I know this question is about music but I’m asking it as more of a cultural issue than musical so I’m posting in GQ instead of CS. Mods please move if you deem it necessary.
So here’s my question: Are there, or have there ever been any societies without music? I listen to a lot of “world music” and am fascinated with the diversity of styles and instruments. And it got me thinking that every culture must have some form of music. Even if it is just singing, whistling, humming, or beating on a hollow log. It’s just human nature, right? Trying to prove myself wrong (hey, isn’t that what science is all about?) I thought maybe… just maybe… Eskimos. :dubious: Any thoughts from wise folk on SDMB?
There is a theory that there are certain Cultural Universals that every human society has in common. It’s actually quite a long list, and music is one of them.
Well, here’s a recent Guardian articla about a ban on music in northern Mali.
Not quite an answer, but…
I am someone who loves all kinds of “ethnic” music, from the polyrhythms of Pygmies to the chants of Tuvan monks. I really feel something deep in these kinds of music – in early Western music, too, like Byzantine liturgical song.
So, I was a bit disappointed to find out that pretty much all cultures go through a predictable series of stages in musical development, paralleling their social, technological, and economic development (kin-based to tribes to cheifdoms, etc… The usual anthropological stuff, which is still a good general descriptive model, even with all the caveats and exceptions and hegemonic academic essentializing.)
So, say, the simple drumbeat of certain Precolumbian Amerindian groups is followed by simple chants, slightly more complex drumming, two-toned flutes of some kind… Things get more varied and unpredictable after that, but those first stages are surprisingly universal. (Even the Late Bronze Age “West” went through something similar, IIRC, though records are very sketchy.)
So a reasonable corollary to this would be that, extrapolating back before those first drumbeats, NO independently developed culture had music (even though they were physically capable of singing).
Your question might then be framed, "are there any cultures today who identify so strongly with that part of their culture which existed before contact with the “West”, AND that contact occurred when they were still in, at most, the “simple drumbeat” stage, that we could say that their culture “lacks music”?
I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. Are there any indigenous Tasmanians around anymore?
Wow, fascinating! Do you have any reading you could recommend?
[Totally irrelevant]
Jacques Brel says there are people without music:
Bien sûr il y a les guerres d’Irlande
Et les peuplades sans musique
Bien sûr tout ce manque de tendre
[…]
Mais voir un ami pleurer
Very loose translation:
Of course, there are the wars of Ireland,
And the people without music
Of course there is a lack of tenderness
[…]
- But to see a friend cry
But I rather doubt Brel is a very good source for anything at all 
[/Totally irrelevant]
They’re trying to physically destroy Tinariwen. The band was betrayed by their former friend who became a leader in the coup there. Mali has rich musical traditions and is the homeland of our minor-pentatonic-based blues scale. So many world-renowned musicians come from Mali.
I wouldn’t say so: Inuit Throat Singing: Kathy Keknek and Janet Aglukkaq (long) - YouTube
It’s quite possible that rhythmic drumming preceded language. Maybe even with some humming to go along with it.
There are probably some monastic groups that have been around for centuries that don’t permit music.
True. That would put my hypothesized date(s) way back in time. But I’m assuming the OP wouldn’t call that “music” – I could be wrong.
That Neolithic ocarina is interesting, though.
From the OP:
Emphasis added.
There may, but they don’t form a culture all by their lonesome. And at least in the RCC church, monks’ vows of silence rarely if ever include liturgical services (including singing at them) - they include every other aspect of life but not that one; note that cloistered monasteries always have some brothers/sisters (usually two) whose job consists of communicating with “the outside world”, so even if there was a monastery of that kind where every single monk/nun had a vow of total silence, there would be two people who wouldn’t be subject to it.
hijack: The sign language used in one of those monasteries for everything from gardening instructions to theological discussion formed the basis for Spanish Sign Language, when one of the monks had the idea to start a school for deaf-mutes.
I can’t think of any one exact source at the moment, but my impression about this comes from having read various pieces by Bruno Nettl, Gerhard Kubik, liner notes to CDs produced by CONACULTA (Mexico’s Smithsonian equivalent, sort of), and entries in the Grove Dictionary.
John Mace – Thanks for highlighting the OP’s words – my mistake. Well, then, I’d have to say that, by that definition, it’s extremely unlikely that any human culture lacks music, by any reasonable definition of “human” (or “culture”). One-third of this book of essays on the origins of music is about how close certain non-human animals come to “making music”, and it’s pretty darned close, depending on your criteria of course.
Lots of good information and cool links. (Yay Eskimoes!) And the situation in Mali is terrifying. The oppression of music in a country with such a rich musical heritage is criminal. Long live Ali Farka Toure!
Just asking: Did the Puritans permit music? Of course, not allowing music because it offends some people that some others are enjoying something is not the same as not wanting music.
USA, in the 60’s and 70’s?
On the contrary, he’s a great source for a lot of things.
Only the drum, trumpet, and Jew’s harp were permitted in 17th century Massachusetts under Puritan rule.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/marshall/country/country-III-30.html
Cite, sorry, phone post