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This is very cool. But calling it the "oldest song" is a bit of a stretch. Maybe one could call it the "oldest song in history", since it is the oldest song we

This is very cool. But calling it the "oldest song" is a bit of a stretch. Maybe one could call it the "oldest song in history", since it is the oldest song we have found written down, but certainly not the oldest song of all time. At least according to a Netflix documentary on India, there are some brahmins outside Kerala that have been chanting the same song since before the invention of speech. The claim is that the chant makes no sense in any linguistic or even musical tradition and is more closely related to birdsong, indicating a pre-oral genesis. I think this particular example is a bit far-fetched, but it's not outside the realm of possibility for an older, oral-tradition song to have survived, in some form, to the present day.

danans 8y ago
> At least according to a Netflix documentary on India, there are some brahmins outside Kerala that have been chanting the same song since before the invention of speech. The claim is that the chant makes no sense in any linguistic or even musical tradition and is more closely related to birdsong, indicating a pre-oral genesis. That's Michael Wood's documentary about India if I recall correctly. However, the implication of that segment was not that it represents a pre-speech musical pattern, but rather that contains uninterpretable elements that might be onomanopaeic. The first modern humans to arrive in India arrived speaking languages as fully developed as any we have today, as they diverged from the same fully verbal Africans as everyone else in the world. EDIT: Here is an answer from the series' website where Wood himself admits that they sacrificed clarity for drama's sake in their description: http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/ask/answers_2.html#q3 http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/ask/answers_2.html#q3 What makes the Kerala birdsong chanting unusual is that it is systematic despite having no obvious denotative meaning, unlike the rest of Vedic hymns which directly rendered in the Vedic language [1]. Also, it only occurs in Kerala. Vedic recitation elsewhere in India does not include the birdsong element - rather it contains only the Vedic language hymns. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit
- cobbzilla 8y ago
  Thanks -- yes it was the Michael Wood documentary I was thinking of. I was always a bit skeptical about that claim; this is some great background. I appreciated the candid explanation by Wood - there is definitely something curious/mysterious about those hymns, regardless of origin.
- jaldhar 8y ago
  That’s not completely true. There are wordless melodies associated with Samavedic recitation all over India. For instance my Guruji knew a particular set and we are Gujarati Brahmanas. However in Kerala they have a specific Shakha of the Sama Veda (“branch” i.e. school of recitation) which is unique. The idea that any of this is “pre-speech” sacrifices clarity to the point of utter misinformation.
  - danans 8y ago
    That's a fair point. After all many Vedic recitations are replete with syllables whose purpose is strictly musical/mystical and without concrete meaning, the most famous being of course "AUM", but also the sequence "shrim, hrim, klim, glaum, gam". If you peruse the book that Michael Wood cites in that comment, you'll find many other Vedic examples of meaningless musical particles like "ha bu" and "bham bham". Conversely, in the Indian pakhawaj drum composition recitation system (of much more recent vintage than Vedic chanting), there is a form called Paran where the opposite takes place: The semantically meaningless, but rhythmically sophisticated patterns of drum syllables are overlayed and interspersed with phonologically and rhythmically similar words drawn from Sanskrit, usually descriptions of a deity. The words in this case play second fiddle to the structure of the musical composition. Here is an example: https://youtu.be/hJg4NOCKTZI?t=443 https://youtu.be/hJg4NOCKTZI?t=443 The Michael Wood documentary, while overall pretty decent, unnecessarily exoticizes it in the example of the Kerala Brahmins, but you see very similar phenomena (melodic meaningless syllables) in popular and folk music around the world today, from India to Motown. In fact, there's a vocal technique from Jazz called scat-singing, that exclusively uses meaningless syllables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing
