Before literacy became the measure of education, aural traditions were. Our first libraries, if you will, were places of listening: the supper table, bedside, churches, town squares. While in Hawaii to record chants for the Smithsonian, I learned that until the nineteenth century Hawaiians had no written language. Their entire library was chanted. A single chant, such as the Kumilipo, or creation chant, tells of life arising out of the ocean and onto land. It runs more than 2,000 lines.

Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence-…, loc. 367