Editing Sigil:Gholibin (section)

== Music and Memory ==

Music is one of the oldest and richest Gholibin arts. Outsiders frequently notice the instruments first because many of them are loud, peculiar, or constructed from materials other peoples would not have considered musical. The deeper importance of Gholibin music, however, lies in the extraordinary range of purposes to which sound has been put.

Gholibin play because they enjoy music. They dance, celebrate, mourn, compete, accompany stories, entertain children, mock one another, and make noise simply because making noise together is pleasurable. Weddings have music. Funerals have music. Feasts have music. Work often has music. An evening around a Hearth may produce musicians without anyone having formally announced a performance.

Over the centuries, however, the Gholibin also learned that rhythm and melody are exceptionally good tools for carrying information. A spoken instruction can be forgotten or altered. A familiar sequence fitted to a melody is harder to lose. A shouted command may disappear amid battle or confusion, while an instrumental signal can travel over considerable distance. A long history is easier to preserve when its structure tells the singer what should come next.

From these observations developed one of the defining characteristics of Gholibin civilization: the use of music not merely to express experience, but to '''store, organize, and transmit knowledge'''.

There are songs for teaching, remembering, working, warning, and finding routes. There are songs whose verses list useful plants or dangerous ones, songs that preserve the order in which a task must be done, and songs that coordinate groups performing the same labor. Children sing games whose apparently nonsensical verses turn out years later to contain useful information. Not every such composition is treated with reverence. Some are simply irritating jingles.

That is often why nobody forgets them.