It warms the cockles of my heart to know that music was invented before royal government archives. Much as I am in favor of libraries, yesterday’s topic, I don’t think we need the blow-by-blow details of every king’s battle conquests as much as we need music. Whether it’s a single fiddle playing out “Danny Boy” or a full-blown choir and symphony, ringing out with Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” music reaches the heart and mind at once.
Archaeomusicologists must be very jealous of art archaeologists. While we might debate, as we did with the “Kiss,” whether a 15,000-year-old smear of paint was two people or a moose, at least we have a picture. We don’t have any recordings of 30,000-year-old flute or kithara players, and there’s disagreement over whether bits of bone and stone are even instruments. Yet, by the time the great cities of the world built their palaces–in Assyria, Memphis, Knossos, the Indus Valley, or Shaanxi–music was a significant part of the culture. We can see paintings of musicians and dancers and know that there must have been intricate choreography and complex arrangements. Somehow, we got from a couple of holes in a bear femur to Coachella, Egyptian-style.
Continue reading “M is for Music”
