In 1995, paleontologist Dr. Ivan Turk excavated a bear’s thighbone from a site in Slovenia. The femur was perforated with four holes in a straight alignment, which suggests conscious design rather than arbitrary markings. The bone flute was found in a hunting area occupied by Neanderthals. Radio-carbon dating indicates that this artifact, allegedly the oldest known musical instrument, is between 43,000 and 82,000 years old.

A surviving list of requirements for minstrels in medieval Germany includes that the musician know how “to acquit himself well as a swordsman” and that the he know how “to throw up little apples and to catch them on the point of a knife, to imitate the songs of birds, perform tricks with cards and jump though hoops.”

Blues musician John Lee Hooker’s longtime companion drove all the way from Detroit to Toledo to confront her fickle lover onstage. She grabbed the guitar from his hands and slammed it on his head. Hooker said later that he was glad he was playing a hollow-body acoustic and not his solid-body Les Paul!

In 1985, a 7-Eleven manager discovered that blasting classical music would disperse vagrants and panhandlers from the parking lot of his store. Around 150 other franchisees started doing the same thing, and the practice is now widespread!

In early 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his company was testing a car security system that plays Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” at high volume when a robber tries to break into an automobile.

The US supports 130 military bands, spending three times as much on military music as on the National Endowment for the Arts, and making military music the government’s single largest commitment to artistic performance.

When "Rolling Stone" magazine published its list of the “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time” in 2016, only five women made the cut.

Sappho (c. 630- c. 570 BC) is often credited as the inventor of the love song and the creator of the Greek lyric.

The oldest surviving poetic work in English is “Caedmon’s Hymn” by a herder named Caedmon.

New Orleans gave birth to jazz at a time when it was also the unhealthiest major city in the US, with an average lifespan for African-American residents of thirty-six years.

In North Korea, you can hear pop songs called “We Shall Hold Bayonets More Firmly,” The Joy of Bumper Harvest Overflows Amidst the Song of Mechanization,” “Potato Pride,” and “I Also Raise Chickens.”

Plato ((429?–347 B.C.E.) warned against the concept of subversive music in "The Republic": “Beware of changing to a new form of music, since it threatens the whole system.” He also argued that music, used prudently, could form character and even shape the soul.

Aristoxenus, one of Aristotle’s pupils, has been called the father of musicology.

Very early songs did not express personal emotions, but articulated communal priorities and demands.

For most of human history, the song was more important than the singer. Performers and composers were so unimportant that their names weren’t preserved.

Law enforcement agencies, transit authorities, and business owners sometimes use loud classical music to repel unwanted parties from public spaces. West Palm Beach police tested this technique on a neighborhood infested with drug dealers. The officers were amazed when there was no one on the corner at 10:00 PM. One of the detectives talked to people on the street and they said “We don’t like that kind of music.”

A large and growing body of research confirms that singing in groups - or even just listening to music - causes the release of the hormone oxytocin. This change in body chemistry makes people more trusting and more willing to cooperate with other people in pairs or teams.

A recent study of songs that made the top ten on the Billboard chart found that 92% refer to sex with an average of 10.49 "reproductive phrases" per song.