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who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

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383(Jordania, 1989:240), believing that vocal polyphony and monophony were developingsimultaneously in eastern and western areas of human evolution (eastern – East Asiansand Australians, western – European and African populations). Later, with <strong>the</strong>accumulation of new information, understanding <strong>the</strong> crucial importance of <strong>the</strong> socialfactor in vocal polyphony, and maybe most importantly, accumulation of <strong>the</strong> cases of <strong>the</strong>disappearance of vocal polyphony from different regions of <strong>the</strong> world convinced my thatKharlap suggestion about <strong>the</strong> chronological primacy of vocal polyphony was correct. It ispity that I had a different view when myself and late Kharlap met, only once, for <strong>the</strong>lunch at <strong>the</strong> Moscow restaurant, toge<strong>the</strong>r with Izaly Zemtsovsky, in <strong>the</strong> mid 1980s.Kharlap was already in his 70s. We discussed my article that was going to be publishedin <strong>the</strong> series “Music of Asia and Africa” (Kharlap wrote a peer review on my article), andof course, talked about <strong>the</strong> origins of vocal polyphony. We both had an opinion that vocalpolyphony was an extremely ancient phenomenon, although our understanding of <strong>the</strong>very beginnings of vocal polyphony was different. It is still very different, as Kharlapwas not proposing evolutionary links of <strong>the</strong> origins of choral polyphony with humanintelligence, language and speech. <strong>For</strong> him music was secondary to language and hebelieved that as a phenomenon, music (singing) developed from speech intonations, orprosodic features (in this Kharlap was close to Spencer’s and Steven Pinker’s ideas). Theearliest and <strong>the</strong> most archaic forms of traditional singing according to Kharlap wereheterophony and drone. Despite all <strong>the</strong> obvious differences of Kharlap’s ideas to <strong>the</strong>model suggested in this book, I must say, that Kharlap was <strong>the</strong> <strong>first</strong> <strong>who</strong> suggested thatvocal polyphony did not come as a new higher stage of <strong>the</strong> development of musicalthought, and that monophony came later that polyphony. I think it would be fair if <strong>the</strong>model of <strong>the</strong> origins of vocal polyphony, suggested in this book, is referred as “Kharlap-Jordania Model”.Let us go back to <strong>the</strong> moral and ethical problems that were haunting MariusSchneider’s conclusions. Marius Schneider’s conclusion about only some racesdeveloping vocal polyphony is rejected in this book, as <strong>the</strong> facts of gradual disappearanceof vocal polyphony in different regions of <strong>the</strong> world contradict his conclusions. But <strong>the</strong>reare new ethic challenges for our model I want to discuss. According to this model, <strong>the</strong>reare at least three moral-ethical controversies:(1) Some populations shifted to articulated speech earlier than o<strong>the</strong>rs,(2) Some populations have more genetic inclination towards stuttering anddyslexia, and(3) The development of phonological system in children of different populationshappens in different time frames.From <strong>the</strong> very <strong>first</strong> moment, when <strong>the</strong> idea of <strong>the</strong> asynchronous shift to <strong>the</strong>articulated speech was born in discussion with Valeri Alexeev, I understood <strong>the</strong> possibleethic implications of <strong>the</strong> conclusions I was coming in my research.Hewes wrote in his survey of language origins <strong>the</strong>ories: ” if language, on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>rhand, had multiple origins,<strong>the</strong>y would hardly have been simultaneous, and polygenic

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