The Seventh Military Orchestra of the Northern Strategic Command stationed at Chernihiv recently publicly performed compositions based on music dating from the Stone Age.
The theme was developed in the last century. When digging at the Mezyn prehistoric human settlement site dating back some 20,000 years (Korop distirct, Chernihiv oblast), making it unmatched in the world, archaeologists unearthed thrilling objets d’art, implements, an ocher-ornamented scapula, a hip, pelvis, two jawbones, and other parts of a mammoth skeleton. The finds were for the first time exhibited during an archaeological convention held in Chernihiv in 1908. For quite some time those six bones thrilled researchers until Serhiy Bibikov, a Kyiv archaeologist, drew their attention, in the 1970s, to the fact that the scapula had traces of hammer blows. Further studies proved that a hammer made from reindeer antlers must have been applied (remnants of antlers had also been discovered on the site).
Further research suggested that the bones could have been used to produce certain sounds. Experts — archaeologists, paleontologists, physicians, sound analysts, and art critics — were enlisted to check the hypothesis. All agreed that the archaeological find was the world’s first set of Stone Age percussion instruments. In other words, the Mezyn discovery had started a new research trend, Stone Age musicology. Step by step efforts have been made to recreate that kind of music. A jazz percussionist was invited to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Kyiv. With his knuckles he knocked gently on the scapula, producing a rhythmic sound which was taped. The result left no doubt that it was music of sorts, with strong clear sounds, keys, and timbres.
A more comprehensive research program was begun after the bones had been delivered to, and skillfully treated and restored, at the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad [currently St. Petersburg]. The result was a set of unbelievably ancient percussion instruments. Years later it was used to play a score specially developed allowing for northern folk rhythmic dancing traditions. It was a kind of music that may well have been performed at the Stone Age. Long years of painstaking effort resulted in the Melodia Recording Company releasing an LP with this primordial music.
Stone Age music has attracted fresh interest in the current century. Two years ago, the recording was written to a CD and entered in this author’s web site; a while later, the topic attracted military musicians. Artem Dvoriachenko, of the Northern Strategic Command Seventh Military Orchestra, helped recreate it. Together with fellow musicians Dmytro Smoliak, Ihor Yakunyn, Ruslan Laryonov, and Viacheslav Ostroukh, he performed it, using bongo, kovbel, klavesa, korobochka [box] drums, castanets, and washboards. The latter three were specially made for them by a local craftsman named Oleksandr Shlionchyk.
Artem Dvoriachenko says he tried to do more than preserve the original sound characteristics of the Stone Age instruments, when working on their concert number. He wanted to have a complete composition that would attract modern audiences. The military orchestra decided to make his rendition their calling card (and the orchestra is one of Ukraine’s best military bands). The decision was anything by spontaneous, as the melody was born on the banks of the Desna.
