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Baby Song Learning and Bird Song Learning: Musical Universals
If you play recordings of bird songs of different species to young songbirds raised in captivity, they will only learn the songs of their own species, evidence of genetic origins. Blackbirds in captivity, no matter how much loving care and patient training they receive, stubbornly refuse to learn the Lennon-McCartney tune “Blackbird,” because a blackbird did not write the song.
The same appears to apply to human babies. Human babies recognize and learn speech and melodies characteristic of the human species, rather than a particular culture. If you learn two languages in childhood, you’ll learn both effortlessly and speak both without an accent as an adult. But if you learn one language in childhood and a second language as an adult, you will learn the first language effortlessly and speak it without an accent, and the second only with considerable effort, and speak it with an accent.
Since all of the world’s musics share a set of universals, like languages, it’s likely that this phenomenon applies to musical cultures. Suppose you have grown up learning the tonal system of the West, with little exposure to the tonal system of, say, India. And suppose, as an adult, you decide to move to India and learn to play the sitar. You’ll probably find yourself expending considerable effort to learn what young Indian sitar players seem to learn effortlessly. And, after some years of training, you will likely play the instrument “with an accent,” so to speak, compared with native- born players of your age and musical experience. (Try it!)