Music is all around us, wherever we are and whatever we’re doing in life. It goes back a long way.
Nobody knows who played the first instrument or sang the first song. Early forms of music likely mimicked the sounds found in nature: animal calls and birdsong, moving water and the wind. Different noises and rhythms would have been used by humans to express fear, sadness or joy. Music likely featured at social gatherings and ceremonies as it does today.
History suggests that when people began to use tools, they may have done so in a rhythm, or a regular pattern. This might have made the first rhythmic sounds that resembled what we know today as music.
Remember Walt Disney’s movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with its loveable song, “Whistle While You Work.” Throughout history rhythm and song has helped motivate and unite workers at task. Music is useful for alleviating the monotony of repetitive labour. Imagine oarsmen on Viking longboats, prisoners in chain gangs and cowboys singing trail songs.
In the Western Isles of Scotland, groups of women would perform a Waulking Song while softening wool so it could be woven and made into clothes and blankets.
The wool would be rhythmically banged off of a table, or ‘waulked’ in time to simple, beat-driven songs sung in the Gaelic language.
Many waulking songs had snatches of older songs embedded in them, but much was improvised on the spur of the moment and there was often laughter and teasing. It was unlucky to repeat a song while still working the same length of cloth, and some lengths took well over an hour to bring to the right condition. In-between the lines of the verses of these work songs are chorus lines with meaningless words. But they are memorable and help the work and raise the spirits. Typically, one woman would sing the verses of the song and the others would join in on the chorus. It was also a social occasion, with the opportunity to catch up on local news and gossip.
When I’m working I like to listen to music. But my work isn’t exactly tiresome or repetitive. Rather, it’s creative and requires inspiration. My perfect work space includes a comfy chair, a large mug of tea and an instrumental soundtrack quietly playing in the background. Lo-fi music is rhythmic, it helps me focus and being without lyrics is not distracting.
I’m an author and artist. My daughter is a talented studying musician. It occurred to us that we could combine our interests in a lo-fi music project of our own. As recording artist, ‘Waulking Song’ my daughter created a moody chilled acoustic track, Passing Times and I created a narrative illustration to accompany it. Her track is available to stream on Youtube on the channel, Lady Lofi.
Have a listen here;
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YF0T3Ny-6cA
It was great fun working on this music project together and I hope we’re able to produce more in the future.
Karen McDonald 