Music is the universal language of mankind.
-Henry Wadsforth Longfellow, American poet
There is an endless number of quotes which spout the beauty, importance, and ethereal quality of music. This is because music has been a large part of most societies for thousands of years. Believe it or not, music dates back to prehistoric times. The Divje Babe flute, a fragment of the femur of a cave bear, is known as the oldest discovered musical instrument. This instrument was discovered in a cave in Slovenia in 1995 and has been dated as 43,000-60,000 years old. It is difficult to think about how music was created. Were a group of homosapiens sitting in a cave, smacking sticks together and discovering the rhythms they can create? Did the wind whistle so beautifully through the trees people were desperate to recreate the sound themselves? No matter what the reason, music has proven beneficial to humans and our society.
Music serves many purposes to humans. Music tells stories, draws emotions, and inspires. As Amy Thorpe, Lincoln Northeast music teacher, states, “Music is very healing. It is a universal language so it no doubt connects people all over the world to each other [with its] lack of needing lyrics to be expressive.” It does not matter what language a person speaks; music carries messages it does not take a linguist to decipher. This includes instrumental pieces as well as music with lyrics. While someone may not speak the same language as the lyrics they are listening to, the sounds and emotions the music is displaying are often clear. Soft and melodic notes may indicate happiness and youth while long bass notes may indicate a period of depression.
As Deane Alban, health information researcher, writes, “Music affects the brain in many positive ways. It makes you smarter, happier and more productive at any age. Listening is good, playing is even better.” There are various ways music specifically affects the brain. Scientists have discovered happy and sad music can affect how one sees neutral faces. A study performed by Nidhya Logeswaran and Joydeep Bhattacharya, two psychology majors from the University of London, showed how after listening to a piece of music, participants interpreted a neutral facial expression as happy if they listened to a happy piece, or sad if they listened to a sad piece. Another way music affects the brain is how background noise can improve one’s creativity, but this only works for a moderate noise level. As writer Belle Beth Cooper states, “Moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity. In other words, when we struggle (just enough) to process things as we normally would, we resort to more creative approaches.”
Music affects the brain because it can often predict a person’s personality. Dr. Jeremy Dean, a psychologist with a degree from the University College London, performed a study displaying how music genres can be affected by a person’s personality using the basic personality traits of openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. A survey among Lincoln Northeast students found pop, rap, country, and rock music to be the most popular music genres. Based off of Dean’s study, pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease; rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing; country fans are hardworking and outgoing; and rock fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease.
Another benefit of music is how music training can improve a person’s motor and reasoning skills. As Cooper commented on a study performed to prove this theory, “One study showed that children who had three years or more musical instrument training performed better than those who didn’t learn an instrument in auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills. They also tested better on vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills, which involve understanding and analyzing visual information, such as identifying relationships, similarities and differences between shapes and patterns.” Music also helps with exercise. It is quite common for people to wear headphones while they exercise or instead blast music through a stereo system; there is a reason for this. Many claim music to help them focus and feel energized while exercising. Music actually fights for the attention of the brain, drawing focus away from thoughts of fatigue. A 2012 study by C.J. Bacon of Sheffield Hallam University showed that participants who cycled in time to music required 7 percent less oxygen than those who did not while performing the same work.
Music will always be a part of society as it is highly influential. As Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
