Is Music Important?
As a music major, I’m no stranger to receiving dubious comments about pursuing this profession, comments from strangers and family alike. It’s been kindly suggested to me that I double major “just to be safe”. I’ve even been sent an article about why pursuing one’s dream isn’t a good thing.
On the other hand, I’ve known plenty of musicians themselves who, after many years and tons of money spent on perfecting their craft, come to believe that what they are doing is pointless.
When I first began my undergraduate degree in clarinet performance, I struggled to come up with a more meaningful reason to pursue music other than simply loving it. Up until then, I had thought my whole life I would go into a STEM field and do something widely recognized as “meaningful” to the world.
A wonderful teacher and mentor once told me in a lesson that music is useless but it is far from meaningless. That sentiment tied all of my dubious and optimistic thoughts together. Music is meaningful to me — which is reason enough to pursue it — but it is also so meaningful to others.
Did you know the earliest discovered musical instrument, the bone flute, dates back 40,000 years ago? Music is simply part of who we are. It is made by all people and cultures across the world. Yet, so many music and arts programs in public schools and even higher education are losing funding if not being eliminated completely. It’s a huge shame at best and harmful to society at worst.
So why is music important?
We’ve all heard about the social and cognitive benefits music has on the brains of babies and children. There are numerous studies out there about how music education has long-lasting positive effects on our verbal and literary skills, improves our motor skills and memory, and even strengthens our abilities in mathematics. Making music together with other people has been shown to increase the amount of oxytocin in our brains. This hormone is linked with empathy, trust, and relationship-building. Sensitivity to pain and the stress hormone, cortisol, have also been shown to decrease when making music together.
“Music is a social glue that clearly enhances our sense of mental well-being,” said neuroscientist and musician Alan Harvey in his presentation at TedxPerth.
Great. But beyond those studies that are used to convince school boards why they should continue investing in their music programs, why is music so important to us?
As I was reminded by a great School of Life article on music, we are incredibly emotional beings, yet so many of our emotions remain below the surface, never receiving the conscious attention they need. This could be because we are busy running from work to home to the gym and then watch TV or are simply too tired for deep self-reflection in our free time.
Whatever the reason, profound emotions with the potential to provide great insights often lie latent below the surface: emotions of grief, compassion for humanity, love of the experience of living, self-hate, etc.
This is why music is important. It amplifies these emotions and encourages us to indulge in them, the good and the bad.
A particular piece or song could amplify a faint feeling in us of loving others or the feeling of optimism for the future. It could amplify a feeling of pain and encourage understanding of how we hurt someone.
Music makes us less lonely. There’s something about beautifully sorrowful music that allows you to silently indulge in the expression of your own pain. When we are feeling down, lost, pessimistic, or misunderstood, music reminds us of the normality of pain. It fights against the false optimism created and expected by our society.
On the other hand, some music has us dancing or singing along, and by the end, that little annoyance from this morning suddenly doesn’t seem so irritating. Music can put things into perspective and allow us to become more appreciative of what matters.
There’s something unexplainable about why music affects us as it does. It allows us to feel connected to, compassionate for and even loving of ourselves and one another. It connects us with our emotions, humanity, and the experience of living. A world full of people more in tune with themselves and with others will be more informed, compassionate, and innovative in the best ways.
Just for fun, here is one of my favorite pieces of music by my favorite composer: the first movement of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony №6 in F major.
Mia holds her B.M. in Clarinet Performance from Indiana University and is currently pursuing her master's in this field at California State University in Fullerton. With her writing, she aims to shed light on the less conventional and less discussed aspects of being a modern musician.
