HOW DO YOU DEFINE MUSIC?
It certainly means very different things to different people.
For some, it takes us to another world, a place of emotion that touches your soul, a place where you can just close your eyes and lose yourself; for others, it makes you want to dance and sing, it’s merely feel-good music that you want to put on replay over and over again.
Songs, in particular, contain something profoundly elemental. The singer actually ‘becomes’ the instrument or vehicle of communication and expression.
Through the combination of voice, lyrical content and poetic structure, melody, rhythm, the nuance of combined tonal qualities and phrasing within the breath, singers can transmit and translate thoughts and feelings, potentially elevating and transporting both the singer and the listener to another realm. Music really can lead us into another dimension.
IT MAKES YOU FALL IN LOVE - OR OUT OF IT
Music also tells stories, breaks hearts, reduces us to tears, or seduces us into falling in love, over and over and over again. Music is a universal language - there's no doubt about it.
Music is a mystery, a code - a vehicle of spirit and soul. It is perceived through ‘hearing’ the vibration of sound, the most sublime resonance – from the eardrum to the brain. Music moves us beyond the intellect to the heart-center.
Of course, there’s also bad music. They may make you wince or cringe. For the sake of your ears, you should probably skip that song, then.
Although I wouldn’t quite call myself a music expert, I’m a music lover; and maybe you are too. A discoverer, an explorer. Music is a friend, a companion, a guide and a teacher. A challenge, a landscape, a palette, a texture, a shape. Music is a structure, harmony or dissonance.
DEVOTE YOURSELF
Yet music is also culture from every origin; it is identity and belonging. It is history and invention. Music is remembering and forgetting. Music is symmetry, rebellion, genius, prodigy, mastery, virtuoso, dazzling, breath-taking, spell-binding, and extraordinary.
We have become so accustomed to recorded sound that it has become rather facile and formulaic. When you can access any piece of recorded music at the touch of a fingertip, something valuable gets lost or devalued in the process.
However, this isn’t a bad thing.
A better way to thoroughly enjoy music is to devote yourself to it for a little bit. Appreciate each and everything you hear. Enjoy it as you’ve never heard it before. Don’t take music lightly – although it may be just another part of our day, music can certainly help us relieve stress and overall, be happier.
