History Of Singing

The History of Song
The human voice is the original musical instrument. Singing is such a natural activity
that there isn’t a single culture discovered that does not sing. The earliest musical
sounds people made were likely imitations of sounds found in nature. As human
cultures evolved, music came to play an important part in religious rituals,
celebrations, and as a lyrical record of events. This “folk music” expressed the life of
its community and was usually anonymous, a collective artifact of the culture that
created it.

“Art music,” or music composed as artistic expression, did not emerge until later.
The first cultures to create music for art’s sake were probably located in early
Mesopotamia. These early cultures even had professional musicians, and the
earliest noted music on record is a Sumerian hymn dated before 800 B.C.E.
The Egyptians, Greeks, and Jewish people all valued music deeply and created
highly developed musical cultures. But it was Christianity, under the Roman Catholic
Church, that came to dominate the next thirteen centuries of Western music. The
original plainchant style (also known as Gregorian chant) gave way to polyphony
(music with more than one melodic part) in the ninth century. By the beginning of the
1600s, the theater had emerged as a new secular venue for music, and the grand
age of opera began.

Although opera seems outdated to us today, it was enormously popular for centuries.
Everyone went to the opera—to see their friends, to hang out, to be seen, to make
business deals, to eat … and sometimes to actually watch it. Composers wrote
frantically. New singers with the ability to sing ever-more-difficult parts were sought.
From Spain came the first castrati, or adult men who’d had their testicles removed
before puberty could change their voices. The beginning of the eighteenth century
saw the first divas, as female sopranos claimed their place as the darlings of the
stage.

It wasn’t until after the First World War that popular music would surge in
significance. As classical styles became less accessible and less attractive to
modern audiences, the public turned to jazz, blues, and swing. People no longer
had to go to the opera or concert hall to listen to music, as technology such as the
phonograph and the wireless radio brought music into the home. Electronic
amplification enabled singers to use a more natural, conversational singing style.
Hollywood, taking its lead from Broadway, began churning out musicals with gusto.
By the middle of the century, the appearance of a singer became all important,
especially as television began broadcasting performances. Les Paul’s invention of
the electric guitar after the Second World War prepared the ground for the
development of rock and roll.

Today, popular music is everywhere: on the street, in the buses, in homes, in
workplaces. There are few places you can go without hearing music. Live
performances, in venues ranging from concert halls to local bars, are accessible for

most people. The proliferation of burned CDs and songs in the easily-downloadable
MP3 file format have enabled a wide variety of international musical styles, sounds,
and genres to flourish and find niche audiences.

Making your own music has never been easier. Microphones, amplifiers, keyboards,
and mixing equipment are easily available in models for almost every budget level.
Karaoke bars give anyone a chance to try out their singing skills in front of an
audience, while competitions like American Idol encourage aspiring vocal artists to
dream that they can be a pop star.

Is there any better time to be learning to sing than right now? (If you were living in
the Middle Ages you might be asked to “intone through your nose,” or sing with a
forced nasal tone!) So enjoy the benefits of the modern world you live in, and flip the
page to learn about the science of song.