Singing creates stronger bonds than speaking
Since Charles Darwin first posed the question in 1871, the evolutionary purpose of music has remained one of humanity's most elegant mysteries — not a tool for survival, yet present in every society ever known. Dr. Patrick Savage, a musicologist at the University of Auckland, has spent years assembling a cross-cultural answer across 46 countries and more than 6,000 musical traditions: that music, and singing in particular, may have evolved as a technology of togetherness, a way of weaving strangers into a shared rhythm. His work suggests that what we call music is less a luxury of civilization than a deep biological inheritance — the sound of human beings learning to trust one another.
- Darwin asked why humans make music in 1871, and the question has gone unanswered long enough to feel like a provocation — Savage has made it his life's work to finally close the gap.
- Defining music itself proves treacherous: ritual chants in Papua New Guinea and Qur'anic recitation both resist easy categorization, revealing how Western assumptions quietly distort the entire field.
- A landmark study spanning 46 countries and 55 languages found that songs move slower and higher than speech — a pattern Savage believes is precisely engineered, by evolution, for human synchrony.
- A follow-up experiment with over 1,000 participants across 30 languages confirmed the hypothesis directly: singing together builds stronger social bonds than talking together.
- Behind the research lives a grief — Savage's brother Kelly died in 2017 after being restrained for ten days in a Japanese psychiatric facility, a loss that has quietly deepened his understanding of what it means to be held, or failed, by human systems.
- Savage now advocates for Indigenous and non-Western voices to reshape musicology itself, hosting a podcast that draws from the more than 6,000 languages in which music is sung beyond English.
Patrick Savage has built his career around a question Charles Darwin raised in 1871 and never answered: why did humans evolve to make music when they never needed it to survive? As director of the CompMusic Lab and a Rutherford Discovery Fellow at the University of Auckland, Savage approaches the puzzle with both scientific rigor and personal devotion — he is, himself, a lifelong singer.
Even defining music turns out to be difficult. Ritual performances in Papua New Guinea and recitations of the Qur'an both blur the line between music and non-music, and Savage is careful not to impose Western categories on traditions that predate them. This sensitivity runs through all of his work: he is acutely conscious of the racist and Eurocentric biases that distorted much early cross-cultural research, and he actively recruits Indigenous and non-Western collaborators.
His most ambitious study brought together researchers from 46 countries speaking 55 languages, each contributing a traditional song, a spoken recitation, and an instrumental performance. The data revealed a consistent global pattern: songs and melodies are slower and higher-pitched than speech. Savage theorized this makes music uniquely suited to synchronizing groups of people. A follow-up experiment, beginning in Auckland with a classic New Zealand pop song and eventually involving more than 1,000 participants across 30 languages, confirmed it — singing creates stronger social bonds than talking.
Savage's own relationship with music is inseparable from his biography. He grew up between Wisconsin and Wellington, excelled at classical piano, sang barbershop, and found his deepest musical belonging in an a cappella group at Amherst College. It was a book on the evolutionary origins of music that redirected his path toward comparative musicology, leading him through graduate study in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan before landing him back in the Wellington house where he grew up.
He lives there now with his wife and two children, grateful they are learning te reo Māori at his old primary school. But the household carries a permanent absence. His younger brother Kelly died in 2017 after suffering cardiac arrest during ten days of physical restraint in a Japanese psychiatric hospital. The family has since campaigned against such practices. The loss has not deflected Savage's research — if anything, it has deepened his sense of why the invisible bonds that music creates between people are worth understanding, and worth protecting.
Patrick Savage stands at the intersection of two worlds: the scientist asking why humans evolved to make music, and the singer who feels its power in his bones. As a musicologist at the University of Auckland, he has spent years chasing an answer to a question that Charles Darwin posed in 1871 and that remains unsolved: if music was never necessary for survival, why did we develop it at all?
The puzzle deepens when you try to pin down what music even is. Savage, who won the Royal Society Te Apārangi Early Career Research Excellence Award for Humanities last year, acknowledges the difficulty. "Sound organised into regular pitches or rhythms" works as a rough definition, he says, but the world's musical traditions refuse to fit neatly into boxes. A ritual in Papua New Guinea blends human moans with instrument sounds that follow neither regular beats nor discrete pitches. A recitation of the Qur'an sounds musical to many ears but is considered forbidden by Muslims who interpret Islamic law strictly. The closer you look, the more the boundaries blur.
