For as long as humans have been on planet earth, music as always been a part of our lives whether we may realize it or not. Music is embedded in our culture, education, lifestyle, collective memory and just in our everyday lives. This is something that will most likely stay with us throughout our lives. Since we have been young there are some songs that have stayed with us such as singing happy birthday, holiday songs or even standing up and listening to Oh Canada every morning. We learn many different songs throughout elementary school, for education purposes or for our enjoyment. As we get older and move throughout our lives, music can also play more a sentimental role, if individuals decide to get married, a special wedding song will be picked, or songs can be used to honour people presently with us or not. A piece of music heard once might be forever joined to a personal sense of a place or powerful sense of memories. Whether we realize it or not music will always be apart of our lives directly or indirectly.
I agree with Brittany's point that music as an integral part of everyone's life. I listened to a CBC Radio show last summer in which they discussed a program to help escaped child-soldiers from Africa and other youth who faced similar oppression.
ReplyDeleteTheir method was to use music to help ease the pain, anger, and other negative emotions associated with their pasts. Children were given the opportunity to sing or play music as a group or perform alone in front of a group. What shocked the Canadian program director was how quickly kids came forward alone to personally express themselves. Kids who had not spoken a word since escaping oppression were suddenly coming forward in front of a group and belting out songs that they had either heard, or were creating on the spot.
What interested me the most was how the program director identified that many sounds are universal. The children's use of major and minor tones made the music understandable even to someone who didn't speak their language - their emotions were universally expressed through musical tone.