As an ethnomusicology major, I am fascinated by how global cultures view music. One culture in particular, the Chinese, view music in such a manner that I believe would change the minds of scholars here in the west if adopted. First, for me to set up my argument, I must delve into the story of how it is believed that music came to be created in China.
Legend states that music in China developed when Huangdi (founder of the Chinese Empire) instructed a man by the name of Ling-lun to travel the Kwen-lun mountains. There he found bamboo shoots, and wishing to imitate the nearby birds in the forest of the mountains, he cut the bamboo into what would eventually create the chromatic scale (called Lü in Chinese) through blowing 12 different pitches. This legend is important to state as it gave birth to the belief that each tone in…
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