ABSTRACT
Curiosity about the origin of things is deeply rooted in the historical consciousness of many peoples, from remote past up to our own days; hence, the quest for the origin of things can be considered as a constant in human experience. The quest for the origin of music and its various components in Arabic and Jewish music as it shall be dealt with in this article, is quite different in its nature, terms of reference and approach. Indeed, due to the lack of past evidence and concrete musical documents, the ethnomusicologist has, generally speaking, to base his research on the issue on his and others observations of living musical stylistic features as well as on concepts drawn from social and anthropological theories. The reference to the ‘inventors’ or ‘initiators’ of primordial knowledge and practices is usually in the form of short statements.
