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      Duane Eddy, Whose Twang Changed Rock ’n’ Roll, Dies at 86

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      A self-taught electric guitar virtuoso, he influenced a generation of musicians. One of them, John Fogerty, called him rock’s first guitar god.Duane Eddy, who broke new ground in pop music in the 1950s with a reverberant, staccato style of guitar playing that became known as twang, died on Tuesday in Franklin, Tenn. He was 86. The cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of cancer, said his wife, Deed (Abbate) Eddy.Mr. Eddy had tremendous success as a strictly instrumental recording artist in the late 1950s and ’60s, selling millions of records worldwide with growling, echo-laden hits like “Rebel Rouser” and “Forty Miles of Bad Road.” In the process, he played a major role in establishing electric guitar as the predominant musical instrument in rock ’n’ roll.Mr. Eddy influenced a multitude of rock guitarists, including George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen, whose plunging guitar lines on “Born to Run” pay homage to Mr. Eddy’s muscular fretwork.“Duane Eddy was the front guy, the first rock and roll guitar god,” John Fogerty, the founding lead singer and guitarist of Creedence Clearwater Revival, is quoted as saying on the Rhino Records website.Mr. Eddy, who was self-taught, devised his rhythmic melodicism by playing the lead lines on his recordings on his guitar’s bass strings and by liberally using the vibrato bar. He never learned to read or score music, but he had a strong ear for pop idioms, including country, jazz, and rhythm and blues.Mr. Eddy in a publicity photo from 1958, the year his rollicking “Cannonball” charted in both the United States and Britain.PoPsie Randolph/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesHe also had a knack for studio experimentation; at one point he brought a 2,000-gallon water tank to a session and placed a speaker inside to simulate the effects of an echo chamber.“I like exploring different textures on tracks in the studio, and different arrangement ideas,” Mr. Eddy said in a 2013 interview with Guitar Player magazine, which had honored him in 2004 with its Legend Award.“For me,” Mr. Eddy went on, “it’s not just playing the instrument, it’s also making the record. I guess a better way of explaining it is that I don’t write or arrange songs as such. Instead, I think of it as writing or arranging records. My sound is the common denominator that pulls all the threads and knits them together.”Easily recognizable, Mr. Eddy’s signature approach to the guitar accounted for 15 Top 40 pop hits from 1958 to 1963. “Because They’re Young,” a string-sweetened record, appeared on the soundtrack of the 1960 movie of the same name that starred Dick Clark and Tuesday Weld. More characteristic of Mr. Eddy’s gritty playing was “Cannonball,” a rollicking instrumental that reached the pop Top 20 in the U.S. and the Top 10 in Britain in 1958, and “(Dance With the) Guitar Man,” a 1962 hit that featured a female vocal group on the chorus. “The Ballad of Paladin,” a loping instrumental, was used as the theme for the CBS television series “Have Gun — Will Travel.”Most of Mr. Eddy’s albums from the late 1950s and early ’60s incorporated a variation on the word “twang” in their titles. This one, released in 1960, was co-produced by his frequent collaborator Lee Hazlewood.Jamie RecordsMost of Mr. Eddy’s early recordings were made with the producer and songwriter Lee Hazlewood and released on the Philadelphia-based label Jamie Records. The Rebels, his backing band, boasted several members of the celebrated West Coast studio collective known as the Wrecking Crew including the guitarist Al Casey, the saxophonists Jim Horn and Plas Johnson, and the keyboard and bass player Larry Knechtel.Most of Mr. Eddy’s albums from the late 1950s and early ’60s incorporated a version of the word “twang” in their titles.Mr. Eddy was born on April 26, 1938, in Corning, N.Y., a small town in the south central part of the state, and started playing the guitar at the age of 5. His father, Lloyd, drove a bread truck and later managed a Safeway grocery store, and his mother, Alberta Evelyn (Granger) Eddy, managed the home. The family moved to Tucson, Ariz., when Duane was 13, and then to Phoenix, where he met Mr. Hazlewood and they began their musical partnership.He acquired his first custom-made Chet Atkins-model Gretsch guitar when he was 16. He made his first recordings — as half of the duo Jimmy and Duane, with the pianist Jimmy Delbridge (who later recorded under the name Jimmy Dell) — the next year.Mr. Eddy on “American Bandstand” in 1958. A year earlier, he had begun touring with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesIn 1957, Mr. Eddy began touring as a guitarist with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars, and he began releasing recordings under his own name shortly afterward.Mr. Eddy and Mr. Hazlewood parted ways over a contract dispute in late 1960, though they later reunited to work on projects. Mr. Eddy signed with RCA shortly after.The hit singles had stopped coming by the mid-1960s, but Mr. Eddy continued to release instrumental albums, including “Duane Does Dylan,” a collection of covers of songs written by Bob Dylan.The rockabilly revival of the next decade gave rise to renewed interested in Mr. Eddy’s work. The 1970s also saw Mr. Eddy producing albums by Phil Everly and Waylon Jennings, whose widow, Jessi Colter, was married to Mr. Eddy from 1962 to 1968.Mr. Eddy’s music was introduced to yet another generation of fans in the 1980s, when the British synth-pop group Art of Noise released an avant-disco reworking of his 1960 hit version of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn,” with Mr. Eddy on lead guitar. It won a Grammy Award for best rock instrumental performance in 1987.Mr. Eddy plays guitar at the 2009 Country Music Hall of Fame Medallion Ceremony in Nashville. