The Music of Primitive Peoples

It is always hard for anyone to imagine a world completely different from the one in which he has been brought up.  All of us in Europe today take it for granted that we shall be surrounded by music of all kinds: at school, in church, in the cinema, on radio and television in the home; music on all kinds of instruments, using melody and harmony, and complicated rhythms and musical forms.  Yet it has taken many centuries for all these aspects of music to be built up, and it is worthwhile trying to get an imaginative picture of early civilizations, and realizing what sort of music surrounded the lives of people who lived in those times.  For always there was music, no matter how primitive the people, and it has always taken a large part in people's lives, however strange some of it may seem to us today.

Television and the cinema have made most of us acquainted with the music making of primitive peoples, as seen and heard on the films which explorers have brought back from Africa or aboriginal Australia.  The music may seem queer to us.  It is not based on our scales, does not use our harmonies or our kinds of musical instruments, and it seems to us to be very monotonous, as it repeats the same phrase over and over again.  But obviously it gives great pleasure to the people who make it, just as ours does to us in Europe.  There must have been a time when music similar to this was the only kind to be heard in the world.