A great little piece from the NYTimes on the history of human music making. I posting this with a gift link that will be good for a couple of weeks (and can be passed along) as the article has some links to listen to various pieces which would work in a snapshot such as on the archive website. It explores the debate of the origins of human music-making (evolution? culture? quirk of our brains?) as well as cross-cultural studies by ethnomusicologists (“Despite their variety, all of the songs shared a number of features that set them apart from speech. The pitch was higher and more stable, for example, and the tempo was slower.”). And it highlights some cool conclusions:
It’s possible that songs have distinct features because they have a special role in human communication separate from speech, said Aniruddh Patel, a psychologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study. What’s more, our brains appear to be sensitive to those features. In 2022, Dr. Patel pointed out, researchers discovered human neurons that only responded to singing — not speech or music played on instruments.
…
“Maybe music was needed to improve group cohesion,” Dr. Ozaki said. Singing in choruses, sharing rhythms and melodies, could have brought people together whether as a community or in preparation for a battle.
Certainly Ancient Greek choruses were linked to martial training.
Humans have been making music with instruments for over 40,000 years . Singing no doubt goes back further – especially as primates, such as gibbons, also sing. Societies that repress music (like the Taliban in the ’90s) always just seemed unnatural to me. Music is so core to life.
It seems only right to end this post with a song:
Ramblings 