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.Ed Rode/Getty ImagesMr. Eddy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the same year that his original hit recording of “Rebel Rouser” appeared in the movie “Forrest Gump.” “The Trembler,” a track he wrote with Ravi Shankar, was featured in Oliver Stone’s 1994 film, “Natural Born Killers.” He was also inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2008.In addition to his wife, Mr. Eddy is survived by three children, Linda Jones and Chris Eddy, from his first marriage, to Carol Puckett, and Jennifer Eddy Davis, from his marriage to Ms. Colter; a sister, Elaine Scarborough; five grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.Unlike many instrumentalists, Mr. Eddy said, he never seriously considered expanding his musical résumé to include vocals.Elaborating on the subject to Guitar Player in 2013, he recalled an interview with Conan O’Brien at which he was asked, “Duane, you’ve been in this business for many years now; what do you consider your greatest contribution to music?” He answered, “Not singing.”“I never felt that I had a good voice for singing,” he went on. “When I was young, this frustrated me a lot, so I took it out on the guitar.” More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Bass

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      Writers, scholars, radio hosts and musicians, including the bassist Ron Carter, share songs that shine a light on an instrument that lays the foundation of jazz.There’s a clip circulating on social media where Charles Mingus, arguably the most famous jazz bassist of all time, is asked what he’s saying through his instrument on the bandstand. His answer, profane and hilarious, isn’t fit to print here, but it’s fitting for the so-called “Angry Man of Jazz.” I’ve often wondered if Mingus’s attitude was just his way, or if he felt somewhat underrated compared with others from his era. By and large back then, bassists weren’t bandleaders; Mingus was an anomaly. And that had me thinking about jazz bass overall: While it might be the most unheralded of all the instruments, no composition resonates without it.This month’s feature is all about jazz bass, and cornerstone musicians like Mingus, the “Maestro” Ron Carter and Israel Crosby, whose performance is highlighted twice below. They all made significant contributions to the evolution of jazz. Their work paved the way for newer voices to shine through, including some artists who have chosen a song this month. And because we’re talking about an instrument like the bass, whose trajectory through jazz has been a complicated one, it seemed best to have plenty of the experts — jazz bassists — talking about their favorites.Enjoy listening to these songs highlighting the bass. You can find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own picks in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Luke Stewart, bassist, bandleader and composer“El Haris (Anxious)” by Ahmed Abdul-MalikComing in hard like a Just Blaze track, then settling into a simple but effective melody that takes you on an unexpected journey in itself. Abdul-Malik explored the “East Meets West” concept of fusing jazz and the music of the Middle East over the course of a couple of albums. This one, however, “Jazz Sahara,” is his most successful in my view, and the most potent musically. Johnny Griffin is a standout on this record, letting us know once again that he is the Little Giant, with his saxophone sound towering above the band as he creeps in with his own sample of a previous tune. Jamal Muhammad of WPFW 89.3FM in D.C. first introduced me to both the Johnny Griffin album “Change of Pace” and the Abdul-Malik album in question, blessing me with some insight into the musicians and to the not-so-subtle signifying on the song titles.Ahmed Abdul-Malik, himself a sonic giant, commands the bass and the band with the imagination and the vision to create a truly fused collaboration of a typical U.S. jazz ensemble with an Egyptian one. This configuration, and this track in particular, does the best in my view. One of my favorite bass solos is his here on this track. Recorded a year after the classic “Night at the Village Vanguard” from Sonny Rollins, featuring Wilbur Ware’s bass solo on “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise,” Abdul-Malik’s solo to me has felt like a response. This is where he was able to bring the Vanguard to the Pyramids.Listen on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Ron Carter, bassist and bandleader“But Not for Me” by the Ahmad Jamal TrioIsrael Crosby’s bass lines on “At the Pershing,” in Chicago, are important not just because he’s on it, but because he made Ahmad play that way. He made the piano player not play. From then on, every bass player had to learn that bass line for the entire song — every Motel 6 player, every Birdland player, had to know it because it was so popular — including yours truly. And he made Ahmad Jamal even more important to the music community.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mike Pinder, Founding Keyboardist of the Moody Blues, Dies at 82

