Fascinating article. I started wondering what a parallel study of singing around camp fires would bring. Then it struck me. Primitive peoples tend to regard song and music as functional entities. IE., their purpose was to accompany work or lament the dead or to accompany religious rituals or whatever, rather than to entertain.

In other words, people may well have sat round camp fires swapping stories long before they started singing purely for pleasure.

Can anyone think of any primitive peoples who traditionally sang around camp fires?