Can you recognise a love song in any language?

All In The Mind

ABC listen

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Science

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Music is a universal feature of the human experience — present from our very first cultures and civilisations.

But do the features of particular songs and styles translate across cultural boundaries? Like, is a lullaby recognisable even when it's from a different culture? Can you identify a love song in another language?

Today, we explore the special relationship between music and our minds, in an episode from Radio New Zealand's Our Changing World.

Our Changing World is produced and presented by Claire Concannon and Ellen Rykers for RNZ.

The clips from the Natural History of Song project used in this episode are available online under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The original version of this episode was first broadcast on RNZ as Our Musical Minds.

Transcript

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0:00.0	ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:07.0	You guys, the world is vast.
0:10.7	There are a lot of people, newsflash, which means a lot of cultures,
0:15.4	which means a lot of musical traditions.
0:21.6	But is there something universal about certain types of songs?
0:25.6	Like, is a lullaby more or less the same everywhere?
0:29.6	Or a love song?
0:31.6	And if so, what does that say about human psychology?
0:36.6	Claire Concanon is a science reporter and host of Our Changing World on Radio New Zealand,
0:42.2	and she has been looking into all of that.
0:44.3	Hi, Claire.
0:45.2	Oh, kiosana, so nice to talk to you.
0:47.4	So good to talk to you.
0:48.4	And are you particularly musical?
0:50.5	Like, why did you want to investigate this?
0:52.3	Oh, in terms of musical ability, not really.
0:56.0	Okay. But I like listening to music as much as the next person.
0:59.0	And it's that kind of universality of music that really intrigued me.
1:04.0	And it's one of the things you don't think about until you think about it.
1:08.0	And just the fact that we can play and perceive music is strange.
1:12.0	Humans are the only species that play and perceive music in this way.
1:16.7	And so you're going to actually be with us for the next two episodes. Next week, you're looking at
	...

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