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      His expertise on the electromechanical Mellotron helped define the band’s progressive sound in the 1960s and ’70s on albums like “Days of Future Passed.”Mike Pinder, the last surviving founding member of the Moody Blues, whose innovative use of the Mellotron — a predecessor of the sampler — helped make the band a pioneer of progressive rock, died on Wednesday at his home in the Sacramento area. He was 82.His son Dan confirmed the death. He said that his father had breathing difficulties and had been in hospice care for a few days.The Moody Blues were formed in 1964, with a lineup of Mr. Pinder on keyboards, Denny Laine on guitar, Graeme Edge on drums, Ray Thomas on flute and Clint Warwick on bass. The group’s “Go Now!,” sung by Mr. Laine, rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.The Moody Blues at the house they shared in South London in 1965. From left: Ray Thomas, Denny Laine, Graeme Edge, Clint Warwick and Mr. Pinder.Chris Ware/Keystone Features, via Getty ImagesMr. Laine and Mr. Warwick left after the release of the band’s first album, “The Magnificent Moodies” (1965), and were replaced by Justin Hayward and John Lodge. The change in personnel set the stage for a change in direction: from R&B-tinged rock to the psychedelic, orchestral sound that the Moody Blues vividly showcased on their breakthrough 1967 album, “Days of Future Passed.”Mr. Pinder had worked as a tester in the Mellotron factory in Birmingham, England, before the Moody Blues formed. Playing the company’s Mark II model for the first time was “my first ‘man on the moon’ event,” he told the British music website Brumbeat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How a Violin Maker’s Dreams Came True in Cremona, Italy

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      Art of Craft is a series about craftspeople whose work rises to the level of art.When Ayoung An was 8, her parents bought her a violin. She slept with the instrument on the pillow next to her every night.Two years later, a shop selling musical instruments opened in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, her hometown, and An became a fixture there, pelting the owner with questions. “I think I bothered him a lot,” An, now 32, said.As a teenager, she decided she would become a violin maker. Eventually, a journey with twists and turns took her to Cremona in northern Italy — a famed hub for violin makers, including masters like Antonio Stradivari, since the 16th century. There, An, a rising star in the violin-making world with international awards under her belt, runs her own workshop.Ayoung An, a rising star in the violin-making world, at her studio in Cremona, Italy, home to famed masters like Antonio Stradivari. Set on a quiet cobblestone street, An’s studio is bathed in natural light and filled with books and piles of wood chunks that must air dry for five to 10 years before becoming instruments or risk warping. She shares the two-room studio with her husband, Wangsoo Han, who’s also a violin maker.On a recent Monday, An was hunched over a thick 20-inch piece of wood held in place by two metal clamps. Pressing her body down for leverage, she scraped the wood with a gouge, removing layers, her hands steady and firm. She was forming a curving neck called a “scroll,” one of the later steps of making a violin or cello. On this day, the violin maker was immersed on a commission for a cello, which shares a similar crafting process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Tuba Thieves’ Review: The Real Meaning of Listening

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      In this film, the artist Alison O’Daniel uses the theft of tubas from Southern California high schools as a central hub in a wheel with many spokes.To hear a tuba is to feel it. The vibrations pulse through your body, and its giant bell is even designed to make the air shudder a bit. A tuba is also much harder for a thief to pilfer than, say, a piccolo, or even a trumpet. Yet from 2011 to 2013, tubas started disappearing from high schools in Southern California, for no obvious reason and with no explanation.The news of the tuba thefts formed a jumping-off point for the artist Alison O’Daniel, who used it as the central hub in a wheel with many spokes. The resulting film, “The Tuba Thieves,” is kind of a documentary — or at least, it has documentary elements. But there are re-creations and a dramatized story with fictionalized characters woven throughout as well, all exploring the role sound plays in our world, both for those who take it for granted and those to whom access is denied. O’Daniel, a visual artist who identifies as Deaf/Hard of Hearing, has a keen interest in sound as an integral