These were, first of all, the cries of the human voice,
expressive of fear and need and joy--at once direct outpourings of
basic emotions and signals to one's fellows, to help, to satisfy, and
to sympathize. In the voice nature provided man with a direct and
immediate instrument for the expression and communication of himself
through sound. Then, perhaps by accident, man discovered that he could
make sounds in other ways, through materials separate from his body,
and so he constructed drums and cymbals and gongs; and by means of
these, too, he communicated his needs and stimulated himself to rage
and excitement--and his enemy to fear--in war dance and battle rush.
And in doing this he was imitating nature, whose noises, exciting and
terrifying, he had long known: the clap of thunder, the whistle of the
wind, the roar of the waves, the crackling of burning wood, the crash
of fallen and breaking things.
Out of unbeautiful noise sprang beautiful music. Men discovered that
through the voice they could make not only expressive noises, but also
pleasant tones; they found, perhaps by accident, that they could do
much the same thing with reeds and strings; they observed that when
they beat their drums at regular intervals to mark the motion of the
dance, they not only danced together more easily, but also experienced
joy in the very sounds they made; or that when they threshed the corn
with rhythmic strokes or rowed a boat in rhythmic unison, their task
was lightened and their wearied attention distracted to the pleasure
of their noise.
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