Music is everywhere in our lives. You can hear music when you turn on the TV or radio. You can hear music when you go to concert halls, cinemas, dance halls, shops, and streets. It seems that music has filled every corner. But where does music come from? Many music experts have different answers to this question.

The first statement: music comes from labor.

Our ancestors were mainly engaged in collective manual labor, such as hunting, picking wild fruits, cutting down trees, and moving stones. Collective labor requires a unified voice to direct everyone to act in a unified manner. Physical labor also needs a calling voice to encourage people. As a result, a regular and powerful sound appeared: "Ouch, hoo!" This was the earliest music. And when hunting was successful or a bumper harvest was achieved, people needed a rhythmic sound to express celebration, so the earliest dance music was produced.

We often say that labor creates people themselves. People learned to walk upright during labor, so their hands and feet were separated, their chests became developed, their vocal cords and other organs became sound, and their brains became mature. Only in this way can people have voices that can produce sounds, hands that can play, and minds that can create and appreciate music. All these show that music comes from labor.

The second statement: music comes from emotional communication.

People naturally make sounds when they are happy, excited, angry, or sad. The ancients said: "Every sound originates from the human heart." It means that deep emotions promote the production of music. People often hear a male bird chirping, often to attract the attention of a female bird. As an advanced animal, humans also use sounds to express their love between men and women.

In the ancient Chinese Book of Songs, there is a poem about "playing the harp and playing the harp to make friends", which means playing the harp to express the desire to make friends with the other person. Modern popular love songs, serenades, etc. are also a kind of music that directly expresses love.

The third theory: music comes from imitating the sounds of nature.

The sounds of nature are very rich: the whistling of the wind, the rustling of the rain, the crashing of the waves, the chirping of insects, the chirping of birds... You must have seen the ventriloquism performance of the acrobatic troupe. , the various natural sounds that are imitated are almost as real as fake ones. People may not be able to reach this level in terms of imitation, but musicians will imitate the sounds of nature and beautify and regularize them, such as the Chinese suona song "A Hundred Birds Pay Attention to the Phoenix" and the second movement of Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony. Like music, this is also one of the sources of music.

The fourth statement: music comes from language.

You might as well try to read an article or give a speech with expression. You will find that human language naturally has changes in rhythm and tone. When people speak excitedly, they tend to exaggerate and emphasize the tone and rhythm of their language. Especially the language of rhymed poetry, if you recite it repeatedly, you will find that there are beautiful tones in it.

In addition, the calls, lamentations and exclamations in people's language are very close to singing. There is a kind of "recitative" in Western operas. When singing, it is similar to speaking. The tone is relatively flat, the rhythm and the language are very consistent, and it is easy for people to understand. In fact, similar examples can be found in children's songs. For example, if you read the sentence "I have a pair of omnipotent hands" first, and then sing it to the tune of that song, you will find that the tone and intonation are very close.

Fifth statement: Music comes from communication signals.

Maybe you will say, isn’t the signal for people to communicate through language? In fact, people communicate through many signals. Language is only one of them. Gestures, eyes, and paintings are all signals, and music is a special communication signal. If you go abroad and don't understand the foreign language, you might as well sing or play the music of that country, and it will be easier for people there to communicate with you. Therefore, people often say that music is a language that transcends national boundaries.

The sixth theory: music comes from witchcraft.

The ancient people did not understand many natural phenomena and thought that gods were at work, so they used witchcraft to communicate with gods and demons.

Music was born in the witchcraft activities of singing and dancing, and later developed into music for worshiping totems, music for worshiping ancestors, etc.

Of course, there are many other theories about how music came about, so I won’t list them all here. Although there are different opinions, the origin of music is always related to the early survival conditions and lifestyle of mankind. In other words, music is produced and developed because of the needs of human survival and life. Life is the source of music.