In social interactions, we must gauge the emotional state of others in order to behave appropriately. We rely heavily on auditory cues, specifically speech prosody, to do this. Music is also a complex auditory signal with the capacity to communicate emotion rapidly and effectively and often occurs in social situations or ceremonies as an emotional unifier.

In sum, the main contribution of this Research Topic, along with highlighting the variety of research being done already, is to show the places of contact between the domains of music and vocal expression that occur at the level of emotional communication. In addition, we hope it will encourage future dialog among researchers interested in emotion in fields as diverse as computer science, linguistics, musicology, neuroscience, psychology, speech and hearing sciences, and sociology, who can each contribute knowledge necessary for studying this complex topic.