Imagine a world without radios, headphones or instruments.
No piano, no guitar, no drums.
No songs stored on a phone, no concerts, no melody coming from somewhere in the distance.
Now imagine a group of prehistoric humans sitting around a fire thousands of years ago.
Someone begins to tap a piece of wood against a stone. Another person joins in. Someone starts humming. A rhythm appears.
We will never know whether anything quite like this happened.
But somewhere in the enormous stretch of human history, sounds became more than just sounds. They became music.
And perhaps that is the most fascinating thing about music: we still do not know exactly why humans began making it.
Music may be impossible to date because its earliest forms left almost no physical trace.
A human voice disappears.
A rhythm made by hands leaves no archaeological evidence. Wooden instruments, animal skins and other organic materials can vanish completely over thousands of years. What has survived, however, tells us that musical behaviour is extraordinarily ancient.
The Smithsonian Institution describes music-making as a universal human trait dating back at least 35,000 years.
Among the oldest surviving instruments are carefully crafted bone and mammoth-ivory flutes discovered in caves in what is now Germany.
One mammoth-ivory flute from Geissenklösterle is around 35,000 years old and had at least three finger holes, allowing it to produce different notes.
And there is an intriguing detail here: these instruments were not primitive attempts at random noise. They were carefully manufactured objects requiring planning, skill and an understanding of how materials could produce sound.
In other words, when the archaeological record finally catches music, humans already seem to be pretty good at it.
And that suggests the story probably began much earlier.
There is no single accepted answer to why humans started making music. Researchers have proposed that it could have helped early humans communicate emotions, coordinate activities, care for children, attract partners or strengthen relationships within a group. One influential line of research focuses on social bonding: making music together requires people to synchronise, listen to one another and share a common rhythm.
There is also evidence that singing together can increase feelings of social closeness, including among people who did not previously know each other. Another fascinating possibility is that music and language developed alongside one another, sharing some of the same ancient mechanisms for communicating emotion. Scientists still debate which came first — music, language, or something that was originally a mixture of both.
Perhaps the first music was not created simply to entertain.
Perhaps it helped humans become a group.
Long before anyone carved a flute, humans already possessed the most versatile musical instrument imaginable: the human body. The voice could change pitch and volume. Hands could clap. Feet could stamp. Stones could be struck together. Bodies could move in rhythm.
A lullaby, a chant, a repeated rhythm around a fire or a collective dance may all have represented forms of music long before anyone thought of them as an art.
And this may explain one of music’s most extraordinary qualities: it can communicate emotion without requiring a shared language.
You may not understand the words of a song from another country.
You can still recognise sadness, excitement, tension, tenderness or joy in the voice and the music.
Music does not necessarily need translation.
International Music Day itself is considerably younger.
The celebration was established by the International Music Council following a resolution adopted at its General Assembly in Lausanne in 1973.
The first International Music Day was held on October 1, 1975, following an initiative by legendary violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin, who was then President of the Council.
The original idea went beyond simply celebrating musicians.
Menuhin wanted music to reach every section of society and to promote the ideals of peace, friendship between peoples, cultural exchange and mutual appreciation. The International Music Council encouraged concerts and musical activities not only in traditional venues, but also in schools, universities, churches, factories, parks and public spaces.
It is an idea that still feels remarkably modern.
Because music has never respected borders.
It has travelled with migrations, survived wars, crossed oceans and passed from parents to children. It can belong to a village, a city, a religion, a generation or an entire continent — and at the same time become deeply personal to a single person.
A three-minute song can bring back a place we have not visited in decades. A melody can remind us of someone who is no longer there. A rhythm can make hundreds of strangers move together without anyone telling them to do so.
Science is still trying to understand precisely why this happens. There are competing theories about music’s evolutionary origins, and no single explanation has been universally accepted.
But perhaps that uncertainty is part of the beauty of it.
We know that humans have been making music for tens of thousands of years.
We know that it can bring people together.
We know that it can express what words sometimes cannot.
But somewhere between the first human voice and the first prehistoric flute, something extraordinary happened.
Sound became meaning.
And we have been listening ever since.
Images from web – Google Research