Exploring the magic and mystery of music

Let’s take a breather from all the stressful goings on here and about, and take the time to dwell on something special in life for all of us — music.

Why does music make us feel the way we do? What is the effect of music on the brain itself? Some of us react in a certain way to Bruno Mars, and in another way to Bach or the Bee Gees. There’s new research that tells us of the powerful effects of music on our minds and bodies. So let’s consider the common threads that weave their way through Bach, Bruno, the Bee Gees and the brain, with some links to their music.

First let’s shake up that old theory, that the experts now say is debunked, that listening to music makes you smarter. Mozart or MC Hammer CDs for little kids, a fad not long ago, may not really help with that. But maybe little kids grow from lengthy CDs in other ways. Learning to play a musical instrument, on the other hand, actually helps brain development, even more so with young brains, in ways that can be measured, even photographed.

The reputable neuroscientist, Jessica Grahn, relying on a host of recent studies, reports that the uplifting side of music helps with our cognitive tasks, reduces pain, helps recovery from strokes, and improves symptoms of dementia. She even concludes that working out and exercising with iPods can improve endurance.

When we sit back or lie down and listen to a new album by a favorite artist, we feel unexplained emotions, as if moving away from reality. Why does it make us feel this way, this “organized sound” as scientists describe music?

A study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience in April of 2013, headed by Dr. Daniel Abrams of Stanford University Medical School, explained that music in general, even with all the personal preferences, has a synchronized effect on people’s brains. The brain’s ability to absorb it, and make sense of it, is highly complex. It processes music far more effectively than the most advanced computer (robots take note).

Abrams’ study conducted MRI brain scans on volunteers who all listened to the same symphony music. Despite all the different tastes in music, their listening to symphony music (by composer Wm. Boyce) produced identical effects. It activated brain regions associated with movement, planning, attention and memory. It showed that listening to music is far more than simply processing sound, such as background noise, because it is repetitive, melodious and organized.

To get more technical, we have known that the auditory cortex is the brain part that processes sounds, but music is now shown to activate far more in the brain, including regions connected to memory, movement and emotions.

This brings us to our first musical link, from the Hawaiian born artist, Bruno Mars. Here is a master of multi-instruments, songwriting, singing and dancing. Consider in this video his virtuoso connection with sound, emotions, and especially here, creative movement, entitled “Uptown Funk.”

Then there’s a superb composition of Johanne Sebastian Bach, whose 300th birthday is currently celebrated worldwide. Whoever will be here to celebrate his 600th birthday will embrace his legacy as closely as we do now. A set of notes as simple and as eternal as it title, “Air,” it is widely regarded as one of classical music’s most beautiful pieces. Sadly, Hollywood has played it over a few gory horror movies. But whichever of your brain functions of memory might be activated, try to savor this short work of genius for what it is: 

Governments of warring countries, be they dictatorships or democracies, have used music as propaganda. And visiting musicians, such as the American pianist Van Cliburn, who won acclaim performing in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, have been known, just with their music, to bring people together in spite of their governments.

This calls to mind another professional’s conclusion: that music is a “unifying force that we don’t get from other things.” So says psychologist, Dr. Daniel Levitin of McGill University in his book, “This Is Your Brain On Music.” He explained in a recent radio interview on NPR that music actually “changes your brain chemistry,” with all of the brain areas that it activates, no matter your musical preference.

Levitin also reports that we are attracted to the repetition in music. Our brains are constantly predicting what will happen next, based on a pattern, as with the beat of a song. Thus do we end up moving with music, from tapping our toes to dancing. So link onto this video of an actress of years ago, Rita Hayworth, who danced her heart out on film. But instead of hearing the different music accompaniments actually played when each dance snippet was videotaped, this video shows a collage of her choreographic art from decades ago, with just one remarkable, relatively recent classic, by the Bee Gees. Notice the mathematics of sound and motion that only music, with no time barriers, can bring to life.

Another insight into the marvel of music is found in a beautifully written report in the New York Times of last Jan. 16, about music therapy for the elderly. In the Hebrew Home in Riverdale in NYC, Kaitlyn Kelly, herself a music therapist, teaches residents to sing and even to write their own songs. What’s remarkable about her work is that most of her clients suffer from dementia, many with Alzheimer’s. As they lie in bed quietly, understanding little of what goes on around them, Kelly’s end-of-life music therapy skills, often with a simple song, will jog their memory and bring them to life, singing long forgotten words. Here again, music brings even suffering minds to a new level, a “change in chemistry,” or as a patient’s witnessing son put it, a “strength coming from somewhere,” “a kind of energy” that he “hadn’t seen for a while,” bringing him to tears.

So we see where the recent science of music still takes a back seat to its mystery. With all that’s unexplained about music, we still have a connection with it that is such a part of who we are, of what we do, striving to absorb it wherever we go and whenever we can. To a profound extent, music refines, even helps define, our relationships, our faith, our inner strength and spirit, even our work and workout routines. This “organized sound,” in one way or another, actually shapes much in our lives, literally from cradle to grave. Music gives voice to our perceptions, lies uniquely engrained in our memory, and makes us a part of itself. One of life’s blessings it surely is.