Why We Need to Embrace the Magic and Mystery of Music

Listen to this article

Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

Music is a universal language. It has the power to evoke our emotions. It moves us to feel things that we didn’t know we could feel. It rouses us from our apathy and makes us feel exultantly alive.

Why human beings are entranced by an arrangement of sound in time is a little bewildering. How can elements like timbre, rhythm, harmony, and melody have such an overwhelming emotional effect on us?

All we can say with any sense of certainty is that music has always imbued human life with a touch of magic. It can make you cry when you are happy. It can make you laugh when you are sad.

What Is the Connection Between Music and Emotion?

Music can lift our mood or cast it down. How we feel is heavily influenced by the words of a song. Music has a profound effect on our mood. It can make us cheerful or melancholic within minutes.

It plays a vital role in our lives. It’s not just for enjoyment or entertainment, it’s also therapeutic, returning us back to feeling centered when we feel too scattered by everything happening around us.

It has the power to affect how we feel and what we do, whether consciously or subconsciously. In the gym, it can push us through an exhausting workout. At a dance, it can make us feel amorous or gregarious. At a classical concert, it can evoke our sublime nature.

Of course, how you listen to music also makes a big difference. There’s a significant difference between listening to music from a YouTube video and listening to the premium quality of sound emanating from a CD stereo system.

How Songs Impact Brain Activity

Songs have a huge impact on our brain activity. Their lyrics can be a powerful tool to change our mood, helping us either rev up or calm down.

Vocals are an integral part of every culture. They provide emotional comfort, identity, and even memories. A baby boomer, for example, listening to a Beatles song time travels back to their heydays when they were young and passionate about fighting for social justice.

With so much importance placed on music, it’s no wonder that it has a huge impact on our brain activity. From the melody to the lyrics, music is the perfect tool for evoking our favorite memories.

The Charm of Invigorating Music

The blend of spirited music and an evocative song can be transformative. Listening to Tommy Castro and the Painkillers, for example, belting out a spirited blend of good time rock and soul songs pulls you out of a funky mood after a rough day at work. Meanwhile, listening to drummer Santa Davis makes you want to take on the world and play the game of life full out.

An Unexplained Mystery

It’s scientifically possible to explain how music works on the brain. For instance, according to neuroscience, the brain stores information as synapses, which are connections between neurons. The stronger the connection between a song and a memory, the more likely it is that our brain will recall emotionally charged memories. But while this explains how music affects our cognition, it doesn’t exactly touch upon why music has such a profound effect on changing our moods, transforming us rapidly from one mood to another in a matter of minutes.

The ancient Greeks, who viewed music as a gift from the gods, may have been on to something. Although we’re no longer entranced by Herme’s lyre, Athena’s flute, or Pan’s panpipes, we still dig the therapeutic properties of music.

We need music now more than ever to help us break free from the stresses and pressures of our daily struggles and disappointments. Our world is changing around us at an alarming rate. Music helps stabilize us. It interrupts our frantic busyness and gives us refuge with its soulful lyrics and melodies.