What has music done for you?

Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQlvn-upmfk

How does music make you feel?

It’s hardly an easy–if even possible–question to answer. Still, we all listen to music. We each have different tastes for different voices, genres, styles—but have you ever noticed the way that individual music affects the individual? How that one split second in a song that you haven’t heard in years can bring you back to an event, an emotion? Many are deeply affected by the power of music, and in countless ways.

This revelation can’t be missed, even on these very streets. Performers that I have seen in the subways, in the parks, all attracted—or didn’t attract—an audience. The main audiences that I noticed were, surprisingly, children. More often than not, I noticed that many adults felt uncomfortable openly watching street performers—but children were an entirely different story. More often than not, I saw children staring in wonder at performers, as their parents looked the other way. One such example was the picture from the Delancey Street Station near the dorms. However, every once in a while, I lucked out and saw adults looking along with their kids—such as the picture of the mother and child at Union Square. Street performers aren’t the only avenue through which music calls out, though. Another example is the magic of the concert.

I myself have attended at least a dozen concerts in past years, but one of the first times that I really noticed the effect of music on the people around me was at my third Anberlin concert, this past October. Here, I noticed that even hours before the concert was to begin, there was an electrified feeling to the air–I was not the only one fidgeting frantically, awaiting a night of high energy and amazing music. Once in the concert hall, though, one was able to see the direst human response to music: all around me, people were moving as one, waving hands, pumping fists—no matter what it was, people were recognizing their own emotion, and reacting in turn as those around them did (and, amazingly, in response to only a few instruments and a singer).

One definition of music is “an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.” It’s truly astounding how just a simple organization of sound in time can evoke such a powerful response. There seems to be nothing else that brings people together to the extent that music does—or as universally.

Be it adults jumping in unison in crowded halls, or children leaning out of strollers and laps for a better glimpse of guitars and kazoos, the power of music is quite irrefutable. It is even supported by science: MRIs and other scans have proven that the brain not only becomes more active while listening to music, but its most emotion-related parts, such as the cingulated cortex, are incredibly active?

What does this tell us? Undeniably, whether we recognize it or not, we are all affected, by individuals and as a people, by the power of music.

What has music done for you?