NEW! Strung Theory II: The Musical Bow

This is the second in a short series of episodes and interviews about that thing we made, that if we hadn't made, there would be no guitar.

Episode six is about how we learned to make a string and pull it tight between two fixed points to make a weapon. The bow and arrow changed the way we lived, ate, and killed each other. And the bow part of the bow and arrow might be a prototype for future stringed musical instruments (chordophones). That's because until we taught ourselves how to make string, and pull it tight enough to do something, we would never have learned to pull those strings tight enough to make pitched sounds when we pluck, strum, and bow them.

Without tensioned strings there are no bows and arrows. Without bows and arrows, there are no harps, lyres, lutes, shoelaces, or Diddley Bows. And there are no guitars. So let's travel from an obscure book from 1899 back to a hunter on a grassy plain 65,000 years ago, to a guitar player in New York in 1978, and think about why and how each of our guitar strings might have an ancient weapon inside of it.

Click here to support A People's History of the Guitar with a one-time or recurring contribution, or maybe both. If you want to see where this goes as much as I do, you can help me to produce unique new content and reach more people with a broader perspective on an instrument that changed the world.

Go back and check out the previous episodes in order if you haven't already, because this thing is initially best understood if you go from first to last. Thanks for being curious about what I'm trying to do here.

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