Music That Shaped History

Music is older than writing, older than cities, older than farming. Long before anyone wrote anything down, people were beating out rhythms, blowing through hollow bones and singing to celebrate, to mourn and to pray. No human culture has ever been found that did not have music of its own.

音乐比文字更古老，比城市更古老，也比农业更古老。早在有人写下任何东西之前，人们就已经在敲打节奏、吹奏中空的骨头，用歌声来庆祝、哀悼和祈祷。迄今为止，人们还从未发现哪一种人类文化没有自己的音乐。

Music has done far more than entertain. At key moments it has pushed revolutions forward, brought nations together, comforted people in pain, protested against injustice and given whole generations a voice. From ancient hymns to today's streaming hits, music has reflected the world around it and helped to change it. This is the story of how music changed history, and how history changed music.

音乐的作用远不止娱乐。在关键时刻，它推动过革命，团结过民族，安慰过受苦的人，反抗过不公，也为整整几代人发出了声音。从古代的颂歌到今天流媒体上的热门歌曲，音乐既映照出周围的世界，也参与改变了这个世界。下面讲的，就是音乐如何改变历史，历史又如何改变音乐。

One of the oldest known musical instruments is a flute made from the wing bone of a vulture. It was found in 2008 in Hohle Fels, a cave in southern Germany, and it is more than 35,000 years old. Its five finger holes show that its maker knew exactly what he or she was doing. Music, it seems, is as old as modern humans themselves.

已知最古老的乐器之一，是一支用秃鹫翅骨做成的笛子。它于2008年在德国南部的霍勒菲尔斯洞穴被发现，距今已有3.5万多年。笛子上的五个指孔说明，制作它的人很清楚自己在做什么。看来，音乐和现代人类本身一样古老。

In the first civilizations, music was closely tied to religion, war and power. Egyptian tomb paintings show musicians playing harps, lutes, flutes and drums. The Greeks treated music as a branch of mathematics: according to tradition, Pythagoras discovered that pleasant-sounding intervals come from simple ratios, so a string cut in half sounds an octave higher. In ancient China, Confucius taught that good music brought order to the state and bad music brought chaos, and the emperor's court set the official musical pitch.

在最早的文明中，音乐与宗教、战争和权力紧密相连。埃及墓室壁画上描绘着弹竖琴、鲁特琴，吹笛子和击鼓的乐师。希腊人把音乐看作数学的一个分支：相传毕达哥拉斯发现，悦耳的音程来自简单的比例，比如把一根弦截去一半，它的音就高一个八度。在古代中国，孔子认为好的音乐能使国家安定，坏的音乐则会带来混乱，而官方的标准音高由朝廷来确定。

Before recordings existed, folk songs were how communities kept their history alive and passed on their values. People learned them by ear and sang them to their children. In places where few people could read, songs worked like newspapers, carrying news of battles, famines and political events from village to village.

在录音技术出现之前，民歌是各个群体保存历史、传承价值观的方式。人们靠耳朵学会这些歌，再唱给自己的孩子听。在识字的人很少的地方，歌曲就像报纸一样，把战争、饥荒和政治事件的消息从一个村子带到另一个村子。

Under oppression, folk music could carry hidden meanings. Enslaved Africans in the American South sang spirituals that sounded purely religious but could also speak of freedom. Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery in 1838, wrote that when slaves sang about reaching Canaan, many of them meant the free North. A popular story says that the song 'Follow the Drinking Gourd' gave escape directions for the Underground Railroad, but historians doubt it: the song was first printed in 1928, and there is no evidence that anyone sang it before the Civil War.

在受压迫的年代，民间音乐可能暗藏另一层含义。美国南方被奴役的非洲人唱的灵歌，听起来纯粹是宗教歌曲，却也可以表达对自由的向往。1838年逃离奴隶制的弗雷德里克·道格拉斯写道，奴隶们唱到要去迦南时，很多人心里想的其实是自由的北方。有一个流传很广的说法，称歌曲《Follow the Drinking Gourd》为通过“地下铁路”出逃的人指明了路线，但历史学家对此表示怀疑：这首歌直到1928年才首次印刷出版，也没有证据表明南北战争之前有人唱过它。

Between about 1600 and 1900, European classical music passed through the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. For much of that time, composers worked for the church or for wealthy aristocrats. For several years Bach wrote a new cantata almost every week for the churches of Leipzig, and Haydn spent nearly thirty years as court musician to the Esterházy princes. Mozart was one of the first to try to make a living as an independent composer in Vienna.

