I am especially proud of this paper because it involved so many people sharing information and ideas together in an open and inquisitive manner.
It is a conversation that began somewhere in 2018 and blossomed into an accessible information resource about musical diversity. Cheers to that!

One important takeaway from this study is that music evolution theories need to look more deeply into religion. While music can benefit social well-being, it is evidently not essential. It could be that the religious function of music is a big missing part of the puzzle.

Our findings suggest that the scale and religiosity of collective action may be the most important explanatory factors for the prevalence of collective music-making, but other factors, like cultural loss and religious expertise, also play a role (see table for a summary of findings)

We aimed to create a detailed portrait of each society through a combination of ethnographic materials and first-hand reports. The latter came from Chris von Rueden, who worked with the Tsimane since 2005, Kim Hill, who worked with the Ache from 1977 to 2020, and many other correspondents.

We look at four societies in which collective music-making is rare:
the Tsimane of lowland Bolivia,
the Ache of eastern Paraguay,
the Ayoreo of Bolivia and Paraguay,
and the Tuvans of the Russian Republic of Tyva.

Any chance you can DM a PDF? (my son is also in the very low percentiles and I was having similar thoughts)

Exciting stuff! And great cover.

et tu, NZ?