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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7191966" data-attributes="member: 4937">Change your cultural sensitivities.Bards have their root in the Kalevala, and in Northern European culture in antiquity in general.&nbsp; In that cultural, music was magical.&nbsp; Warriors went into battle singing songs of doom to dismay their foes and instill themselves with courage.&nbsp; The closest in modern culture comes to that sensibility is the relationship of the Scots to the bagpipes or &quot;battle pipes&quot; as they would once have been known, although the idea that you support your soccer team by singing is probably related.&nbsp; Steeped in those cultural values, in 'The Lord of the Rings' when the Rohirrim charge the Pelanor Fields, they entire host breaks out into song.&nbsp; They continue this song until their battle-leader, who has initiated the charge with the chant, &quot;Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises!&quot; and the blowing of a horn (which bursts asunder with the power of his voice), at which point they switch to a chant repeating the word, &quot;Death!&quot; Peter Jackson kept much of that scene as it was in the book, and as a result it is (when he sticks to the scene as written) one of the least silly and best remembered scenes in the whole movie.&nbsp;&nbsp; But one concession he made to the sensibilities of the audience, is he has the music stirring in the background, and not being voiced by the Rohirrim themselves - possibly for fear the Rohirrim singing out their joy of battle would have seemed 'silly'.&nbsp; But imagine you live in a world without recorded music.&nbsp;&nbsp; Does not the sound of the singing as the horsemen charge down at you seem as epic as the soundtrack of an action movie, and is it hard to imagine that those riders might believe that the one of their number with a particularly loud, beautiful, and powerful singing voice is doing more than just leading the song, but working a real magic to inspire you in battle, protect you from harm, and dismay your enemies?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7191966, member: 4937"] Change your cultural sensitivities. Bards have their root in the Kalevala, and in Northern European culture in antiquity in general. In that cultural, music was magical. Warriors went into battle singing songs of doom to dismay their foes and instill themselves with courage. The closest in modern culture comes to that sensibility is the relationship of the Scots to the bagpipes or "battle pipes" as they would once have been known, although the idea that you support your soccer team by singing is probably related. Steeped in those cultural values, in 'The Lord of the Rings' when the Rohirrim charge the Pelanor Fields, they entire host breaks out into song. They continue this song until their battle-leader, who has initiated the charge with the chant, "Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of Theoden! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises!" and the blowing of a horn (which bursts asunder with the power of his voice), at which point they switch to a chant repeating the word, "Death!" Peter Jackson kept much of that scene as it was in the book, and as a result it is (when he sticks to the scene as written) one of the least silly and best remembered scenes in the whole movie. But one concession he made to the sensibilities of the audience, is he has the music stirring in the background, and not being voiced by the Rohirrim themselves - possibly for fear the Rohirrim singing out their joy of battle would have seemed 'silly'. But imagine you live in a world without recorded music. Does not the sound of the singing as the horsemen charge down at you seem as epic as the soundtrack of an action movie, and is it hard to imagine that those riders might believe that the one of their number with a particularly loud, beautiful, and powerful singing voice is doing more than just leading the song, but working a real magic to inspire you in battle, protect you from harm, and dismay your enemies? [/QUOTE]

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