The song remains the same: normative listening in the nomos of birds and computers.

In ancient Greek, one of the meanings of the term nomos is “law,” denoting a corpus of written rules a state or community agrees to obey in order to co-regulate behavior at different levels of organization. The etymon of this word means to distribute (nemein), and in its most ancient sense was used to describe ritual distribution of food to guests at a feast. A musical translation of this term offers a contrasting picture. Jesper Svenbro argues that reciting the law from memory is more ancient than reading it out loud. Thus, before aural transcriptions were cognitively offloaded by writing sound down (phonographein), performing the law was a memory-based vocal art. Unwritten laws (ágraphoi nómoi) were sung out or recited by authoritative exegetes.

In this context I suggest another interpretation of the term nomos that reflects on what I construe as normative listening practices. Notably, after the seventh century BC, this proposed mode of listening appears in the aesthetic judgement of nomoi, a class of Greek traditional melodies. These nomoi are melodic patterns that preserve specific aesthetic functions. With normative listening in mind, I will explore two cases of this musical understanding of the term nomos. First, bird species listen to and preserve socially learned vocalizations to coordinate behavior and address environmental situations. Second, programmers used to listen to algorithmic rhythms (algorhythms) to make sure computers were operating as designed. In sum, through the musical interpretation of nomos as normative listening, I aim to explore a bridging concept of culturally transmitted listening behavior in law, music, and animal communication. As far as normative listening is concerned, even if there is freedom to perform nomological variations, the song remains the same.