Does anyone feel they need to escape from school, politics, the horrors happening abroad or from the corruption within the US?
My answer is to listen to music.
Music has been very much disregarded as something we take for granted but what we don’t realize is that music makes things feel good and special. Regardless of how cliché it sounded, think about it, music is omnipresent everywhere you go from your phone, on your computer (Youtube), shops, events and even elevators and it’s due to those reasons. Music can encourage someone to buy something, perform better, or focus.
News always highlight what is wrong with the world because they think that the “more shocking” the more newsworthy, but that’s not the case. News should also be about recognition of elements which makes daily life worth living.
1. Relaxing
As many of you know, music is useful when stressed because it takes the focus off of your work and into the lyrics or the rhythm of the song. It can make you feel you’re another person and empower you to take initiatives you wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.
In addition, a lot of people are not comfortable with silence and music seems to nicely feel the gap between background noise and tranquility. For example, if we think of non-medicalized therapy, music is applied in: yoga, tai chi, reiki, and many others which use a form of musical background in order for the senses to harmonize with each. If we think about it, relaxation can come from touching (like a massage), earring (music), breathing, smelling (incense or scented candles), thus making music an essential therapeutic instrument.
2. Helps to focus
Along with this, some type of music can help us focus on assignments or on a workout and provides a stamina kick. Rap or hard rock can accelerate the pace of the way you perform a task. For example, I like ironing or doing domestic chores with music because music sets a pace and a limit to how long I want to do the chore.
3. Escapism
Music has helped people cope with tough times which also ties in with the idea of relation or focus.
For example, music can cover a fight in the room next door between your parents, make you think of something else while your mom summons you on what you did last night, or avoid talking to someone.
4. Use for activism
Music brings people and ideas together. Take Jazz for example, it was created in the 1850s by Black Americans and was performed through improvisations, and forged a musical identity. “Some form of music shaped by the black experience in the United States had appeared in both the South and the North by the time of the Civil War” (all about jazz.com)
By contrast, gospel is seen as the Black women’s medium of expression through religious references. It provides a peaceful way to protest, same goes for Anti- war movements which were also punctuated with music (i.e Jimmy Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles). “Bob Dylan opened up that cultural space for an oppositional voice to the Vietnam War during the first half of the 1960s. Initially connected to a folk music revival that was simultaneously a political and cultural phenomena—an attempt at a kind of singing mass movement as the scholar Richard Flacks described it—Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Masters of War” in 1962, the latter as venomous, and self-righteous an indictment of militarism as popular music had seen.”
Contemporary Black American artists also include the fight against white supremacy, mass incarceration, and gendered social biases such as Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Beyonce.
5. Universal themes
If you think about it the most popular songs share the same theme whether it is love, power, defeat, or weakness, but just like most arts, the innovations come from the angle and performance the artists choose to adopt.
6. Essential feature for any media
Music allows those media to create their own brand: for example, CNN has its own music before announcing their breaking news, tv shows have their own trailers and commercials have their own jingles.
7. Is music your “madeleine de Proust”?
The cultural saying “madeleine de Proust” refers to an object, sound, or smell, that reminds you of good times. For Proust it was the French tiny buttery cake “la madeleine” but for you it could be a lullaby, Christmas song, or nursery song that can take you back to places you thought you had forgotten.
On a practical stance, some people have a “hearing memory”, where they memorize better by hearing, rather looking or writing. A good example is learning the alphabet: the stepping stone of writing is taught through a song.
Music mark historical events such as national hymns, opera also make for the memorialization of an event. In France, la Marseillaise is more than a song since it marks its independence from the monarchy.
8. Beautiful skill
Learning how to play an instrument or singing, is often undervalued, but it one of the most valuable skills one could have. It is not surprising; it has been promoted at school “54% rated the importance of arts education a "ten" on a scale of one to ten” (spreadmusicnow.com).
Learning how to play an instrument requires discipline of your hands, posture and brain which are often praised by the people who don’t know how to play or sing.
9. Part of being disciplined and a well- rounded person
Knowing about your music history from Chopin, Back and Mozart but learning an instrument also goes with hours of practice until you get it right
86% agree an arts education encourages and assists in the improvement of a child's attitudes toward school (spreadmusicnow.com). Not to mention, that it allows you to learn a new universal language of music and trains parts of your brain you wouldn’t exploit otherwise. In one study, three-year-olds were split into two groups. The first had no special training in, or exposure to music. The second group studied piano and sang daily in chorus.
Eight months later the musical three-year-olds were much better at solving puzzles. They also scored 80% higher in spatial intelligence than the other group. There's also anecdotal evidence that listening to music, especially from Mozart's era, can help you study and learn better. (streetdirectory.com)
10. Creativity and self-improvement
Once people master, their skill or instrument they can go on creating their own pieces which are original and personal. They convey a person’s feelings or life experience and can have a very therapeutic impact on someone.
Those were my top 10 reasons why I value music but there are many more.
