How music grew, from prehistoric times to the present day — Context and Discussion

language by which people could talk to each other, and there were no books and no pencils. There were no churches then, no homes nor cities, no railroads, no roads in fact, and the oldest and wisest man knew less than a little child of today.

Step by step men fought their way to find means of speaking to each other, to make roads to travel on, houses to live in, fire to cook with, clothes to wear, and ways to amuse themselves.

During this time, over one hundred thousand years ago, called “prehistoric” because it was before events were recorded, men had to struggle with things that no longer bother us.

Picture to yourselves this era when people lived out-of-doors, in mounds and caves surrounded by wild beasts which though dangerous, were not much more so than their human neighbors. Remember, too, that these people did not know that light followed darkness as the day the night; summer followed winter as the seasons come and go; that trees lost their leaves only to bear new ones in the spring, and that lightning and thunder were natural happenings; and so on through the long list of things that we think today perfectly simple, and not in the least frightening.

Because they did not understand these natural things, they thought that trees, sun, rain, animals, birds, fire, birth, death, marriage, the hunt, caves and everything else had good and bad gods in them. In order to please these gods they made prayers to them quite different from our prayers, as they danced, sang and acted the things they wanted to have happen. When a savage wanted sun or wind or rain, he called his tribe together and danced a sun dance, or a wind dance, or a rain dance. When he wanted food, he did not pray for it, but he acted out the hunt in a bear dance. As the centuries went by they continued to use these dances as prayers, and later they became what we call religious rites and festivals. So here you see actually the beginning of what we know as Easter festivals, Christmas with its Christmas tree and mistletoe, spring festivals and Maypole dances with the Queen of the May, Hallowe’en and many other holiday celebrations.

This is how music, dancing, poetry, painting and drama were born. They were the means by which primitive men talked to their gods. This they did, to be sure, very simply, by hand-clapping and foot-stamping, by swaying their bodies to and fro, by shouting, shrieking, grunting, crying and sobbing, and as soon as they knew enough, used language, and repeated the same word over and over again. These movements and sounds were the two roots from which music grew.

If you can call these queer grunts and yells singing, the men of those far-off days must have sung even before they had a language, in fact, it must have been difficult to know whether they were singing or talking. In these cries of joy, sorrow, pain, rage, fear, or revenge, we find another very important reason for the growth of music. These exclamations, however barbaric and rough, were man’s first attempt at expressing his feelings.

We still look upon music as one of the most satisfying ways to show our emotions, and the whole story of music from prehistoric times to the present day is a record of human feelings expressed in rhythm and melody.

Gradually these early men learned to make not only musical instruments, but also the knife for hunting and utensils for cooking. The first step towards a musical instrument was doubtless the striking together of two pieces of wood or stone in repeated beats. The next step was the stretching of the skin of an animal over a hollowed-out stone or tree trunk forming the first drum. Another simple and very useful instrument was made of a gourd (the dried hollow rind of a melon-like fruit) filled with pebbles and shaken like a baby’s rattle.

As early in the story of mankind as this, the love of decoration and need of beauty were so natural that they decorated their bodies, the walls of their caves, and their everyday tools with designs in carving, and in colors made from earth and plants. You can see some of these utensils and knives, even bits of wall pictures, in many of the museums in collections made by men who dig up old cities and sections of the countries where prehistoric peoples lived. These men are called archaeologists, and devote their lives to this work so that we may know what happened before history began.