As an undergraduate music education major I spend a great deal of time immersed in the collegiate world of music, and it always makes me smile inside when I listen to someone from another major tell me, "Yeah, Becky! I love music! Music is my life!". It makes me smile for a number of reasons. The top three are these:
1. It's immensely gratifying to talk to someone else who's enthusiastic about music, whether they're a trained musician or a casual listener. The conversations we have about our musical tastes or the impact that music has had on our lives are important to me, as every single time I'm able to learn something new about the thing I love most.
2. I spend more than thirty hours focusing on music every single week. I delve deeply into the more complex aspects of musical form and structure, I have intense and engaging conversations with my colleagues and professors, I perform in various ensembles (inside and outside of the university), and I am constantly wondering about the nature and meaning of our art form. It never leaves my mind.
I call this "determined fixation". Some others might call it "obsession"...but tomato, tomahto; the label isn't as important as the fact that it makes me happy. And when I examine music's role in my subjective existence, it really is my life. I can truly relate whenever someone else claims it to be theirs, as well.
3. I find it fascinating that every single person I've met enjoys some kind of music. Even if someone is "not a very musical person", when I mention music, there are specific things about it that people seem to intuitively understand without my having to educate them. In fact, often I find that my "non-musical1" friends know more about some aspects of music than I do. They might be "listening experts" of a particular style of rock or "improv junkies" who get their kicks listening to the highly technical and abstract soloistic work of Coltrane or Dizzy Gillespie. I have friends with no prior musical training who "just know" why their hip-hop beats attract the attention and admiration of their musical community...and I know people in the medical field who've learned that playing a patient's favorite CD while they're recovering from surgery decreases the amount of physical pain that they experience. It's as though we are all inherently musical people, and it makes me happy to know that wherever I go and no matter who I talk to, we will always have the enjoyment of music in common.
This blog is my attempt to explore why music (and not various other types of art) permeates our lives so thoroughly that every person, everywhere, who is physically able to listen to and comprehend the sound that comes through their headphones, enjoys it...and not only do people enjoy it, but a large number of people whom I've met in the past ten or fifteen years claim that "music is my life". Why do people connect with music in such a way that they choose to intertwine it with their very identities? Why do they love it so much?
Why is it that--in a world full of opinions, experiences, and perceptions that are as diverse and numerous as grains of sand--humans, as a whole, are able to agree on the fact that music is great? There must be something inherently human about music if we are all affected by it in such a huge way...or perhaps there is something inherently musical about us. Either way, my goal is to discover why humans are obsessed with (or perhaps I should say, "determinedly fixated on") music...and I plan to use this blog to collect my thoughts on the matter.
Stay tuned (as it were) for more questions, as that is the nature of science and progress. It must always begin with curiosity.
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1: I use the term "non-musical" here because this is how many people refer to themselves. It is an inaccurate (and, frankly, unfair) reference, as we are all inclined toward musical expectation and enjoyment. You don't have to be musically trained to be musically inclined.
