This weekend, enjoy this lovely rendition of “Beauty and the Beast” on a Harp by a very talented musician. And reflect on the history of music.
Due to the overwhelming preponderance of evidence, Eurocentric narratives thankfully do not claim origin of music in Greece or Babylon, but admit that it arose “independently” in various parts of the ancient world, including in India, China, Greece, Egypt.
From birdsong-mimicry to hooting calls of hunters, very early humans must have experimented with atonal music first. Evidence of drummers and dancing from 35,000 year old rock art in Bhimbetka show that rhythmic dances and instruments too made an early appearance in human deep-history, and seen in many ancient cultures.
40,000 year old chewed bones from a cave in Germany led to Eurocentric claims that it was evidence of an early flute, but this is much disputed.
8000 year old hollow bird bones fashioned into 7 and 8 holed flutes have been discovered from a musician’s grave in China, indisputably showing instrumental music at that early age.
As with the usual culprits and distorted Indian history, despite early versions of Veena/Lyre and flutes described in the Rg Veda, these have been time-commandeered by Max Muller to post-1200 BCE period, effectively making them posterior to Mesopotamian music.
Archaeological evidence from Harappa shows clay flute (hidden in a vault in a UK museum), several spindles similar to the tension-tuning spindles seen in modern Veena and Thampura, and symbols that resemble bow-Harp and drummers. See also works by Shail Vyas.
Egyptian tombs show the Lyre, as also Mycenean Greece in the 1500 BCE period. An Old Babylonian Cuneiform tablet of a similar period was claimed by a researcher as the earliest written music, claimed to be in the later Greek Lydian scale (Kalyani Raaga). But these are expeditious reconstructions mapping to a Eurocentric narrative that shows Greek heritage from Babylon — nobody has a clue what the tuning and notes would have sounded like.
For that matter, as I highlight in my talks, nobody has explained why music has become standardized into the 7 notes or 12 semitones, whether in India, Greece, or China. Only a common origin can explain this standardization.
Very ancient Harappa and hitherto less-researched southern Indian marine trade (see my post on Poom Puhar) to Ancient China, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, and large-scale migrations out of India in 2000 BCE would have been the periods of communication of a standardized music. We can claim this because of evidence of musical notes in the Chandogya Upanishad and several other works that show a 3-tone to 5-tone to 7-tone scale, leading to 12 semitones and 22 shrutis. The antiquity of Vedic works stems from the astronomical phenomena contained therein. The origins of this musical system go back to the musical chanting of the Sama Veda, and expounded at length in later texts such as Natyasastra.
That leads us back to the Harp. References to musical instruments are in Rg & Sama Veda, the Brahmanas and Upanishads. The early Veena (Rudra & Saraswati) gave way to the ancient Lyre and Harp and several other stringed instruments, including modern string instruments such as the Violin and Guitar. The earlier forms of Harp have vanished in India, but survived in the West. Instruments are seen in ancient temple sculptures thru recent times, and ornately at Hoysaleshwara temple in Halebid.
We can re-trace the journey of the Harp, shorn of Eurocentric lenses & moorings. From ancient Veena came the Lyre and Harp, whose knowledge spread to Babylon and Egypt around 1800 BCE (following the out-of-India migrations of 2000 BCE). From the Mesopotamian Hittites and Mittanis and later Babylonians it spread to the Mycenaean Greeks (~1300 BCE), to the later Greek and Roman periods (~400 BCE — 400 CE), popularized over the Roman Empire regions. In the 1700s-1800s it enjoyed resurgence with new innovations, and continues in the shadow of the Guitar today in popular music.
Some ask why Indians who made stupendous advances over time in Raaga melodic music, failed to develop harmony — which is common in classical and modern Western music but almost completely absent in Indian music. Early evolution of harmony can be inferred in the sympathetic scaffolding drone of the Thampura, with the sa-pa-Sa-Pa. In fact, Pythagorean music led to singing with octave separation notes — similar to the Thampura’s sa-Sa and pa-Pa), a precursor to polytonic music. The modern Veena has fretless strings on the side that can — if desired — be tuned to a root-chord (an effect seen for example in the Veena Maestro, Chitti Babu’s album, “Wedding Bells”).
Over a long period of time, Western music developed in the melodic (diatonic and chromatic) scales (basic forms of Raagas). Similar to Sama Vedic Indian music, Western music was initially for liturgical purposes, leading to chanting in the Byzantine Christian monasteries. Some claim that this led to polytonic chanting around the year 1000 CE. But most evidence points to 1600s onward when harmonies were explored in Western music by classical composers, leading to great richness in that tradition today.
Today with music streaming from all sorts of services, we should pause and ask — how did we get here over many thousands of years? Answering that question will lead to a story of mankind itself — the story of us.