These experiments are certainly not the first in the history of humanity, and undoubtedly represent a structured effort to take a step towards the integration of entropy with control structures that could support its scope. In such ways, the aim is to balance the unpredictable with the assurance of achieving an appreciable sonic result within a particular cultural setting. The combination of game and music sounds somewhat like a territorial negotiation conducted under the auspices of a socio-economic necessity, effectively responding to demands emanating from the cultural market of the time.
It would be remarkably interesting to study the approach to any similar experiments in sound play in different contexts and cultures. Unfortunately, given the specificity of this musical form, composed of mixed notation systems mostly related to ludic and entertainment contexts characterized by a prevalence of oral transmission of practices, it is difficult to trace back to much earlier sources. There are some testimonies and attempts to systematize cultures other than the Western one, among which it is worth mentioning the comprehensive work on Traditional Maori Games by Marko Brown or the online testimonies on Throat Singing by Inuit women from North America. However, both these sources reveal a practice that largely favors one of the two elements, in an imbalance not particularly useful to the present dissertation: the game supersedes sound in the case of the Maori, and sound overrides the game in the case of Throat Singing. For the Maori, in fact, the sound involved in the games is functional to the completion of the gameplay and therefore in a subordinate position to the competition and entertainment offered by the match; for the Inuit, instead, the practice of Throat Singing has elements of play intended in a strictly musical sense, such as the introduction of rhythms, imitations, and so on. At least in Bruno Deschênes's testimony, the focus seems to be more on the development of vocal virtuosity, thus devoting much space to the sound aspect to the detriment of the game element.
An honorable mention, however, must be given to the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest Coast, who have in their repertoire a type of gambling game known as Slahal, or lehal (bone game), studied and reported by Wendy B. Stuart in the Canadian Journal for Traditional Music in the 1974 edition1. The uniqueness of this game lies in the combination of the musical dimension with a gambling game, which, as Stuart says, "is an integral part of the tradition since aboriginal times and have been maintained and preserved by oral means." The interesting aspect of the particular formula lies both in the development of a particularly advanced musical practice closely connected with the social fabric - so much so that the researcher mentions an interlocutor who recognized the songs sung despite not having been exposed to them for 40 years - the involvement of multiple people, even those excluded from the development of the game itself, and the role of music itself. The game involves a division into two opposing teams with different roles, one that mixes previously marked bones with indicative lines and shows them hidden in the fist of the hand, and a team that must guess the type of bones. The game unfolds over many turns that extend the duration of the game from fifteen minutes to several hours connected to a complex system of point allocation that also involves betting money. The team that mixes the bones, however, has the additional task of singing and using percussion instruments to confuse and perhaps rile the opposite team — particularly the guesser who is trying to concentrate on the whereabouts of the unmarked bones. Within the sung text, in fact, there are often bold elements of challenge addressed to the opponent. The music’s role as an attempt to destabilize and inject confusion into opponents reflects a conception of the sonic element that is particularly elaborated, yet at the same time very spontaneous, instinctive. It arouses a pronounced interest as it departs vigorously from the more "traditional" uses presented so far, and also perfectly reflects the dynamic interplay within the association between it and the game being played.
Most songs are monophonic although you often hear what appears to be parallel fourths or parallel fifths. This second voice usually consists of several women singing above the men in a range more comfortable for their voices. And although it appears that the upper part has a harmonic function, in reality the women are simply singing the identical piece a fourth or a fifth higher than the men. Frequently this produces some most interesting cross-relations […]. The percussion accompaniment, 252 beats per minute on the average, includes the use of circular or octagonal deer-skin drums held at the back and beaten with a leather-ended stick. […]. As to the texts of slahal songs, all of the songs in my collection consist of vocables which occur with remarkable consistency from rendition to rendition, even over the course of several years. Each slahal song seems to have definite vocables which go along with it. This might lead to the often heard speculation: perhaps the vocables were once meaningful words which evolved over years of oral tradition.
Many elements in Stuart's research underscore how the development of musical practice is closely intertwined with the ongoing game. For example, the only designated team for singing is the one mixing, actively seeking to confuse the opponents. The sticks pass from team to team depending on the number of guessed rounds, thus forming a kind of rhythmic chorus, a particularly interesting duality musically speaking. Furthermore, the differentiation between the roles of singers points to another element supporting the thesis of the close interrelationship between game and music. Stuart writes: "I have long been skeptical as to whether or not an entire song is in the mind of that individual or leader, at the time he or she initiates the song. One reason for doubt is that the leader will oftentimes hold a single note for a few seconds before proceeding, as if he/she is deciding on a song after having gained everyone's attention." Additionally, the formal structure of the musical performance is closely dependent on the course of the game, on the players' performance involved: "In most circumstances a song continues until the end of a round; the length of the round determines the number of repetitions involved."
These sources represent examples that demonstrate how the contamination between musical elements or sonic language and ludic structures has been widely experimented with across societies, cultures, or institutions, and is therefore present in various situations and modalities, not limited solely to the more or less developed Western culture. It is also remarkable how such mechanisms have reached contexts different from those usually designated for performances, be they ritualistic, social, or otherwise. However, one aspect to consider is the validity of applying the perspective of "intersection between game and music" to the practices described above. It is worth noting that within the cultural context of origin, customs can be one and the same - separating a kind of "layer of play" and "musical layer" in activities could in some cases be artificial and misleading. Furthermore, the assumption that the author writing about a specific traditional musical game is, with high probability, a representative of the described culture, thus multiplies the possible filters and/or interpretations not necessarily embedded within the reality in question. It is necessary to emphasize the need to consider these examples not so much under the lens of an ethnomusicological investigation, the necessities and characteristics of which are distant from the capabilities of the author, but rather as an attempt to demonstrate how certain practices of contamination of disciplines even so distant find fertile ground in different ethnic groups, thus demonstrating a substantial transversality of the practice and its belongingness to the intimate nature of human beings.