- wahern 8y ago
  > they diverged from the same fully verbal Africans as everyone else in the world As far as I understand, it's believed that humans had developed articulated speech before the first out-of-Africa migration because it's assumed that our capacity for articulated speech 1) largely preceded or at least co-evolved with our physiology for speech and 2) preceded or at least co-evolved with our extraordinary social behaviors--extraordinary cooperation and coordination beyond kin groups, unlike anything else in the animal kingdom. But there's no solid evidence for this presumption about the order of events. There's a very compelling hypothesis that says that humans developed the physiology for non-verbal speech (i.e. singing, chanting) and developed a highly cooperative and complex social structure before verbal speech. That is, coordinated behavior and singing physiology (choral singing) co-evolved, trailed by higher-order thought and finally articulated speech. Slightly more radical, a corollary hypothesis is that the last piece of the puzzle, articulated speech, back-migrated from East Asia. See "Who Asked the First Question: The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech" by Joseph Jordania. Most compelling to me is that it's the first model I've seen that can explain the emergence of human social cooperation within the confines of the traditional Darwinian genetic model. Specifically, it solves the free-rider problem as in this model those who weren't genetically inclined to cooperate were immediately killed by predators. The TL;DR of the hypothesis is that when humans descended onto the savannah a method of hunting, scavenging, and defense emerged that relied on coordinated rhythmic dancing and vocalization to intimidate predators. Those who couldn't or didn't physically and psychologically coordinate, instinctively, with the group were, much like a young or sick herd animal, more likely to be killed, especially given that their novel hunting and scavenging behaviors regularly put them in direct conflict with predators. There was no easy way avoid this selective pressure--either to fake it or silently hide in the group--beyond adopting the genetic traits that ungirded instinctive cooperation and selflessness. The corollary hypothesis can be relatively easily tested (but hasn't, yet) and is based on the observation that articulation problems, such as stuttering, often disappear when singing, suggesting that articulated speech is relatively recent as compared to even highly complex vocalization. Furthermore, initial data suggests that articulation issues are most prevalent in Africa and Europe, and least prevalent in East Asia. Europeans and Africans are quite genetically close, while East Asians are the most distant. Similarly, choral singing is least prevalent (today and in recent history) in East Asia, which would be consistent if the emergence of articulated speech diminished the utility of choral singing in supporting cooperative behavior.
- ramgorur 8y ago
  This comment reminds me of siberian/slavic shaman music, the whole musical genre is about mimicking different animal sounds. Very strange. https://youtu.be/YeAp1fPt8Eg?t=31 https://youtu.be/YeAp1fPt8Eg?t=31
russdill 8y ago
Song of Theseus?
vertexFarm 8y ago
Definitely. Music obviously predates our species entirely. I mean birds? I guess it depends on how you want to define music, like if it needs intent of some kind. Which would be impossible to prove in that case.

