I’m so mad.

So, I’m scrolling through X, as you do, and I stumble across this ‘Academic Agent’, a self-proclaimed scholar pushing this premise for discussion:

The replies all reek of racist attempts to rewrite history in favour of white people.

I mean, fine, I’m curious about the racist takes on both sides - left and right - so I usually just browse to see what misinformed nonsense is out there. But the responses to this? Hardly befitting of an academic agent’s fanbase. Naturally, I had to call BS on some users, like, where the feck are you getting these bizarre takes?

Take a look at this gem:

Jazz comes from Irish music, not African, because the pentatonic scale is unique to the Irish? Wtf??

Unless this is some extremely niche troll bot, I’m baffled as to where this information could even come from. The idea that the pentatonic scale is uniquely Irish is bizarre. The pentatonic is famously universal, appearing in every corner of the world, forming independently across human history.

Hell, there are pentatonic bone flutes from China going back 9,000 years or so. Some might argue the pentatonic is hardwired into humans, like birdsong or whale calls.

It’s a fascinating piece of humanity, and it’s worth diving into.

Woven into the Universe

Back when we relied on oral traditions, a simple five-note scale with no jarring tension was the way to spread your jive (No idea if I’m using that word correctly). The pentatonic (think C-D-E-G-A, or Do-Re-Mi-So-La) is perfect for this - unlike, say, the Altered Scale (Do-Ra-Me-Mi-Fi-Le-Te).

Anyone can grasp the pentatonic. But it is curious; why these five notes specifically? Why not a similar set with microtonal tweaks?

It comes down to physics and goes a long way to explain why it’s so humanly universal.

These five notes vibe with the harmonic series. Every sound you hear has a fundamental frequency - the main pitch you hear - and a whole bunch of other pitches - overtones - hidden inside it. This is why the exact same pitch on a guitar string and a banjo string sound distinct from one another, those overtones are multiple waves combining to different extents for each instrument.

In musical terms, if you play one note, all these other notes (and more) are subtly present to varying degrees:

You can also visualise it as a soundwave. Here is the construction of my own voice:

You can see how, although I can only sing one note at a time, there are multiple peaks up and down the piano keys adding together, including the fundamental frequency of B, and an interesting peak, likely a recording artifact, way up in the 20 Khz range (far higher than human's ability to hear).

If you were to remove all the peaks except the fundamental B on the left, you would get a simple Sine Wave. You would not recognise it as a human voice, or even a vowel sound. Just a pure tone.

Musicians can tease out these harmonics by using certain techniques like a guitar’s pinched harmonics or Tibetan throat singing. You can try it by messing with the shape of your mouth while using an electric toothbrush.

Anyway, the closer the relationship of any two notes with the simpler ratios of the harmonic series, the more pleasing it sounds. An octave (2:1 ratio) is super simple. It's the first two pitches in the harmonic series. Pluck two strings, one exactly half the length of the other, and you get an octave. A fifth (3:2 ratio) is just as satisfying and is the third in the series.

Compare those to a tritone, the 11th in the series, with its chaotic 32:45 ratio. Your ear struggles to process 32 cycles of one note against 45 of another before they sync up… It’s just dissonant and tense.

Back to the Pentatonic

The pentatonic scale sticks to the more simple, pleasing ratios making is accessible to even the most primitive among us:

• C to D = 9:8
• C to E = 5:4
• C to G = 3:2
• C to A = 5:3
• C to C = 2:1

Tweak any note even slightly, and you get a grating, wobbly sound. This is actually how we tune a guitar or piano by ear. Just listen for that wobble and adjust until the intervals lock in and the wobble disappears.

So, no, the pentatonic isn’t some Irish or white skin exclusive. It’s baked into humanity, whether you’re white, black, or Cyan (CLM!)

There's actually a whole lot more to unpack here, including our western compromise we call Equal Temperament that might have something to say about all this, so feel free to stick around and I might go into that in more detail soon.

But don't even get me started on the rest of that tweet, let alone all the other dumb takes, or I'll be here all day.

Update: We had a back and forth when he finally got back to me. One highlight was his request: Can you even provide one example of Africans using the pentatonic scale?

Which I did in about four seconds. Then he spent the next 15 minutes wriggling around the fact. After pushing relentlessly, he just called it 'wailing noise' and therefore didn't count, despite it specifically and exclusively using the pentatonic scale.

Ahh, twitter.