musical complexity is not easily measured and subject to biases brought
about by a culture that worships complexity) as “the world’s simplest
style.”It consists of songs that have a short phrase repeated several or
many times,with minor variations,using three or four pitches within a
range of a fifth.This kind of music is interestingly widespread.
It appears to have been the only style,or the principal style,of some
peoples living in widely separated isolated areas of the world.In addi-
tion,it is found in societies whose music is otherwise more complex,and
here it is often relegated to the accompaniment of children’s games,to
games generally,and to obsolete rituals.We have reason to believe that
it is old material,associated as it is with social contexts once central to
the culture but overtaken by more complex music.Examples may be
heard in recordings of songs of the Vedda of Sri Lanka recorded as early
as 1910,songs of the “last wild Indian,”Ishi,last surviving member of the
Yahi tribe,music of certain Pacific islands such as Mangareva,in chil-
dren’s ditties of European and other societies,as well as certain pre-
Christian ritual songs preserved in European folk cultures.
It is tempting to say this music is widespread,its geographic distribu-
tion in isolated areas suggests age,its association with social contexts no
longer central makes it archaic,and so obviously this is what the earli-
est music of humans was like.Perhaps so.But there are also reasons to
be skeptical.
Whereas these kinds of music,because of their similarity,their well-
nigh universal distribution,and their simplicity,appear to provide the
best guide available to the sounds of the earliest human music,let me
mention some caveats.First,are they really so similar? For one thing,we
who come from a conventional background in Western music tend to
privilege melodic movement and to give particular emphasis to intervals.
The pieces are quite different from each other in rhythm and also in
other ways—singing style or timbre,dynamics,and perhaps much else.
The point is that the similarity of these pieces,their unity of style,is based
on one group of interrelated features involving intervals,range,and
form:few intervals,small range,and short repeated lines or stanzas.Actu-
ally,music with few pitches but longer and more complex forms is found
in folk music of Eastern Europe,in liturgical chants and some instru-
mental music.In other words,a number of the characteristic traits of the
world’s simplest music are also found in otherwise musically more
complex environments.This is true of some of the Romanian Christmas
carols recorded before World War II by Béla Bartòk.
The other thing that holds these simplest musical examples together
is form,the sectioning and relationships between sections:a short line
or stanza repeated and varied lightly.This kind of form is found in
many other cultures and repertories,from complex African tribal
music to south Slavic epics to modern urban minimalist music,from469 An Ethnomusicologist Contemplates Musical Universals