danans 8y ago

> At least according to a Netflix documentary on India, there are some brahmins outside Kerala that have been chanting the same song since before the invention of speech. The claim is that the chant makes no sense in any linguistic or even musical tradition and is more closely related to birdsong, indicating a pre-oral genesis. That's Michael Wood's documentary about India if I recall correctly. However, the implication of that segment was not that it represents a pre-speech musical pattern, but rather that contains uninterpretable elements that might be onomanopaeic. The first modern humans to arrive in India arrived speaking languages as fully developed as any we have today, as they diverged from the same fully verbal Africans as everyone else in the world. EDIT: Here is an answer from the series' website where Wood himself admits that they sacrificed clarity for drama's sake in their description: http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/ask/answers_2.html#q3 http://www.pbs.org/thestoryofindia/ask/answers_2.html#q3 What makes the Kerala birdsong chanting unusual is that it is systematic despite having no obvious denotative meaning, unlike the rest of Vedic hymns which directly rendered in the Vedic language [1]. Also, it only occurs in Kerala. Vedic recitation elsewhere in India does not include the birdsong element - rather it contains only the Vedic language hymns. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Sanskrit

cobbzilla 8y ago
Thanks -- yes it was the Michael Wood documentary I was thinking of. I was always a bit skeptical about that claim; this is some great background. I appreciated the candid explanation by Wood - there is definitely something curious/mysterious about those hymns, regardless of origin.
jaldhar 8y ago
That’s not completely true. There are wordless melodies associated with Samavedic recitation all over India. For instance my Guruji knew a particular set and we are Gujarati Brahmanas. However in Kerala they have a specific Shakha of the Sama Veda (“branch” i.e. school of recitation) which is unique. The idea that any of this is “pre-speech” sacrifices clarity to the point of utter misinformation.
- danans 8y ago
  That's a fair point. After all many Vedic recitations are replete with syllables whose purpose is strictly musical/mystical and without concrete meaning, the most famous being of course "AUM", but also the sequence "shrim, hrim, klim, glaum, gam". If you peruse the book that Michael Wood cites in that comment, you'll find many other Vedic examples of meaningless musical particles like "ha bu" and "bham bham". Conversely, in the Indian pakhawaj drum composition recitation system (of much more recent vintage than Vedic chanting), there is a form called Paran where the opposite takes place: The semantically meaningless, but rhythmically sophisticated patterns of drum syllables are overlayed and interspersed with phonologically and rhythmically similar words drawn from Sanskrit, usually descriptions of a deity. The words in this case play second fiddle to the structure of the musical composition. Here is an example: https://youtu.be/hJg4NOCKTZI?t=443 https://youtu.be/hJg4NOCKTZI?t=443 The Michael Wood documentary, while overall pretty decent, unnecessarily exoticizes it in the example of the Kerala Brahmins, but you see very similar phenomena (melodic meaningless syllables) in popular and folk music around the world today, from India to Motown. In fact, there's a vocal technique from Jazz called scat-singing, that exclusively uses meaningless syllables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scat_singing
wahern 8y ago
> they diverged from the same fully verbal Africans as everyone else in the world As far as I understand, it's believed that humans had developed articulated speech before the first out-of-Africa migration because it's assumed that our capacity for articulated speech 1) largely preceded or at least co-evolved with our physiology for speech and 2) preceded or at least co-evolved with our extraordinary social behaviors--extraordinary cooperation and coordination beyond kin groups, unlike anything else in the animal kingdom. But there's no solid evidence for this presumption about the order of events. There's a very compelling hypothesis that says that humans developed the physiology for non-verbal speech (i.e. singing, chanting) and developed a highly cooperative and complex social structure before verbal speech. That is, coordinated behavior and singing physiology (choral singing) co-evolved, trailed by higher-order thought and finally articulated speech. Slightly more radical, a corollary hypothesis is that the last piece of the puzzle, articulated speech, back-migrated from East Asia. See "Who Asked the First Question: The Origins of Human Choral Singing, Intelligence, Language and Speech" by Joseph Jordania. Most compelling to me is that it's the first model I've seen that can explain the emergence of human social cooperation within the confines of the traditional Darwinian genetic model. Specifically, it solves the free-rider problem as in this model those who weren't genetically inclined to cooperate were immediately killed by predators. The TL;DR of the hypothesis is that when humans descended onto the savannah a method of hunting, scavenging, and defense emerged that relied on coordinated rhythmic dancing and vocalization to intimidate predators. Those who couldn't or didn't physically and psychologically coordinate, instinctively, with the group were, much like a young or sick herd animal, more likely to be killed, especially given that their novel hunting and scavenging behaviors regularly put them in direct conflict with predators. There was no easy way avoid this selective pressure--either to fake it or silently hide in the group--beyond adopting the genetic traits that ungirded instinctive cooperation and selflessness. The corollary hypothesis can be relatively easily tested (but hasn't, yet) and is based on the observation that articulation problems, such as stuttering, often disappear when singing, suggesting that articulated speech is relatively recent as compared to even highly complex vocalization. Furthermore, initial data suggests that articulation issues are most prevalent in Africa and Europe, and least prevalent in East Asia. Europeans and Africans are quite genetically close, while East Asians are the most distant. Similarly, choral singing is least prevalent (today and in recent history) in East Asia, which would be consistent if the emergence of articulated speech diminished the utility of choral singing in supporting cooperative behavior.
ramgorur 8y ago
This comment reminds me of siberian/slavic shaman music, the whole musical genre is about mimicking different animal sounds. Very strange. https://youtu.be/YeAp1fPt8Eg?t=31 https://youtu.be/YeAp1fPt8Eg?t=31

russdill 8y ago

Song of Theseus?

vertexFarm 8y ago

Definitely. Music obviously predates our species entirely. I mean birds? I guess it depends on how you want to define music, like if it needs intent of some kind. Which would be impossible to prove in that case.