Advertisement

Music is our GPS, so we need to support it

By Huib Schippers from Griffith University

Music is not essential for humankind. Unlike air, food, physical safety or reproduction, music is not a precondition for survival of the species. We are unlikely to ever read that the cause of death of a healthy young person found lifeless somewhere in an apartment was “music deprivation”.

Yet virtually all people in the world passionately engage with music. Almost every culture has music of some kind, and more often of many kinds. Some have moral or religious restrictions on music, others flaunt it whether you want to hear it or not. What is music to some is horrible noise to others: across cultures, generations, corridors …

But still, all humans (except for those with a rare affliction known as amusia) have the amazing capacity to structure and make sense of the complex sounds, timbres, pitches and rhythms (and often words) that we tend to qualify as music.

Amsterdamize

Finding a definition for music is challenging, though. It seems to slip away as we try to grasp it too closely, and has for thousands of years. Not all cultures even have a word for it. Indeed, trying to put into words what music is may be nigh impossible because of its very nature: diverse, multifaceted, and ultimately intangible.

In order to understand its prominence in our lives, it may be more fruitful to consider what music does. To make my point I would like to argue that music primarily serves as people’s Global Positioning System (GPS), an essential tool to define ourselves and our place in our environment. Let’s consider this proposition:

As children we learn from our parents, interact with our peers, express our creativity, comfort ourselves, and start to make sense of the world through music. As teenagers we emphatically seek to construct our identity through our individual or collective choice of music (often to the horror of our parents’ finely-tuned ears).

Ed Yourdon

Every new generation seems to invent a new genre to achieve this: from the sensuality of crooning to the anarchy of punk to the sexism of much rap.

As lovers we try to lure future mates (I Want to Hold Your Hand), celebrate our conquests (Tonight I’m Loving You), bitterly condemn (I Will Survive) or beweep (Without You) passions lost. Much music across genres with broad appeal is based on intensity and turmoil, from blues to country music to Italian opera.

Remarkably, we rarely sing about the extended calm joy of stable relationships, although The Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-Four comes close.

Intimate connections

We also use music to establish and celebrate links with our families, our ancestors, and our communities, as in much African music. We mark our ties to our country, in ways that range from national anthems to Aboriginal song. We use music to connect with our favourite places: spiritually, emotionally, or playfully.

epiclectic

We embrace our friends and allies through song and criticise those who we feel do wrong, at a personal level, or in more general terms through protest songs. We use music to dispel fear from early childhood, and try to scare our enemies, on the battlefield (Turkish military music is an impressive example) or in the football stadium (We are the Champions).

We use music to connect with the divine or the spiritual, whether as a shaman invoking healing spirits, Bach calling out to Jesus Christ, or Janis Joplin pleading: “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”.

We all have music we hold very dear. It allows us to withdraw, go on journeys, feel intense emotions: very real in some sense, but at the same time delivered wondrously free from the actual grief, torment, or suffering it may refer to.

Even the most self-avowedly “unmusical” among us treasure their music collection. Many who don’t read or play music will claim a lack of musical sense or distinction (especially in the West). Yet, offer to exchange their CDs or MP3s with a random other collection of equal size and they will be up in arms.

The music we choose allows us to celebrate our humanness in the intimacy of our headphones or the exuberance of the Last Night of the Proms. It nurtures us as individuals, as members of communities, as inhabitants of this planet.

Nadja von Massow

In political debates, we are often told we need stronger economies, infrastructure, borders, education, and health care. All those are worthwhile. But in the complexities of the 21st century, it is perfectly possible to feel completely lost with all of these in place. That is where the arts come in, as a place to reflect who and where we are.

Let’s get engaged

We know of no great civilisation that did not have a thriving arts scene. In fact, we tend to remember great artists more than influential politicians or successful business people of any era. In addition to its own substantial economic value, music has the power to provide a sense of belonging and connection to others, and through that feed into sustainable development.

Gresham College

I think it is naïve to claim that music can be great in itself, without any outside reference: it is great because of how we engage with it. It is even more silly to see music as something instrumental: to make you smarter, more docile, more likely to buy.

These are side-effects at best, largely unproven and mostly undesirable to make a case for music.

Music is what it is in the world because of what it does for people. That should be ample reason for leaders of countries, institutions, organisations, and communities to keep supporting music in its myriad functions, roles and incarnations.

Music has always needed and found the support of those who were in a position to do so: temples, churches, courts, corporations, philanthropists, civil servants, teachers, elders, and politicians. The IMC World Forum on Music, which is being held in Australia for the first time, is the perfect place to remind all those in this delicate ecosystem to play their part in the future of music.

The 5th World Form on Music of the International Music Council will take place at Queensland Conservatorium and the surrounding Parklands from November 21-24. Registration and event tickets still available.

Professor Huib Schippers is the Chair of the Music Council of Australia, Chair of the WFM5 Program Committee, and Director of Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University.

The Conversation

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Stay informed, daily
A FREE subscription to The New Daily arrives every morning and evening.
The New Daily is a trusted source of national news and information and is provided free for all Australians. Read our editorial charter
Copyright © 2024 The New Daily.
All rights reserved.