On the surface your question seemed straight forward and simple. Once I started thinking about an answer, I fell down the rabbit hole. The part of our minds that process music -melody harmony and rhythm - and how it relates to emotions, language, meaning, and the poetry of non verbal communication, all come into play. Of course the human voice is an instrument, Scat or listening to a song that is in a language you do not understand is still "instrumental", so I assume you mean instrumental music as music without lyrics. That is a whole other complicated subject since there are so many ways for lyrics to interact with music from simple verse and chorus folk music to oratorios. I will be up late tonight thinking about this stuff!
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I agree this question is loaded, I am now trying to find out which one was first "words or music" can't help but remember Al Jareau.
On the surface your question seemed straight forward and simple. Once I started thinking about an answer, I fell down the rabbit hole. The part of our minds that process music -melody harmony and rhythm - and how it relates to emotions, language, meaning, and the poetry of non verbal communication, all come into play. Of course the human voice is an instrument, Scat or listening to a song that is in a language you do not understand is still "instrumental", so I assume you mean instrumental music as music without lyrics. That is a whole other complicated subject since there are so many ways for lyrics to interact with music from simple verse and chorus folk music to oratorios. I will be up late tonight thinking about this stuff!