music something of a melody. One of the first things that
impresses us in studying examples of savage music is the
monotonic nature of the melodies; indeed some of the music
consists almost entirely of one oft-repeated sound. Those
who have heard this music say that the actual effect is not
one of a steady repetition of a single tone, but rather that
there seems to be an almost imperceptible rising and falling
of the voice. The primitive savage is unable to sing a tone
clearly and cleanly, the pitch invariably wavering. From
this almost imperceptible rising and falling of the voice
above and below one tone we are able to gauge more or less the
state of civilization of the nation to which the song belongs.
This phrase-tone corresponds, therefore, to the sentence-word,
and like it, gradually loses its meaning as a phrase and fades
into a tone which, in turn, will be used in new phrases as
mankind mounts the ladder of civilization.

At last then we have a single tone clearly uttered, and
recognizable as a musical tone. We can even make a plausible
guess as to what that tone was. Gardiner, in his "Music of
Nature," tells of experiments he made in order to determine the
normal pitch of the human voice. By going often to the gallery
of the London Stock Exchange he found that the roar of voices
invariably amalgamated into one long note, which was always
F. If we look over the various examples of monotonic savage
music quoted by Fletcher, Fillmore, Baker, Wilkes, Catlin,
and others, we find additional corroboration of the statement;
song after song, it will be noticed, is composed entirely of
F, G, and even F alone or G alone. Such songs are generally
ancient ones, and have been crystallized and held intact by