Can you feel the Music?
Music underlines many forms of communication, including entertainment. A movie, for
example, without music to set the atmosphere, would never have the same impact as one with
music. The soundtrack sets the tone and suggests the mood of each scene.
Elton John.
Source: Richard Mushet on Wikimedia Commons.
Enlarge picture
Elton John's award winning song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" helped make Walt
Disney's The Lion King the top-selling video of 1995, winning it a Grammy Award for best
original song. The music in the film played an instrumental role in the success of the
production.
The movie was an international success, being translated into 32 languages worldwide. Note,
however, that while the words may have been translated into many languages, the music
stayed the same. The music communicated the emotion of the story to people of every
language, tradition, belief, and age.
Isn't music a powerful influence?
You will hear music in shops to attract prospective customers, music on the radio to entertain
millions of listeners, music in advertising to sell products, and music in private homes to set
the mood for relaxation or partying.
What would a romantic evening between two people in love be without the right type of
music to set the mood? Would you play a military march during dinner with your loved one?
Would you sing a lullaby to mobilize an angry mob?
And music can effect more than the listener. Take a look at these statistics about musicians:
Musicians are more twitchy than violin strings, says a report from the British Performing Arts
Trust. It found that two out of three musicians suffered rapid heart beat, sweating hands,
muscle tension, trembling, shaking, loss of concentration and breathing problems. They are
also anxious, depressed and suffer from joint pain, deafness and 'disobedient fingers.' One in
five are on permanent medication (© The Telegraph London).i
The Science of Music
Scientific and medical research helps us understand how music can so profoundly affect us
physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Music can be used as a treatment for mentally
handicapped and schizophrenic patients. Neurologist
Dr. Oliver Sacks describes one patient of his, whose
symptoms of intense excitement and uncontrollable
movement were treated by music:
By far the best treatment of her crisis was music, the
effects of which were almost uncanny. One minute
would see Miss D compressed, clenched and
blocked, or jerking, ticking and jabbering like a sort
of human bomb; the next, with the sound of music
from a wireless or gramophone, the complete disappearance of all these obstructive,
explosive phenomena and their replacement by a blissful ease and flow of movement as Miss
D suddenly freed of her automatisms, smilingly "conducted" the music, or rose and danced to
it.ii
Read more about music therapy
Music can also have powerful negative effects, as Dr. Neil Nedley tells us:
A study of 121 Midwestern high school students’ music preference indicated that 75 percent
of the girls who preferred heavy metal music had considered suicide compared with 35
percent of the girls who preferred other types of music. Nearly 50 percent of the boys who
preferred heavy metal had considered suicide compared to with 15 percent of the boys who
listened to “non-metal” music.iii
Music affects emotions. It can move us to be more happy, content, peaceful, joyful, and
gentle or it can move us to be more irate, angry, or sad.
With music having such a profound effect on our day to day lives, would it not be wise to
understand this communication tool more fully, so we can make good decisions in choosing
music that will help us get to where we want to go?
Read more about the power of music:
