Music
Music is an art of arranging sounds in time through elements of harmony, rhythm, melody and timbre. Music is known as one of the universal cultural aspects of our society. It is an interesting topic for narrative construction, evolutionary theory, and natural philosophy. It is basically predated speech, but how to draw lines between music and speech. Now one may seem to think that music involves pitch, rhythm, and pattern but these aspects are sometimes found in heightened emotions too. Thus each of us has different ways of identifying some sounds like music and speech.
Music is one of the highly valued features of mankind which has been a part of daily life since ancient times. For singing, one important aspect is controlling pitch and scientists have been studying jaw structure and skulls of fossils of early apes to check if they were able to control pitch and vocalize. About a million years ago, scientists discovered that the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals had the vocal anatomy to sing like today’s human beings but it is impossible to know if they knew how to sing.
Archaeological records show that the oldest musical instruments were discovered 40,000 years ago. Rhythmic music may have been created by our ancestors by clapping their hands which can be linked to the first musical instruments. These instruments were mainly made by soft materials such as reeds or woods so there is no evidence of these materials. But we have evidence of bone pipes. Some of the earliest instruments found were of vultures and swans about 39000-43000 years ago.
But how come music has been stuck with us through ages. There are different answers to this and one is dancing. It is believed that when dancing was introduced in the world it was accompanied by music whereas some believe that music led to people first moving in rhythm and then finally discovering the art of dancing. Another reason is music is the biggest source of entertainment, there is music available for every mood. Earlier, music such as drums was also used as a source of communication. Another and the most emphasized reason is that music brings people closer together, it leads to bonding such as between religious groups, or mother-child bonding through lullabies. Music is also found productive for workers who are engaged in repetitive and often boring work, it increases the force of work and increases their efficiency.
Evolution of Music
Music and musical instruments have been evolved along with the evolving species of human beings. Music has always been an integral part of our life, it has known to have healing power and cure diseases but one’s preference in music is highly individualistic. There are multiple genres in music and people appreciate whichever pleases them the most. During the early 1900s, music was all related to jazz and blues, Travelling dance bands used to play popular music at that time. Then during the 1940s, the world was thriving under impressions of WWII but even in this time of despair, different groups of musicians kept entertaining the troops through jazz, swing and big band. The 1960s brought the era of commercialisation of music, it was the time when famous music bands came into play such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Beachboys e.t.c. After about ten years, disco music also came into the field. In the 1980s, music wasn’t limited to auditoriums and stadiums but now music channels such as MTV started broadcasting where the different artists would feature a video on their songs. In this decade, the most successful artist has to be Michael Jackson who presented skilled dancing with creative pop music and soon became a music sensation. Hip-Hop was also accepted as a music genre around this time. With time, many female singers also displayed their art and attracted huge fan bases such as Celine Dion, Mariah Cary and Whitney Houston. The arrival of the 21st century brought massive changes in the music industry and it is believed that music shifted from its traditional approach. During this time, many genres of music were getting introduced every day such as Pop punk, Emo, Dance-Pop, Indie Rock, Contemporary, Hip-Hop, Country e.t.c. With so many genres came different platforms to showcase musical talent. Internet supported a lot of artists and youtube become a popular platform for artists to launch their music and earn huge crowds along with huge revenues. Thus, one can say, music has gone through a whole ride of evolution and it is stopping nowhere, it will only keep evolving and being the driving force for humanity.