The Music of Language (Book)
Songs are danced speech.--Alan Lomax [Updated 11/7/2025, Essay 46) Chat with the LLM The Music of Language is a compilation of writings over the past decade on the connection between language and music. I'm in the camp of musicians who believe that music preceded language. I always understood it intuitively, and then later on it became more of a passionate intellectual pursuit. At the back of the book, as the appendix are what I’m calling “wordrums” (a portmanteau of “word” and “drum”), where the inherent rhythms in natural speech become musical and become seeds for the music. In the past, it was customary for songwriters to start with a title, and the title would have some kind of a rhythmic pattern to it, which would be the basis for the entire song. I still like to work this way. An AI-generated summary/analysis: *** *** Playlist of Examples: *** Footnotes: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shave_and_a_Haircut 2. Ivo Popasov, “Bulche...