element of human life, and “The Tuba Thieves” expands that query in many directions.The result, admittedly, is not particularly easy to follow. “The Tuba Thieves” is not very interested in explaining itself; its connective tissue is an idea, an exploration, and it’s designed to be more absorbed than understood. But for the patient audience, it’s richly illuminating. The film is open captioned, so no matter how you see it, you’ll see descriptive text onscreen. Sometimes that text interprets sign language — in fact, the title credits are signed by a character, Nyke (Nyeisha Prince), and much of the film’s dialogue is in ASL. Sometimes the text describes sounds. And sometimes it’s a little cheeky; “[ANIMALS GROWL],” one caption reads, and then is immediately replaced by “[MACHINES GROWL],” with images to match them both.Nyke, who is Deaf, is one of the film’s main recurring figures. Scenes with her father (Warren Snipe) and her partner, whom the film only calls Nature Boy (Russell Harvard), unpack her fears about becoming a parent — what if something happens to the baby, and she can’t hear it? — and the joy she takes in music. Another of the film’s characters is Geovanny (Geovanny Marroquin), a drum major at Centennial High School, from which tubas have been stolen; the theft affects the marching band’s performance as well as Geovanny’s life. Both Nyke and Geovanny are based on the actors’ lives, but you can clearly sense the truth coming through: that sound hearing is one thing, but listening is another.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Paul McCartney’s Lost Bass Guitar Was Found Five Decades Later

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      The Höfner violin bass that accompanied the Beatles to fame went missing more than 50 years ago. Two journalists and a Höfner expert were determined to find it.No one seemed to know what had happened to one of the most important bass guitars in music history, though in the decades since it went missing there had been some dramatic rumors.Was the Höfner violin bass, which had accompanied Paul McCartney and the Beatles to worldwide fame, tucked away in a private collection? Had it been secretly shipped to a wealthy fan in Japan?It turned out the bass was passing time in a more unassuming locale: the loft of a family home in East Sussex, England. The family reported the guitar in late September, after a couple of journalists and a guitar expert started a new campaign looking for it in 2023, more than 50 years after it was last seen.The guitar, which has been authenticated by its manufacturer, has been returned to Mr. McCartney, according to a statement posted on his website on Thursday. “Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved,” it said.It was the denouement to an enduring mystery that had gripped Beatles fans, including one group who pooled their skills to help find it.‘It started Beatlemania’The Höfner 500/1 guitar is a precious part of Beatles lore. It can be heard on recordings of hit songs including “Love Me Do,” “She Loves You” and “Twist and Shout.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I Started Playing My Sax Outdoors. Then the Fans Came.

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      When your rehearsal space is the bank of the Hudson, the audience is a bit unconventional.It was Year 2 of the pandemic, in the spring, that I hit on the idea of having my high school saxophone refurbished. My 48-year-old horn came back from the repair shop in Midtown Manhattan a week later. I put it together in my Upper West Side apartment and … for the love of God, it was loud. A couple of days later, I saw my downstairs neighbor in the lobby, and he asked, “Is that a sax I hear?” He professed to be OK with my rudimentary jazz stylings, but I was uncomfortable.My building is directly adjacent to Riverside Park. The day after that encounter, I walked 10 minutes down to the bank of the Hudson, found an arrangement of boulders where I could put my case and started to improvise to some 1960s soul jazz playing through my headphones. I was loud. Gloriously, triumphantly loud. Within minutes, bike riders and strolling couples stopped to listen. Some took photos. After that, I took my sax to the park almost every day. Over the next few weeks and on through this summer, paddleboarders, canoers and motorboats on the river hove to the shore to listen for a few minutes. When the traffic on the nearby West Side Highway ground to a halt, I got a round of applause. I had at least two cameos on Instagram.I find it hard to practice inside now, even in my building, where the jazz pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn once lived. It’s inhibiting. I miss the expansiveness of playing outside. And I’ve found nature surprisingly attentive, despite the noise. Robins and sparrows — and only one word is possible here — flock to me as if I’m St. Francis of C Minor. Squirrels stand on their hind legs and fix me with hard stares, like miniature critics. My most cherished fan, though, was Zippy, a goose with whom I had a prior relationship. (My wife is known as the Goose Lady of Riverside Park, but that’s a subject for another essay.) One summer day, Zippy and his extended family were paddling south down the Hudson but then circled back and flew up to the riverbank next to me. Zippy sat there quietly for the next 45 minutes until I packed up to head home. There is nothing more satisfying than entertaining a goose you’re fond of.But, of course, it’s the interactions with people that mean the most. Little kids in matching T-shirts on day-camp outings are delighted. They clap for the noisy man. The guy with the wild hair, eating a sandwich on a nearby bench, loved it too. “Do you know Hall and Oates?” he asked. “You should learn ‘Maneater.’ You could make a lot of dough playing that. Hey, if you need some grub, that church on 99th is pretty good.” I wasn’t sure if I looked like I could use a square meal or just sounded like it.Robins and sparrows — and only one word is possible here — flock to me as if I’m St. Francis of C Minor. To be honest, I stink. This is not humble-bragging. I’m just realistic about my abilities. I imagine that for many people, what I’m playing sounds “jazzy.” (Common questions from passers-by: “Are you professional?” “Do you play in a club someplace?”) But if I showed up at Smalls, the Greenwich Village jazz spot, for one of their jam sessions, and someone said, “Let’s do ‘How High the Moon’ in D flat,” it wouldn’t take more than a few measures for the drummer to toss one of his cymbals at me. (It happened to Charlie Parker in Kansas City in the 1930s, although he went on to great things.) I’m OK with simple chord progressions or, better yet, just wailing to a Jimmy Smith recording. But I still can’t throw in those diminished-seventh licks or tritone substitutions at will. It’s shocking, really, how little I have progressed since fourth grade. I don’t care. When I play outdoors, perfection is neither possible nor expected.In 1960, Sonny Rollins, already one of the greatest tenor-sax players ever, quit recording and appearing in public so he could concentrate on getting better. He was living on the Lower East Side. He tried to practice in a closet (I’ve been there). Still too loud. There was a pregnant neighbor. “I felt real guilty,” he said, according to a 2022 biography. So he walked over to the Williamsburg Bridge and played outside day and night until he returned two years later with an LP called “The Bridge.” I’m not Sonny Rollins, but I can hear progress.I can be pretty jumpy in public. It’s New York: You pay attention (and a sax is not cheap). I was playing a few weeks ago at another spot I like, just off the main path that runs through the upper park. My sax case and music were on a stone wall. At some point, I noticed a man squatting a few feet behind me, fumbling through some kind of bag. I thought, Here we go! He stood up and lurched over to me, his hand raised. And then he said, “Do you want me to put it there?” indicating my open case. He had a few coins in his hand. This guy wasn’t in good shape — maybe under the influence of something, maybe just struggling with life — but he wanted to share what he had.I said: “That’s really nice of you, but I’m just practicing. Keep that for yourself.”“You sure?”“Yeah, I’m sure.” I did two taps on my heart.“I love what you’re doing,” he said, quite emotionally. He gave me a soul shake and then brought me in for a bro hug. “I love you, man.”“I love you too, man,” I said.Really, what I should do is go to the park with a case full of dollar bills and pass them out to the people (and geese) who stop to listen, because I owe them for a music lesson I didn’t know I needed.Harvey Dickson has been a staff editor at The Times since 1997, for the last 16 years at the magazine. He has also worked at The International Herald Tribune in Paris. More

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      A 12,000-Year-Old Bird Call, Made of Bird Bones

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      In flight, the Eurasian kestrel is mostly silent, a small falcon that seems to defy physics as it faces the wind and hovers in midair, tail spread out like a fan. Flapping its wings vigorously, the bird of prey catches every eddy of the breeze while scanning the ground below for quarry.Perched in its breeding grounds, however, the kestrel emits a series of raspy screams, each note a single-syllabled kik-kik-kik. In June, a team of Israeli and French archaeologists proposed that 12,000 years ago the Natufians, people of a Stone Age culture in the Levant and Western Asia, mimicked the raspy trills of the Eurasian kestrel with tiny notched flutes, or aerophones, carved from waterfowl bones.The flutes, which were discovered decades ago at a site in northern Israel but were inspected only recently, may have been used as hunting aids, for musical and dancing practices or for communicating with birds over short distances, according to the study’s authors, who published their paper in Scientific Reports.