The word “music” derives from Greek mousike, which originally referred to any of the arts governed by the nine Muses (or mousa), daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Eventually it came to mean the science of composing melodies, and in the Middle Ages was one of the four primary sciences that were studied as part of the quadrivium. Greek culture greatly influenced other Mediterranean cultures, which borrowed the word — musica (Latin), moosiqi (Farsi or Persian), and musiqa (Arabic) — and spread from there to most of Europe: for example, musique (French), musik (Germanic languages), muusika (Estonian), muzyka (Polish), muziek (Dutch), and “moozeeka” (phonetic Russian spelling). Some European languages with different linguistic roots did not adopt this word, however. These include Hungarian (zene), Icelandic (tonlist), and Slavic (hudba).
Even though musical expression is a universal human trait, the concept of music is not universal. Some languages, including many West African languages such as Yoruba and most Native American languages from North America, do not have a word for music. Yoruba, for example, has words for song, for playing instruments, for drumming and for dancing, but not for music as a distinct entity.
The Japanese lacked a term for music until the nineteenth century, following contact with European colonial powers, when they created the word ongaku (“on” sound + “gaku” enjoyment). Prior to that, the Japanese did not conceive of music separate from other components of performance such as pantomime, dance, acrobatics and theater.
The Chinese term for music — yue — reflects a similar origin not as a distinct entity but bound with elements of performance. Yue can be used as a noun or a verb meaning music, performance, entertainment. or to make music, to perform, to entertain. It originally described a type of ritual court performance synthesizing music, dance and hand props that arose during the Zhou dynasty (1046-221 BCE). The character for yue is purportedly a combination of the characters for silk (si) and wood (mu), two elements which comprise the strings and body of a zither-like instrument known as the se. More significantly, the character for yue is the same as that for the word that means joy or pleasure.
The Sanskrit word for music is sangeet, which literally means “sung together.” Interestingly, Sanskrit’s roots show up in another musical word, guitar, derived from the Arabic word qitara with its two Indo-European roots: “qit” traces back to sangeet and “tar” means string. Those roots also show up in the word kithara, an Ancient Greek stringed instrument, and in the Persian sihtar and Indian sitar.
The idea of music as a distinct category has slowly taken shape over the centuries and spread throughout the world to the point that modern cultures all understand the concept and, in many cases, even share the same root word.
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