We publish the recording of the first of the PREHISTORY MEETINGS of 2025 which took place on February 26th.
Donatella Livigni, Performer of Singing in Nature, teacher of Vocal Functionality and sound anthropologist, she deals with research and training in pedagogical-functional practices related to sound, voice and sacred spaces – sites with archaeological-acoustic, symbolic and therapeutic interest.
Enrica Tedeschi, Graduated in sociology with a PhD in Social Theory and Research; specialized in Historical-Religious Studies. Her research areas are contemporary neo-religious movements, historical cultures of popular devotion - including shamanism and magic, cultural anthropology, socio-cultural and communicative processes and methodologies of ethnographic writing.
Donatella Livigni THE SOUND OF CREATION: BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE
The Origins of the Relationship Between Music and Femininity.
Sound as the engine of creation is attested both by the physical sciences and by a large number of cosmogonic narratives from all over the world. An even more symbolically significant fact is that, in some of these narratives, sound is attributed a feminine character and that, often, from sound mythically takes place an event of parthenogenesis, through a goddess or through the voice, whose term derives from the Sanskrit Vâc, a feminine noun.
This paper aims to reflect on the ontological and anthropological feminine character of
music, drawing on myths from distant traditions, but characterised by a mythical imagery
very similar. It is possible that this is due to the fact that the human vocal system, from which
the word and the song are born, sharing evident symbolic and functional analogies with the elements
of cosmogonic narratives?
To answer this question, the intervention will have a theoretical-practical nature, where the practical part will be preparatory to the theoretical part with the aim of:
- to have a direct sensory-perceptual experience of the connection between singing/sound and creation
- lead the audience into an active sensorial listening, functional to enter into the logic of creation myths.
Enrica Tedeschi MUSES ON THE NET
In most cosmovisions, the passage from the unmanifest to the manifest occurs through a vibration or sound explosion. Subsequently, the original emanation multiplies and articulates, transforming itself into a multiplicity of personifications, which vary from culture to culture.
We know of several deities of music, singing and recited poetry, male but above all female, especially in the Himalayan area, where the "base" of the spacious emptiness of the
cosmic awareness is avowedly “mother”.
By exploring some of the muses or musical goddesses, we will discover that their meanings, and the qualities they are endowed with
carriers, are more easily understood if one follows the symbolic flows of their relationships. More than their specific positions in their respective mythological hierarchies, the networks and nodes that connect their symbols are, in fact, crucial.
Transcultural reading – of deities such as Drayang Gyalmo, Saraswati, Kurukulle – can bring to light, with greater accuracy, the powers and connections that the most ancient traditions have
attributed to the art of music.
