> It's not clear to me that there ever *was* a time when music
> was "only" for dancing or ritual.
Going even further, ritual subsumed "dance" as well: music and dance for ritual were the ritual, not separate (or separable) categories.
On Mar 31, 2011, at 2:38 AM, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:
> One thinks of shepherds and their flutes.
In West African traditions, ritual revolved around the drums, which were ceremonial instruments that were actually locked up between ritual observances.
But there is/was a whole tradition of personal music, that increasingly centered around the guitar since the advent of Northern presence in Africa, but traditionally might have been jew's harp-like instruments or much simpler stringed instruments.
This distinction between the ceremonial and the personal is common and quite old, as Joanna points out.
Charles