Ever notice how you can commit song lyrics to memory much more easily than prose or poetry?

I wonder how it all started.

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And, I dispute the statement from one scientist that this has no survival value.

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I think you're dead on TPAW.

Anyone who's ever hunted or been in the military during an exercise (been there) or during combat (not done it, but imagine its doubly true) knows that our sense of hearing is critical for success in either venture.

Remembering subtle sound patterns, not only has this prosaic function, but intonations are a very important medium for communicating emotional information and social nuance in human conversation.
In both cases, it's not hard to see the survival value of having highly developed aural discrimination and memory faculties.

This is off-the-top-of-my-head speculation and, as such, has no place in a journal article.

But to categoprically deny that these abilities have survival value is just stupid, in my opinion.

By the way, TPAW, cool article. Ever see the NOVA show about music where they got American college students to choose what emotion was being conveyed by a particular electronic sound, surprise, anger, sadness, joy etc...?

Different habitats harbour different bird species. For example, when you hear the song of the red winged black bird, you know you are near not just water, but water with reeds or shrubs in it or near by. Not that outstanding in S/W Ontario where swamps are dime a dozen, but what if it's a small water hole in a big semi dessert savanah? Associating the mellody of a particular bird song with the memory of a water hole, or other important feature would seem to me to hold significant survival value.

I wonder if mellody and memory became intertwined in such a fashion?

I think emotion might come into it because music also mimics, not words, but the mellodic intonations of speach.