大约从1600年到1900年，欧洲古典音乐经历了巴洛克、古典主义和浪漫主义三个时期。在这段时间的大部分时候，作曲家都为教会或富有的贵族工作。巴赫曾有好几年几乎每周都为莱比锡的教堂写一首新的康塔塔，海顿则在埃斯特哈齐亲王家族担任宫廷乐师近三十年。莫扎特是最早尝试在维也纳以独立作曲家身份谋生的人之一。

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was first performed in Vienna in 1824, when the composer was almost completely deaf. Its final movement sets Friedrich Schiller's poem 'Ode to Joy', with its bold idea that all people are brothers. Today the European Union uses the melody, without words, as its anthem. By Beethoven's time, music had moved out of palaces and churches into public concert halls, where anyone with a ticket could hear it.

贝多芬的《第九交响曲》于1824年在维也纳首演，当时作曲家几乎已经完全失聪。它的最后一个乐章为弗里德里希·席勒的诗作《欢乐颂》谱了曲，诗中表达了一个大胆的理想：四海之内皆兄弟。如今，欧盟把这段旋律（不带歌词）用作盟歌。到了贝多芬的时代，音乐已经走出宫殿和教堂，进入了公共音乐厅，任何买了票的人都能欣赏。

Much of the popular music of the 20th century goes back to the African American communities of the South after the Civil War. The blues grew out of spirituals, work songs and field hollers, and it sang about poverty, racism and lost love with painful honesty. Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson and, later, Muddy Waters turned these feelings into an art form that millions of people heard on record.

20世纪的流行音乐，很大一部分可以追溯到南北战争后美国南方的非裔美国人社区。布鲁斯由灵歌、劳动号子和田间呼喊发展而来，以令人心痛的坦诚唱出贫穷、种族歧视和失去的爱情。贝西·史密斯、罗伯特·约翰逊以及后来的马迪·沃特斯，把这些情感变成了一门艺术，数以百万计的人通过唱片听到了它。

Jazz appeared in New Orleans around 1900. It mixed African rhythms, the blues and European harmony, and it gave musicians room to improvise. For a long time Black and white musicians rarely shared a stage, because American society was strictly segregated. That began to change in 1936, when bandleader Benny Goodman brought the Black pianist Teddy Wilson into his trio, one of the first mixed groups to perform in public. Jazz soon spread around the world and influenced almost every style of popular music that came after it.

爵士乐大约在1900年出现于新奥尔良。它融合了非洲节奏、布鲁斯和欧洲和声，并给乐手留出了即兴演奏的空间。由于美国社会实行严格的种族隔离，黑人和白人乐手长期以来很少同台演出。1936年，这种情况开始改变：乐队领队本尼·古德曼邀请黑人钢琴家泰迪·威尔逊加入自己的三重奏，这是最早公开演出的混合种族乐队之一。爵士乐很快传遍世界，几乎影响了此后所有的流行音乐风格。

In the mid-1950s, rock and roll swept across the United States. Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley brought loud electric guitars, a heavy beat and a rebellious attitude. Teenagers, who now had their own pocket money and record players, loved it, because this was music that belonged to them and not to their parents.

20世纪50年代中期，摇滚乐席卷了美国。查克·贝里、小理查德和埃尔维斯·普雷斯利带来了响亮的电吉他、强劲的节奏和叛逆的态度。那时的青少年已经有了自己的零花钱和唱机，他们热爱这种音乐，因为它属于他们自己，而不属于他们的父母。

Rock and roll also crossed racial lines. In a segregated country, white teenagers bought records by Black artists and danced to music rooted in Black culture. Many parents, preachers and politicians called it immoral and dangerous, which only made it more exciting. In 1964 the Beatles arrived in the United States, followed by the Rolling Stones and other British bands. This 'British Invasion' turned rock into a worldwide force that shaped the fashion, language and attitudes of young people everywhere.

