Call and Response

9/10/19

This week I looked into the pre-technology history of audio-based communication. I started off by reading about Greek Chorus where lyrics and singing in unison helped tell to the stories of the Greek plays of the time which at the time was very exciting and got the crowd involved to support the characters in ways such as cheering or throwing things at the stage. From this I wanted to find examples of audio that caused a reaction in the audience to do something without instruction. While they were not instructed to react, each reaction was their own. Thinking about Green Day as a modern example, the frontman Billie Joe Armstrong says different non-instructive words that initiate a call and response. I then backtracked from there finding the Ramones and Queen to the Isley Brother’s “Shout!“. However, call and response is in no way modern. The origin from what I found was from religious practices and slave songs. Call and response when applied to music theory is a little bit different as it doesn’t involve the crowd, but rather a second phrasing of melody is written as “commentary“ to a previous phrase.