On some early Mesopotamian percussionists
On some early Mesopotamian percussionists

Author(s): Piotr Michałowski
Subject(s): Archaeology, Ancient World
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Sumerian and Babylonian music; musical instruments; Sumerian song types; organology; percussion; percussionists
Summary/Abstract: This article discusses certain aspects of early Mesopotamian musicalpractices, focusing on a small set of native terms for instrumentsand performers. Assuming, in anthropological terms, that musicalinstruments, like other culturally important objects, can be classifiedin multiple contextually different ways, it is argued that certainSumerian words could in some contexts signify specific instrumentsor types of musicians, while in other usage could stand for a class ofinstruments, for song types, or in the case of balagˆ, for all musicalinstruments. More specifically, the terms adab and tigi are subjectedto analysis, resulting in the proposal that in 3rd and 2nd millenniumtexts these designated only song types and not, as is often asserted,physical musical instruments.

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