Most of music is a mating call.
Don't know if I'd go
that far but for sure a primal function of music across a myriad of species.
Back to the shaman (Or shaman-
ess? My cultural programming is evident):
I think the shaman was born in many places in a relatively short period of time, much the same way it's been said that good ideas also have a curious way of occurring to several different people within a short time.
If the shaman was the "creator" of music, he then may have had the opportunity to wield influence within the tribe.
If the tribe started dancing when he beat on the hollow log, and made it clear they wanted him to keep drumming, perhaps an instinctive grasp of the power in his hands took hold.
I always thought of the shaman myth in terms of the witch doctor who used potions to go into a trance, and revealed messages from the spirits to the tribe when "possessed". But now I think I get where Jim Morrison was coming from a bit more when he called himself a shaman, I think maybe he really got it, that the shaman's original drug was music itself.
So: What's it good for? How does a shamaness earn her keep? Maybe in part by creating ritual music?:
Wake up the tribe in the morning.
Celebrate a successful hunt.
Celebrate a birth.
Mourn a death.
Thank the deity for blessing the tribe.
And yes, of course, the mating dance.
Ceremony.
The roots of religion.
All with the true function of strengthening the tribal ties.
Music becomes a valuable cultural survival asset in a time when speech was still in its most rudimentary phase. (According to my hypothesis.)
Music is still a crucial ingredient of many (if not all?) religions to this day.
Group participation led to invention of more sophisticated instruments beyond the drum. Surely singing, even if only vocalized pitches, was used. Music evolves and becomes more sophisticated even in the earliest stages. Perhaps rudimentary vocalizing itself stimulated the development of speech?
Differing geographies and isolation gave rise to different cultures, shaped by and reflecting their unique environments, each with their own musical instrument evolution, made from whatever local materials were at hand, before the significant exchanges of cultures began to occur:
Woodwinds. Tars (my shorthand for the entire family of stringed instruments built on a resonating body) which seem to be a almost universal theme except for Australia, where aborigines somehow created the unique and prehistoric didgeridoo:
A neat story about a cultural close encounter:
We’re suckers for singular moments that stand out. Floods of information wash over us, and the vast majority of it, for one reason or another, doesn’t stick. Every once in a while, though, somethin…
www.thepoweredit.com
The music itself was the universal language and spiritual connection, capable of rousing deep-seated human emotions, in that story.
So what came first? Woodwind or string? Or simultaneous?
Matters not. The fact is: the human race is naturally inclined to create instruments to further the creation of music.
There's more, about cultural programming, but I gotta break now... I paused my Youtube playlist to post this...
Oh yeah, a slight veer:
So far my only alternative theory about the origin of music is that one day a gang of space bikers had to make an emergency pit stop for repairs on the Third Stone From the Sun, and had a party: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and everything.
Unfortunately, the locals who dared to lurk and watch and listen in the shadows at the fringes became infected with the music virus.
Any takers?
