https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201026095422.htm

In an article published recently in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a team of anthropologists and psychologists argue more evidence supports music coming from the need for groups to impress allies and foes, and for parents to signal their attention to infants.

The researchers also take issue with other music origin theories including that making music arose out of a need for social bonding, or that it is merely a fancy evolutionary byproduct with no real purpose -- "auditory cheesecake" as the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker once called it.