The origins of music: making noises

Many animals can produce a few noises to communicate; we were originally no different, though we eventually discovered how to develop them into complex language. But other animals do not make noise unless it is for vital purposes, such as proclaiming territory, in association with mating, or for mother – offspring bonding; otherwise, an animal's behaviour is naturally selected ‘not to make a noise’. Both as hunter and hunted, and we were both, the animal which makes least noise and has the most acute hearing survives and succeeds (what a fine text for this noise-ridden age).

When we became toolmakers, making noise was an inevitable part of operations such as shaping flint. We don't know when we got the idea that we could make noises using artefacts as a distinct action, but it is unlikely that we did so simply for the sensation of hearing them unless and until we were in a sufficiently advanced self-protecting community that it was not disadvantageous. It pre-supposes either a static community or a well-organised large nomadic one; it is unlikely that even the simplest of noise-making for pleasure occurred earlier than about 15,000 years ago, by which time primitive language was developed (see e.g. Boughley, 1975, Clark, 1969). Early experimenters with noise may have realised practical uses for their discoveries, so that when artefacts are found which could have been used to make noise, we should not automatically assume that they had anything to do with music. An obvious use is to signal. The cacophony which people made to frighten away animals or evil spirits was hardly music either.

Although one assumes that percussive sound was the earliest form of music, making noise randomly communicates nothing, and the idea of making it regularly had to come from somewhere. For reasons given in Chapter 11, it may have originated with the noise of ornaments worn during primitive group movements. It was certainly invented independently in several different cultures, and developed in some to a high level of sophistication.