Who invented musical lyrics?

Answer 1

First, the proper word would be created, not invented. A creation describes a creative act or behavior, while invention describes making an object. Second, musical lyrics are simply words set to a melodious tune, e.g. music. Music can include anything from tapping... to humming... to today's combination of multiple instruments. Some things in life we will never, ever know with certainty who invented, created, or developed a particular thing, habit, behavior, or mechanical device. In a way, asking who first created lyrics is like asking who was the first human to pick or scratch their nose--we will never know!

However, it is easy to imagine how lyrics came into being. Cave men and women would have been immersed in sounds of nature, and would have mimicked those sounds, much the same as a parrot can mimic a human voice. They would have heard the tapping of animals on trees, or the sounds water made against rocks and found they, too, could use objects to make specific noises. They would have discovered they could hum by controlling how they breathed; humming likely evolved first from grunting. (Test it out; both involve holding and controlling how breaths move across the vocal cords.) As humans developed language, rather than just mimicking sounds animals made, humans could use words to describe what they observed and felt.

Many historical texts, including The Bible, describe humans making music and singing. David in the Bible was a musician and lyricist. Sounds of songs may have evolved because some emotions lack words. For example, how would you express deep sorrow... or deep faith if you had no words-- how would your voice "make music"? The invention and development of instruments aided the sounds humans made with their voices, even without using words. How many songs can you think of when a singer only expresses sounds like Ahhh, da, la, etc.? As humans realized they could "speak" through music, they put their talking sentences to melodies. Think of any song today... you can quickly see you can speak the same words as sentences. In fact, poetry likely began first or concurrently with putting poetic sounds of spoken words to music. Many of David's music were his prayers to his God, almost like poems but sung.