Longing for the day ...

Let's come together and sing His praises

The Christian Church was the first to combine music with a specific message to attract converts and keep the faithful devoted. This has gone on to become a massive music market.

Gregorian chants (named after Pope Gregory I 590-604 AD) were sacred texts that were sung unaccompanied. Priests wrote the melodies to help singers remember the texts and express messages of devotion ... with feeling!

For many years, the church refused to let people play instruments while chanting because playing an instrument distracted performers from worship, which was the point of chanting as far as the church was concerned.

The Church developed a code for writing down and sharing these melodies. But only church-educated people could understand the code and thus learn the melodies without hearing and performing them.

Because it was a Church-owned code, only sacred music was written down. Although people who were not part of the Church grooved and boogied as part of their festivals and gatherings, most of this music has been lost to history.

In the medieval villages, wandering minstrels told stories and entertained with dances and circus-style acts. Unlike musicians in the church or the rulers' courts, they were the lowest form of life and were ridiculed as often as revered.

Summary:

The power of music to help people learn, define their collective identity and bring them together has been used to sell ideology. Thus, value accrues to people who control access to music's reproduction or performance because they determine which music people hear.