Without exception, different human cultures can produce some form of music. However, there seems to be a big difference between these music cultures. From Italian opera to Croatian klapa to Tuva guttural singing, the various rhythms, melody, dynamics and harmony, etc., highlight the different civilizations around the world. Creative diversity.
Just like language, music is ubiquitous in humans, but it does not exist in even the closest non-human relatives, which is at least incomprehensible to us. But music is different from the language in that it has no obvious adaptive function, which prompts scientists who study music to wonder what force helped music emerge in the first place. Is music an evolutionary adaptation, or is it purely a human invention?
The origin of music in human society can be traced back to very ancient prehistoric times. Before humans had produced language, they already knew how to express their meanings and feelings by using the level, strength, and weakness of the voice. With the development of human labour, chants for unifying labour rhythms and shouts for communicating information between each other have gradually emerged. This is the prototype of the most primitive music; when people celebrate the harvest and share the fruits of labour, they often beat stone and wooden tools to express Joy and other emotions.
Ancient Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates) is one of the important cradles of human culture. At that time, the fertile Mesopotamia region (in the area of Iran and Iraq today) had relatively developed music in the fourth millennium BC. At that time, the Sumerians living in this area already had a harp-like instrument and several orchestral instruments. Professional singers and larger bands have been produced in the court at that time. Later, these more advanced music cultures gradually spread to ancient countries such as Egypt, Greece, India, and China, and further developed in different forms and national flavours in these regions. Although the development of music in different ethnic groups and regions is not the same, its basic development direction is gradually shifting.
When listening to music, do we need to know the history of music? Do we need to do a lyrics analysis? Do we need to learn knowledge to understand the structure of music? Do these questions finally make us feel the music more realistically? Without exception, as long as people talk about music, they are all cultures—historical culture, language culture, and music culture. These have nothing to do with the essence of music.
From an evolutionary point of view, our ancestors worked hard to distinguish regular vibrations. These periodic and regular vibrations heralded changes in the environment, perhaps because the danger was imminent and could escape their lives, or perhaps the prey brought new things. Over time, this regular vibration establishes a deep connection with our nerve impulses and emotions such as fear and happiness. Music has allowed humans to establish better communication with the environment in the evolutionary choice, accompanied by language. The development of music has also enabled better communication between human clusters and social animals. When humans began to live in a relatively safe environment, music became independent as an art form, allowing us to reproduce the emotional experience of danger and surprise.
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