摇滚乐还跨越了种族界限。在一个实行种族隔离的国家，白人青少年购买黑人艺术家的唱片，随着植根于黑人文化的音乐起舞。许多家长、牧师和政客斥之为不道德而危险，这反而让它更加诱人。1964年，披头士乐队来到美国，滚石乐队和其他英国乐队紧随其后。这场“英国入侵”让摇滚乐成为一股世界性的力量，影响了各地年轻人的时尚、语言和观念。

In the 20th century, music became one of the main languages of protest. In the 1960s, folk singers such as Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan sang for the civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War. A song could spread an idea faster than any newspaper, and it reached people's feelings as well. 'We Shall Overcome' became the anthem of the civil rights movement and was sung at marches and sit-ins across the country.

在20世纪，音乐成为抗议的主要语言之一。20世纪60年代，皮特·西格、鲍勃·迪伦等民谣歌手为民权运动发声，并反对越南战争。一首歌传播思想的速度比任何报纸都快，而且还能打动人心。《We Shall Overcome》成为民权运动的颂歌，在全国各地的游行和静坐中被反复传唱。

In South Africa, musicians fought apartheid with their songs. Miriam Makeba spoke out against it at the United Nations and lived in exile for thirty years. In Chile, the singer Víctor Jara, a well-known supporter of President Allende, was tortured and killed after the military coup of 1973. In the Soviet Union, the secret police kept watch on underground rock bands. In Poland, Jacek Kaczmarski's song 'Mury' (Walls) became the unofficial anthem of the Solidarity movement, which helped to bring Communist rule to an end in 1989.

在南非，音乐人用歌曲反抗种族隔离制度。米丽娅姆·马卡贝曾在联合国发言谴责这一制度，并流亡海外三十年。在智利，歌手维克多·哈拉是阿连德总统的知名支持者，1973年军事政变后他遭到酷刑并被杀害。在苏联，秘密警察监视着地下摇滚乐队。在波兰，雅采克·卡奇马尔斯基的歌曲《Mury》（《墙》）成为团结工会运动的非正式会歌，这一运动帮助在1989年结束了共产党的统治。

Technology has changed again and again how music is made, sold and heard. In 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first machine that could record sound and play it back. For the first time, a performance did not disappear the moment it ended. In the 1920s radio brought music into millions of homes, and in the 1930s the electric guitar opened up sounds no one had heard before.

科技一次又一次地改变了音乐的创作、销售和欣赏方式。1877年，托马斯·爱迪生发明了留声机，这是第一台能够录下声音并重新播放的机器。演奏第一次不再在结束的那一刻消失。20世纪20年代，广播把音乐带进了千家万户；30年代，电吉他又开创了前所未闻的声音。

Later, the cassette tape, the CD and the MP3 download each shook up the music business. In the 21st century, streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music put almost all recorded music on everyone's phone. Today a musician recording in a bedroom anywhere in the world can find listeners on every continent without a record company. Neither Beethoven nor Elvis could have imagined it.

后来，磁带、CD和MP3下载先后冲击了音乐产业。进入21世纪，Spotify和Apple Music等流媒体服务把几乎所有录制过的音乐都装进了每个人的手机。如今，世界上任何地方一位在卧室里录音的音乐人，不需要唱片公司，就能在各大洲找到听众。无论是贝多芬还是猫王，都无法想象这样的情景。

From a bone flute in a prehistoric cave to a playlist on a smartphone, music has been with people all along. It has survived wars and disasters, crossed borders and outlived empires. A melody can move listeners who do not understand a single word of the lyrics, across languages, cultures and centuries.

从史前洞穴里的骨笛到智能手机上的播放列表，音乐始终陪伴着人类。它熬过了战争和灾难，跨越了国界，也比任何帝国都存在得更久。即使听众一句歌词都听不懂，一段旋律也能跨越语言、文化和世纪打动他们。

Music matters because it reaches the parts of us that reason cannot: our emotions, our memories, our sense of who we are and our need to be understood. In many ways, the history of music is the history of human feeling, and people will keep singing for as long as they feel.

音乐之所以重要，是因为它能触及理性无法到达的地方：我们的情感、记忆、对自我的认同，以及渴望被理解的心。从很多方面来说，音乐的历史就是人类情感的历史，只要人还有感情，就会一直唱下去。