Has anybody taken up this question in some way beyond the affective? Really, what does music do for us? Is its universality due to instinct, like language? Are there cultures where rhythm, melody, the elements aren't known? Has anyone floated a psychobiological explanation? There's an article which pokes at the same question w/r/t poetry in the very first issue of "Oral Tradition," must be a decade back, but probably available in a big library.

I recall that there was one topic the International Linguistics Society would not take papers on: origins of language. Too much bullshit, too little data, they said, in some more elegant way. And maybe this is the same kind of question.

Adam