Savage directs the CompMusic Lab for comparative and computational musicology, which he founded in 2018 at Keio University in Japan before relocating to Auckland in 2023 on a five-year Rutherford Discovery Fellowship. One of his most ambitious projects brought together researchers across 46 countries speaking 55 languages—Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Ukrainian, English, Balinese, Cherokee, Spanish, Māori, Basque, and Yoruba among them. Each researcher sang a traditional song, recited its lyrics, and performed it on an instrument, whether whistle, sitar, clapping, or tapping. The pattern that emerged was striking: songs and instrumental melodies moved at slower tempos than speech, with higher and more stable pitches. Savage theorized that these predictable, unhurried sound patterns may be uniquely suited to creating synchrony and social bonding when people sing together.
A follow-up study tested this hypothesis directly. Working with collaborators including PhD students Zixuan Jia and Danya Pavlovich (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine), Savage and his team facilitated both singing and speaking sessions in small groups across the globe. The pilot began in Auckland with the Exponents' classic song "Why does love do this to me?" and expanded to involve more than 1,000 people speaking 30 languages. The finding was clear: singing created stronger social bonds than talking.
Savage's path to this work was shaped by music from childhood. Born in Wisconsin, he moved to Wellington at nine when his geophysicist mother took a position at Victoria University. He excelled at classical piano, played chess and basketball, sang in a barbershop chorus, and absorbed the English folk songs his father loved. At Amherst College in Massachusetts, he studied music composition and joined an a cappella group called The Zumbyes. "That's the greatest bonding experience I've had through music," he recalls. "I went back to a reunion with those guys last year and we all sang together again and it was just super-powerful."
The turning point came when he discovered The Origins of Music, a book that showed how evolutionary biology, linguistics, and anthropology could revitalize musicology—a field that had lost direction during the twentieth century. He reached out to Steven Brown, one of the book's editors, and pursued a Master's degree at McMaster University studying musical and genetic diversity in Indigenous tribes in Taiwan and the Philippines. Further study followed at Tokyo University of the Arts.
Savage is acutely aware of the racist and Western-centered biases that corrupted much nineteenth and twentieth century cross-cultural research. He emphasizes inclusivity in his own work and advocates for more Indigenous and non-Western researchers in musicology. He channels this commitment through his podcast, Many Voices, which features musicians and music lovers from around the world sharing songs from their own languages and cultures—drawing from the more than 6,000 languages other than English in which music is sung.
Today, Savage lives in his childhood home in Karori, Wellington, with his wife Sawa and their children Maika and Kazushi, while his parents Mike and Martha still live nearby. The family plans to return to Japan in late 2028. In the meantime, he's grateful his children attend Karori Normal School, as he once did, and are learning te reo Māori. He has also rejoined Vocal FX Chorus, the barbershop group he sang with in his early twenties.
But there is an absence that weighs on the household. Savage's younger brother Kelly died in 2017 of cardiac arrest following hospitalization in a Japanese psychiatric hospital during a manic episode. He was restrained for ten days, a practice that drew extensive news coverage and prompted the family to campaign against such restraint protocols in Japan. The loss shaped Savage's understanding of vulnerability and care, even as his research continues to map the invisible threads that bind people together through song.
Notable Quotes
That's the greatest bonding experience I've had through music. I went back to a reunion with those guys last year and we all sang together again and it was just super-powerful.— Patrick Savage, on his a cappella group experience at Amherst College
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
You've spent years studying why humans make music. Has your research changed how you experience music yourself?
Absolutely. When I sing now, I'm aware of what's happening neurologically and socially in a way I wasn't before. But that knowledge doesn't diminish the feeling—it deepens it. I understand why my a cappella group felt so bonded. The science explains the mechanism, but it doesn't explain away the power.
Your studies show singing creates stronger bonds than speaking. Why do you think that is?
The rhythm and pitch create something that speech can't. When you sing together, your bodies synchronize—your breathing, your heartbeat. There's a physical entrainment happening. It's not just intellectual; it's embodied. That's why it works across cultures, across languages.
You emphasize inclusivity in musicology. What was wrong with how the field approached non-Western music before?
It was filtered through Western ears and Western assumptions about what music should be. Researchers would go to other cultures and judge their music by European standards. That's not scholarship; that's colonialism dressed up as science. We need Indigenous researchers asking their own questions about their own music.
Your podcast, Many Voices, seems like a direct response to that problem.
It is. I wanted to create a space where musicians from around the world could define their own music on their own terms. Not me explaining their culture to English speakers, but them explaining it. The podcast is really about listening—genuinely listening—to how people understand their own musical traditions.
You lost your brother in Japan. Does that loss inform your work?
It's hard to separate. Kelly's death made me think deeply about vulnerability, about how communities care for people in crisis. Music is one of those things that can hold people together when everything else is falling apart. I think about that a lot.