“This is the first time a prehistoric sound instrument from the Near East has been identified,” said Laurent Davin, an archaeologist at the French Research Center in Jerusalem who made the discovery.The theory is largely based on fragments of seven wind instruments that were among 1,112 bird bones unearthed at Eynan-Mallaha, a prehistoric swamp village in the Hula Valley, which is still an important passageway for the more than two billion birds that annually migrate along the African-Eurasian flyway. The Natufians inhabited the Levant from 13000 to 9700 B.C., a time when humans were undergoing a massive shift from nomadic hunter-gatherers to more sedentary, semi-settled, open-air communities. The society featured the first durable, stone-based architecture and the first graveyards, with funerary customs that changed through time.Seven bird bone flutes from Eynan-Mallaha, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.The Hebrew University of Jerusalem“The Natufians bear witness to a completely crazy period in human history, abandoning the nomadic lifestyle practiced since the dawn of man to settle down in one place,” said Fanny Bocquentin, the lead archaeologist on the dig since 2022. “It’s a big responsibility, a challenge they successfully met, since in a way they gave rise to our way of life and our food regime.”Dr. Davin noted that the settlers of the valley had to find regular sources of food before they even knew how to cultivate them. “Before that time, they relied on game such as rabbits and foxes and gazelles,” he said. The lake and seasonal swamps that nearly covered the valley provided fish and an abundance of birds, most of them wintering waterfowl.The swamp was drained by Zionist pioneers as part of an infrastructure project in the early 20th century, and first excavated by a French mission in 1955. Since then, careful sifting has yielded bones from a wide range of local animal species. The flutes went unnoticed until last year when Dr. Davin observed marks on seven wing bones of Eurasian coots and Eurasian teals. Only one of the instruments was fully intact, and that was all of two and a half inches long.Closer inspection revealed that the marks were tiny holes bored into the hollow bones, and that one of the ends of the intact flute had been carved into a mouthpiece. Initially, Dr. Davin’s colleagues dismissed the holes as routine weathering. But when he subjected the delicate bones to micro-CT scans, he realized that the holes had been meticulously perforated and were spaced at even intervals. The bones had been scraped and grooved with small stone blades, he said, and they bore traces of red ochre and had microscopic wear patterns suggesting that the aerophones had seen considerable use. “The perforations were finger holes,” Dr. Davin said.To test out his theory, a team of archaeologists and ethnomusicologists fashioned three replicas of the intact bone flute. Unable to obtain carcasses of Eurasian coot or teal, the researchers used the wing bones of two female mallard ducks. Blowing into the replicas produced sounds that they compared with the calls of dozens of bird species plying the Hula Valley. The pitch range was very similar to that of two kinds of raptors known to nest in the area, Eurasian kestrels and sparrow hawks.

      The research team determined that the finger holes had been made with a flint tool so precise that the holes could be sealed with a fingertip, the sine qua non of wind instruments. “For the Natufian to produce those flutes was a piece of cake,” said Anna Belfer-Cohen, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She added that the society produced a wealth of tools and highly sophisticated utensils, beaded jewelry, pendants of stone, bone, teeth and shells, as well as engraved bone and stone plaques.The flowering of music-making in the deep past is hotly debated. The oldest flute attributed to modern humans is a five-holed aerophone found in 2008 at the Hohle Fels cave in southwest Germany. Carved from the wing-bone of a griffon vulture, the flute may be 40,000 years old, making it one of the oldest instruments ever found.But some scholars point to a Neanderthal artifact known as the Divje Babe flute that was unearthed 28 years ago in a cave in northwestern Slovenia. That object, a young cave bear’s left thigh bone pierced by four spaced holes, is thought to date back at least 50,000 years. However, other scientists argue that the Divje Babe flute was simply the product of an Ice Age carnivore, possibly a spotted hyena, scavenging on a dead bear cub.Hamoudi Khalaily of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who collaborated on the bird flute study, has said that if the Natufians used the aerophones to flush birds out of the marshes, the discovery would mark “the earliest evidence of the use of sound in hunting.” In other words, the miniature flutes could have produced Stone Age duck calls.Natalie Munro, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, has an alternative hypothesis. “While we’re speculating, maybe the true purpose of the instruments was to communicate with a different animal altogether,” she said. Eynan-Mallaha was also home to a Natufian woman found buried with her hand resting on a puppy. The burial dates to 12,000 years ago and figures frequently in narratives of early dog domestication. “Maybe these bones and their high-pitched sounds were more akin to dog whistles,” Dr. Munro said. “They could have been used to communicate with early dogs or their wolf cousins.”Considering the flute’s harsh tone, few scientists maintain that it was intended as a melodic tool. Still, as John James Audubon observed of a pair of American kestrels, “Side by side they sail, screaming aloud their love notes, which, if not musical, are doubtless at least delightful to the parties concerned.” More