The problem of universals in cross-cultural studies: Insights from Sámi animal melodies (yoik)

This article offers a critique of the notion of “universals” in cross-cultural studies on music and emotions based on empirical observations and philosophical arguments. The empirical material comes from experiments with songs evoking animals and belonging to the Indigenous Sámi “yoik” tradition. Participants from the Belgian Ardenne untrained to the yoik ( N = 114, age 4–79) listened to recordings and tried to guess which animal was evoked. While their scores were significantly above chance level, additional data about their own environment and relationships to animals illustrate that interpretations in terms of “universals” would obscure the interrelational processes and (productive or unproductive) “misrecognitions” at work during the experiments. By analogy, this illustrates the need for a down-to-earth approach in cross-cultural studies on music that acknowledges the creative role of experimental designs and laboratory conditions in the production of universals. This approach may imply a move away from the nature/culture divide and a renewed attention to experimental subjects in a postcolonial context, with the aim of informing us on the entanglement of human musicality in “relational places” and the productive biases these offer to relate across different environments.