Music is a component of human culture of a historically universal presence. Enjoyed by many and irrelevant to few, music continuously receives interest from academia and the public alike. Capable of uniting, as well as dividing, music is often in a focus of individual comparisons. In this study, we combine the approaches of evolutionary and social psychology to investigate the relationship between intelligence, music preferences, and uses of music. We collected data from 467 high school students. We used the Nonverbal Sequence Test, the Uses of Music Questionnaire, and the Scale of Music Preferences. Confirming our expectations based on the Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesis, we found intelligence to be a significant predictor of the preference for instrumental music, but not of the preference for vocal-instrumental music. Furthermore, we revealed the significant role of cognitive use of music as a predictor of the preference for instrumental music. We conducted factor analysis of the Scale of Music Preferences, and revealed five factors: reflective, popular, conservative, intense, and sophisticated. We also found the cognitive use of music to be significantly correlated with the preference for instrumental music, as well as music of reflexive, intense and sophisticated factors. Taken together, our findings support the Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)