The Music of Man

Episode Overview

The first program tells how music began 35,000 years ago with hollowed-out animal bones. In India and China, music was a perfected art long before the birth of Christ. In the western world, music has only flowered in the past thousand years. Menuhin points to the basis of musical expression: man's sense of rhythm, first developed in the womb in response to the mother's heartbeat. Performing are Menuhin, Canadian composer Murray Schafer, jazz flutist Paul Horn, native singers and dancers from New Guinea, Senegal and Plains Cree Indians, Ukone of the Gwi people, Martha Takata of Syria, Abed Azrie, Nellie Karras Dancers, Greek singer Arda Mondikan, Ponti and Demotic Dancers of Greece.