Shang, a drop of golden rain,
Jiao, a name I call myself,
Ji… I shout when I'm in pain,
Tu, the one who isn't me… (etc, sorry, not all of the lyrics still survive)
THAT'S MY GAL
A
ctually, talking of one-time famous singers, try this name for size. Pa-Pab-Bi-gaggir gal. It's a corker of a name, isn't it? And, no word of a He, he - or it could have been she, it's very hard to tell, much like today - was the big musical star of the period 'Early Dynastic III'. The 'gal' bit in the name simply means GREAT and he/she is referred to in several texts or reliefs. He/she could have been a royal servant or a temple tunesmith, or simply could even have been a gigging musician, booked for special events and rituals. Whoever he/she/it was, they would almost certainly, by their time, be familiar with a battery of instruments that is really beginning to take shape. Harps, lyres, and the odd bit of percussion.
The singers, judging again from reliefs found in Old Kingdom Egypt-", usually had their left hands held to their ears. Singers today insist this is to hear your 'inner tuning', although some say it is so that you don't hear the guy next to you. With their other hands, they appear to be 'signing', for want of a better word. This, I imagine, was either something similar to what a cantor does in a church to indicate roughly which note he's going to sing next, or it's a signal to the barman to bring another tray of pints across. Other pictures show the singers playing a set of clappers or rattles (sistra) with one hand, the other being used to pinch their larynx. Again, singers today will tell you that pinching your own throat alters both the pitch and timbre of the note, but most musicologists put it down to a desire to 'get in first, before anybody else does'.
LYRE, LYRE, PANTS ON FIRE
I
ncidentally, do you know how to spot a lyre? No? Wdl, in that case, lend me a tenner and I'll give it back to you tomorrow. Actually, as bad as that joke was, it was marginally less boring than me telling you that a harp looks like this: this time is very much an unwritten Tolkien novel. s» Old Kingdom' is the period in Egypt from around 2850 to 2052??; it was preceded by the period of 'the Two Kingdoms3 and followed by the 'Middle Kingdom' period. So you see - the history of music at this time is very much an unwritten???™*./»«*/ whereas a lyre looks like this: Got that? Good. Well, maybe write it down, alongside the name of the Early Dynastic III period's leading pop star - Pa-Pab-Bi-gaggir gal, remember? The minute you've written it down, fold up the piece of paper, carefully, and place in the bin. Hopefully you'll never need the information ever again. If you do find yourself using this information again, then… well, I think I've sat next to you at a dinner party from hell once.
THE GUTI CALL
S
o. Lyres, harps, flutes and ratdes. My word, things were really flying. The Sumerians, though, were having a bit of a torrid time of it. From 2370?? onwards, they were conquered by just about anyone with a few hundred pounds and a good line in swords. Probably the most noteworthy conquerors were the Guti - which, although I have not an ounce of etymological evidence, I like to think was pronounced Gooti, to rhyme with 'booty'. The Guti were a band of mountain barbarians. It's always the way, isn't it? Everything is blamed on 'the barbarians'.
The other 'wave of incoming', as far as the Sumerians were concerned, were the Semitic Akkadians who, probably because of their rather complicated and?-conceived branding - well, I mean, Guti on one side and Semitic Akkadians on the other: I know which would test better in my focus group! - decided to adopt the Sumerian culture they had overthrown, rather than destroy it. Despite its brevity, this Guti/Akkadian period was great for music. Temples were built and, as the saying goes, where there's temples, there's music. In this instance, pipes were almost certainly 'in', as were bull's-horn trumpets which look, from contemporary carvings, extravagantly striking and impressive. Particularly if you are a bull.
After this point, the Sumerians hosted the biggest 'bring and die' party seen for some time. They were conquered, surmounted, reconquered, overcome, defeated, re-reconquered, multi-conquered, triumphed over and generally given a jolly good seeing-to. I think I've made my point. As I'm here, it might be worth just stopping off briefly to put the Babylonian kings under the spodight and, in particular, one of the most famous of their number, Hammurabi.
Two things have often occurred to me, on more than one occasion, and I think I should share them both with you. They botli concern 'the afterlife'. You see, I've often thought that, if there were to turn out to be such a place, then, firstly, it's going to feel something like a motorway service station. Don't know why: just think it would. I imagine it to have distinctive red-and-white branding, with a cute if slightly disembodied-looking mascot resembling a Fury, who gently beckons you to pull in and sample the plastic and largely overpriced post-death environment. I realize this is probably not everybody's view of the afterlife, but, well, you're never going to be able to prove me wrong, so SUE ME! The second, and let's face it more important, aspect of postmortem existence that has always struck me is that, despite the promise of infinity, I can't for the life-after-death of me see how I'm going to find time to get round to speaking to everyone with whom I'd want to have a jolly good chinwag. And this brings me back to Hammurabi. Apart from the obvious list of people and questions that you would have in any afterlife - you know, 'Ahh, Mr Einstein, can I interrupt your brunch a minute? I just wondered if I could go through this "E=mc2" thing again. Sorry - haven't quite got it. By the way, don't forget, you get a free refill with that coffee.' Well, apart from all the obvious ones, there's all the ones who you just didn't realize would be quite so interesting. And I think old I lammurabi falls into this bracket.
IF I HAD A HAMMURABI
I say old. Hammurabi almost certainly died young but, nevertheless, he presided over a period which saw huge leaps forward in all walks of life: he put laws in order, as it were, establishing what is almost certainly the first structured legal system, and with it, the first crackdown on 'drink-charioteering'. He did similarly well with the medical system, too. But his successes in the music business are what concern us here. In Hammurabi's time, music really came on. Good things happened to it. New things. This 'West Semitic' period, as it's often known, saw existing instruments become much more portable - a great deal smaller and almost certainly lighter. No doubt the fashion concept of being 'so last dynasty' was introduced, as were brand-new ways of playing instruments. Hammurabi's time introduced a new lyre, again smaller and lighter, which you held with the soundboard against your body and which you plucked with… wait for it… a plectrum! Jeepers creepers. I mean, although it would have been originally just a little piece of quill, you can imagine the scene when that little puppy was introduced into the temple. Hammurabi: What's this? Musician: It's a plectrum, your suspended floraness. Hammurabi: A what? Musician: A plectrum,? Euphratic one. Hammurabi: And what do you do with it? Musician: You pluck the lyre strings with it, sire. It stops your fingers getting all hard and calloused, and means the lyre player can play for longer… Hammurabi: I'm not sure that's any real use to me… Musician:… er, which means shorter drum solos. Hammurabi: Order me a thousand.^ Just in case you don't consider the plectrum to be musically significant enough to justify Hammurabi's inclusion - and let's face it, these days some rock stars get by very well using their teeth - he did also oversee the time which appeared to give birth to the kettle drum (timpani) and the cymbals. So, whenever you sit through a performance of'Rule Britannia', just think: that drum roll and cymbal crash that comes on 'Rwuuuuk… [roll]… Britcmn-ya… [CRASH]… Britannya, rule the waves…'