Picking up the fifth hammer

There is a well-known conservative pundit who doesn’t believe that rap is music. To him, the statement “rap is not music” is a “fact” because he was told by his father — who studied music theory — that music has three elements: harmony, melody, and rhythm. Rap lacks harmony and melody and so ergo, it is not music.

Let’s put aside the absurdity that an application of logic can somehow invalidate the decisions of millions of people who have chosen hiphop to be the soundtrack of their lives. Applying logic to music feels absurd but there is historical precedent for the inclination to do so. Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher that most of us associate with triangles, was known as both The Father of Mathematics and The Father of Music. Perhaps though it would be more accurate to call him The Father of Music Theory for his discovery that musical intervals are created by the length of an instrument (such as strings in a lyre) that follow simple numeric ratios.

These particular ratios produced pleasing sounds. The music became more beautiful because it fit a theory that was itself considered beautiful and pleasing to Pythagoras because the ratios were made up of whole numbers that added up to ten.