As a musician who has traveled from the bushy hills to the grandest cathedrals, I find orchestrated sound to be one of the most captivating medians. Music is said to “Sooth the Savage Breast.” This saying is fascinating. Even though music is not considered a language by some, music is a language because it can be used to communicate and it is understood world wide.
Can music be understood by the undeveloped mind? Is the language of music something that can create feelings? Does music play a role in all our lives universally? These are some of the questions that we are going to touch on in this venture of musical expansion.
Music is not just an art played or performed in jest but a language with which to communicate and to spread a message. Ani Patel (2007) Author of Language, music, syntax and the brain states a couple of facts: “First, it’s universal, like language; secondly, it occurs in every human culture that we know of and thirdly it goes far back into human history”. Music is a part of every human being. From birth melodies are being hummed or sung to us. According to the era or generation in which you were brought up, a love for collective sound is developed. Have you ever listened to a song being sung in a foreign language and find yourself tapping your feet to the beat? This is the power of music. Music is defined as: “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.” (Merriam-Webster online Dictionary)
According to archaeological records, the oldest musical instruments are said to be around 40,000 years old, and it wouldn’t be surprising to discover older ones than that. Patel (2007). Some have said, and I agree, that the human body with it’s heart beat was the first musical instrument. Therefore, as long as man has been in existence there has been a musical instrument. Drums have been beaten and bells have been rung to warn and to gather people from some of the first civilizations. With this human connection, music can be understood and shared all across the world without saying a word.
Sep
30
