
- Who Asked the First Question?Who Asked the First Question?Who Asked the First Question? The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech is a book on human evolution and the origins of human choral singing. It was written by Joseph Jordania, ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist, Honorary Fellow of the University of...
The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech (Logos, 2006) - Why do People Sing? Music in Human EvolutionWhy do People Sing? Music in Human EvolutionWhy do People Sing? Music in Human Evolution is a book on human evolution by Australian/Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist Joseph Jordania, published in 2011 by “Logos”...
(Logos, 2011)
Articles and essays
- Jordania, J. (1985) Problem of Emergence of Three-Part Drone Polyphony in Georgian Folk Music In J. Jordania (Ed.), Problems of Traditional Plyphony. Pg. 21-24. Problems of Traditional Polyphony Tbilisi: Sabchota Sakartvelo. (in Russian with English summary)
- Jordania, J. (1988) Origins of Polyphony and the Problem of Geneses of Articulated Speech In J. Jordania (Ed.) Proceedings of the conference Problems of Traditional Polyphony. Pg. 21-24. Tbilisi Stet University Press (In Russian with English summary)
- Jordania, J. (1989) Re-assessment of Musical Traditions of Ancient Middle Eastern Peoples: The Problem of Polyphony In I. Zemtsovsky (Ed.) Folk music: History and Typology. Pg. 75-80. Leningrad: Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema Press (In Russian)
- Jordania, J. (1992) Problem of Indo-Europeans in the Light of Musical Data In Matsne, Bulletin of the Academy of Science of Georgia, Serial of History, Ethnography and Arts History, 3:42-55 (in Georgian with Russian summary)
- Jordania, J. (1997) Perspective of Interdisciplinary Research of Part-Singing Phenomenon In Christoph-Hellmut Mahling and Stephan Munch (Eds.) in Ethnomusicology and Historical Musicology - Common Goals, Shared Methodologies?. Pg. 211-216. Tutzing: Verlegt Bei Hans Schneider
- Jordania, J. (2000) Question Intonation, Speech Pathologies, and the Origins of Polyphony In Rusudan Tsurtsumia (Ed.) Proceedings of the International Conference “Problems of Traditional Polyphony”, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, 10–15 November 1998. Pg. 143-155. Tbilisi State Conservatory (in Georgian with extended English Summary),
- Jordania, J. (2000) "Georgia" and "North Caucasia" In Timothy Rice, James Porter and Chris Goertzen (Eds) Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 8 Europe. Pg. 826-849, and 850-865. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000.
- Jordania, J. (2001) The Incidence of Stuttering among Chinese: Preliminary Investigation In Speech, Language and Hearing Association News, volume 5, Issue 2, April–May, pg. 2-3, Singapore, 2001.
- Jordania, J. (2001) Moral Models and Ethics in the Study of the Origins of choral Polyphony In Rusudan Tsurtsumia (Ed.) Proceedings of the International Conference “Problems of Traditional Polyphony”, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, 10–15 November 1998
- Sheree Reese with Joseph Jordania (2001). Stuttering in the Chinese Population in Some South-East Asian Countries: A Preliminary Investigation on Attitude and Incidence (American Speech Pathology Association online conference)
- Jordania, Joseph (2005) Interrogo Ergo Cogito: Responsorial Singing and the Origins of Human Intelligence (proceedings of the International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony, held in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2004).
- Jordania, Joseph (2010). Music and Emotions: humming in Human Prehistory (proceedings of the International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony, held in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2008.
- Jordania, Joseph (2010). Georgian Traditional Polyphony in Comparative Studies: History and Perspectives. In Rusudan Tsurtsumia & Joseph Jordania (Eds) Echoes from Georgia: Seventeen Arguments on Georgian Polyphony. Pg. 229-248. New York: Nova Science
See also
- PolyphonyPolyphonyIn music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
- Choral Music
- group singing
- Battle tranceBattle tranceBattle trance is a term denoting a specific altered state of consciousness that characterizes the psychological state of combatants during a combat situation. In this state, combatants do not feel fear or pain , and all the individual members of group are acting as one collective organism...
- IntimidationIntimidationIntimidation is intentional behavior "which would cause a person of ordinary sensibilities" fear of injury or harm. It's not necessary to prove that the behavior was so violent as to cause terror or that the victim was actually frightened.Criminal threatening is the crime of intentionally or...
- Humming
- SilenceSilenceSilence is the relative or total lack of audible sound. By analogy, the word silence may also refer to any absence of communication, even in media other than speech....
- Origins of music
- History of danceHistory of danceDance does not often leave behind clearly identifiable physical artifacts that last over millennia, such as stone tools, hunting implements or cave paintings...
- Evolutionary musicologyEvolutionary musicologyEvolutionary musicology is a subfield of biomusicology that grounds the psychological mechanisms of music perception and production in evolutionary theory...
- Origins of language
- StutteringStutteringStuttering , also known as stammering , is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...
- Collective identityCollective identityThe term collective identity may refer to a variety of concepts. In general however, these concepts generally pertain to phenomena where an individuals' perceived membership in a social group impacts upon their own identity in some way. The idea of a collective identity has received attention in a...
- Body paintingBody paintingBody painting, or sometimes bodypainting, is a form of body art. Unlike tattoo and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, painted onto the human skin, and lasts for only several hours, or at most a couple of weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting...
- RhythmRhythmRhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
- Contact callsContact callsSeemingly haphazard sounds made by many social animals are known as contact calls. Contact calls are very different from many other types of calls , as contact calls are not a specific signal, designed to communicate some specific information...
- CannibalismCannibalismCannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
- IntelligenceIntelligenceIntelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....
- QuestionQuestionA question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information may be provided with an answer....