old age fundamentalism/mostly for

[Guest guest]

I wouldn't venture into that realm you all are conjuring. However, as a teacher of history (albeit History of Theatre), there do seem to be some cultural and/or intellectual beliefs and actions that recur over time and space and place. My students are always surprised at how little human nature changes.

That said, this is mostly for .

, you wrote:

One thing I'm mindful of these days, (oddly the result of my study of

proto-music,) is that as you step back in time, eventually, all the bright

ideas disappear completely. This happens somewhere between 50-100,000

years ago.<<

"Proto-music" you say. In a recent issue of Archaeology mag there's a brief but interesting article about the "new" pursuit of musical archaeology, the finding of early music-making -- the chime sounds of flint spear tips when struck, for instance. You might find it as interesting as I did.

Cheers to all.

phoebe

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[Guest guest]

Phoebe, all,

Nice to hear from you, Phoebe.

I'm all over the development of music. I just discovered that my program

pages at Lakewood Public Library have been removed, so I'm going to

resurrect them on my web site. The gist of those programs (given in 2006)

was to meld a recorded musical program with the participant's experiential

encounter with the music. The underlying hypothesis was not to educate an

audience about the origins of music, but, rather, to find out what

immersion in a simulcra of an ancient sound world would evoke.

For example, since there aren't recordings prior to the beginning of the

20th century, to approximate the sound world of ancient Africa, the

program utilized the field recordings of the San and Khoi of the Kalahari.

Their musical culture has sustained its signal music for, perhaps, 5,000

years. And, their 'anthropological' antecedents have occupied the Kalahari

as hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years.

I also did a program on the spike fiddle and proto-string instruments.

Again, using primitive musics discoverable in folkloric byways of Central

Asia. (When I resurrect the web pages, I'll provide downloads of the

musical programs.)

Incredibly, the participant's responses were very rich and some of them

articulated archetypal data. (See the ps for more info.)

***

Your response evoked my wondering about proto-theatre. How did small

groups present narrative material to each other when it became clear

enough that this material could be re-represented and played over?

With music, the consideration of proto-music proceeds as a matter of

hypothesizing about the utility of sound as a form of communication. So,

for example, one idea suggests that proto-musical sound production may be

an antecedent of language; melody before grunt if you will!

***

It is curious to consider that this " backing up " through history to points

where " symbol " disappears--at least in the material record--weighs on the

paradoxical interplay between, for example, a regard of a conception of

the collective unconscious, and, the organizing factors given and

theorized by evolutionary anthropology.

(This is one reason why I have waggishly remarked here that Jung is

seemingly a 19th century figure.)

Of course there is a literature about the origins of cognitive capability

able to extract " symbol " as a representation of repeated patterns. Etc..

***

Phoebe, how do you present the proto-theatre as historical development?

regards,

ps.

delightful read:

Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals

Ian Cross:

Music and social being

http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/~ic108/PDF/Mus_Aust_paper06.pdf

Music, Cognition, Culture, and Evolution

http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~marksch/psyc56/Readings/Cross%202001.pdf

technical:

The Evolution of Music in Comparative Perspective

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~wtsf/downloads/Fitch2005Music.pdf

Wallin et al, The Origins of Music (essential book)

Iain Morely, The Evolutionary Origins and Archaeology of Music

http://www.dar.cam.ac.uk/dcrr/dcrr002.pdf (277 pages)

[Guest guest]

-thanks for these references - i'd really like to see your site when it's up..-- As within, so without~ Alice O. HowellAll joy in the world has come from wishing happiness for others.

All the suffering in the world has come from wanting pleasure for oneself.~Shantideva (7th. c. CE)A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: one to fear and sorrow, real poverty~e Hume