What is Music; a Mind Uninterrupted Soulful Intriguing Caravan (MUSIC). Why music: Music can raise someone’s mood, get them excited, or make them calm and relaxed. Music also - and this is important - allows us to feel nearly or possibly all emotions that we experience in our lives. The possibilities are endless. Music is an explosive expression of humanity. No matter what culture we are from, everyone is touched by it. It is hard to find any people who don’t love music. Not all of us can play musical instruments, but anyone can make a list out of it that brings happy memories and raises the spirit. Love the sound of it and listen to it repeatedly. Music could convey all sorts of emotions to people. Music is also a very powerful means to connect with God. Music is the purest form of worship of God and to connect with our soul. Music therapy makes use of music to improve overall health.
Create music, play along with pre-recorded sounds, compose a song, or listen to an instrument. Traditionally used in hospitals, schools, and prisons, you can use it in your daily life for relaxation, to give an energy boost as well as deal with emotional turmoil. Sophie Bold from the British Association for Music Therapy says, “Listening to music, playing a musical instrument or being a part of a choir -all these activities are beneficial, as they help us unwind and feel uplifted. Music can be exciting or
calming, joyful or poignant, can stir memories and powerfully resonate with our feelings, helping us to express ourselves. “The therapy improves the quality of life and allows one to interact better with others. Music is an essential aspect of all human civilizations and has the power to affect society
emotionally, morally, and culturally. When people from one culture exchange music with each other, they gain valuable insight into another way of life. Learning how music and social bonding are tied is especially crucial in times of conflict when other lines of communication prove to be challenging. Music, as a cultural right, may aid in the promotion and protection of other human rights. It can help in the healing process, dismantling walls and boundaries, reconciliation, and education. Around the world, music is being used as a vehicle for social change and bringing communities together. At the core of our everyday experience with music, we use it to relax, express ourselves, come to terms with our emotions, and generally improve our well-being. It has evolved into a tool for healing and self-expression, often dictating how we, as individuals, take steps to impact society. We know from our experience that music in schools improves student, teacher, and community outcomes – and in
turn, society, specifically the future generation. In a case study about our work in Newark, NJ, 68% of teachers reported improved academic performance. 94% of teachers also saw improvement in social-emotional skills. Schools saw better attendance and ELA (English Language Arts) scores. Another example of this is our work in Metro Nashville Public Schools, which has been a partner district of Save The Music since 1999. Students who participated in music programs for up to one year had significantly better attendance and graduation rates, higher GPAs and test scores, and lower discipline reports
than their non-music peers. Hearing music in the recovery room lowered the use of opioid painkillers. Music therapy has been tested in patients ranging from those with intense acute pain to those with chronic pain from arthritis. Overall, music therapy decreases pain perception, reduces the amount of pain medication needed, helps relieve depression, and gives people a sense of better control over their pain. Music therapy is often used to aid improvement in multiple areas of brain function deficit and to improve quality of life, as well as facilitating physical healing. Ragas help cure ailments. Some of the
ragas are widely known and which can be used to treat a host of other ailments. For example, for hypertension: Raga Bageshri, Malkauns, Todi, Pooriya, Ahir Bhairav and Jaijayanti and for hormonal problems and PCODs: Slow songs at a lower to medium octave as in Bhajans help in relaxation. They lead to favourable hormonal changes and cures PCODs. The type of music that’s most relaxing for you depends on your musical tastes. However, some music is designed for deep relaxation using specific frequencies and binaural beats. The fight or flight response is designed to come online when we face difficult situations. Once the stressor has passed, the nervous system switches back to rest and digest as the default setting. But our stressful lives can tip that delicate balance and flood your body with too many stress hormones. Listening to music can activate the rest and digest response by decreasing
stress hormones and releasing reward and relaxation hormones.
There is a caveat, though. The researchers believe the type of music is important and recommend relaxing music, such as classical or smooth jazz. Other studies have found that listening to enjoyable music can improve memory and learning. This may be because music’s repetitive nature helps our brains to form patterns that improve our memories. Not everyone finds it useful to listen to music while studying or trying to retain information, but many people do. The extent to which it helps depends on several factors. These include how much you like the music and how musically trained you are. People with musical training are more likely to find music distracting. Since ancient times, music has been used in war. Whether it was used to motivate troops, raise their efficiency, scare the enemy, or torture them, music has been intertwined with the worst in humanity (as well as the best of us, of course, but for argument’s sake, we’re focusing on the negative part now). Violent songs increase people’s reading velocity of aggressive words, compared to non-aggressive words. By timing how fast people read these words, researchers discovered that after listening to violent songs, people required less time to pronounce aggressive words (e.g., assault, choke). This means that people get easier access to concepts contained in the music they’ve listened to earlier. If someone regularly listens to songs with violent and sexually aggressive content, they’ll be more likely to interpret interactions with a hostile tone. This can lead to a more confrontational response (both verbal and physical) and escalate the situation to an
outcome he or she will soon regret. We can’t continue to be naïve about what we choose to listen to regularly. There’s a tangible risk we should work towards avoiding or at least balance the kind of music we listen to every day.
“Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung.” These are the words told by David Levithan. Some of the greatest music is produced by nature. For example, the sounds made by birds, waves hitting the seashore, waterfalls, flowing water in a stream, rain and so on. How beautiful are those, right? Music produced by nature is highly connected with human emotions. Just like humans have a strong interconnection with nature, the emotions developed within humans are having strong bonding with the music. And that is the reason why many composers, poets, and musicians consider
the music of nature as the foundation of their art. Composers throughout many generations and from all over the world have managed to inspire emotions in the listener’s mind through the portrayal of nature in music.
Time or music, which one is the best healer--a million-dollar question. I preferred Music because I think time is simply a great eraser. It rolls on and on regardless, eroding our memories, chipping away at those great big boulders of misery until there's nothing left but sharp little fragments, still painful but small enough to bear. Music has accompanied human civilisation since time immemorial. Musical behaviour has likely played an important part in forging human social behaviour and continues to do so today. There is still much to be understood about the place of music in human society, as well as the mechanisms that link musical and social behaviours. In the future, we may be able to use this accumulating knowledge to design and engineer new forms of music-making that are specifically intended to enhance social aspects of human interaction. Such an extended research process will
serve as a powerful test of our understanding of the social importance of music and may also serve to help in advancing different kinds of social progress. Ultimately, such a research programme could lead to new forms of music-making. Several healthcare professionals are now harnessing the power of music, which is an art form as well as a therapeutic tool that holds extraordinary promise, in helping people cope with both mental and physical illnesses.
