21 January 2020, Music Cognition Reading Group: Music of the Tsimané

The Tsimané are an indigenous people from Bolivia that have had relatively little contact with industrialised societies. Tsimané culture differs markedly from Western cultures and this has attracted interest from medicine to music. Adding to earlier reports of different consonance and rhythm perception, a study led by Nori Jacoby now suggests that Tsimané do not perceive octaves as equivalent. Should we reconsider the building blocks of music perception?

Jacoby, N., Undurraga, E. A., McPherson, M. J., Valdés, J., Ossandón, T., & McDermott, J. H. (2019). Universal and Non-universal Features of Musical Pitch Perception Revealed by Singing. Current Biology, 29(19), 3229-3243.e12. https://doi.org/10/ggbvj3