Exploring music in the world

Lately there seems to have been an explosion of books, articles and documentaries about various topics related to music: music and human evolution, music and the brain, music and culture, etc. For example, take a look at the following clip from a presentation given by Bobby McFerrin at the World Science Festival recently:

How interesting that, despite the differences in music across different cultures, some scales and intervals seem to be almost universal...

For more on these musical universals, we highly recommend The Music Instinct, a recent PBS documentary about music as related to the human brain and culture, which was co-hosted by Dan Levitin, author of The World in Six Songs and This is Your Brain on Music. In the documentary, the connections between music and all other aspects of our humanity are vivid, inspiring and thought-provoking. For example, did you know that evolutionary anthropologists and neuroscientists largely agree that music most likely evolved almost entirely independently from language, and therefore probably had a separate evolutionary purpose? The most plausible theory of this purpose seems to be tribal bonding and synchronization within groups. Yet no one can be certain which evolved first, music or speech. Could there have been a time when humans used only wordless music to communicate?

We're also currently reading Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, by renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks; many may know him as the doctor whose work and writing inspired the movie Awakenings. We'll post a full review of this fascinating book soon.

Any other books, films or links to recommend to fellow music-lovers?