A cross-cultural study of music in history

Music lives in every culture, yet most investigations into music are based on Western music and Western listeners. This has not only ignored the cultural richness in music itself, but has also limited the impact of research on large varieties of societies. In reality, music is multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-facet. Evident in communication, education and healthcare systems, multi-cultural challenges have also merged into many aspects of our historical and contemporary societies. Moreover, rapid changes of the society and fast evolutionary development of media and technology have enriched world wealth of music. In this paper, we demonstrate that music has a rich but cross-cultural foundation in history with significance in linguistics, health and art. Consequently, we present a multi-disciplinary or multi-cultural study of music in history, revealing its significance in linguistics, health and wellbeing.