We want to interrogate the role of music in our individual and social experience. To seek to discover how music shapes our subjective perception and why the music we listen to is important.
Music is you! Because when you listen to music, your brain is resonating with the external frequencies and rhythms it perceives through your senses. So neurons recapitulate by synchronization to the external sound, within the communication patterns they develop between themselves, the music that surrounds them. Every part of our brain is activated and we immerse ourselves in emotional experience beyond our conscious control. And then our physical bodies become susceptible to movement and dance, to real organic synchronization. So, it is not too bold to say, that when we listen to music, we become the instrument through which the music carries its melody forward. Because all these poetic ways of describing the listening of music find their correspondence in serious scientific studies, validated by consistent quantitative data.
This insight into the impact of music on man as an individual who has a particular physical body, I can say that for me, was revelatory. But to delve deeper into this reality, we need to go further in our investigation. We need to seek to understand how music affects man as a social individual. Many anthropologists and biologists believe that man first discovered rhythm as a sound pattern (e.g. the sound of footsteps), and then through rhythm he developed music and finally language. This is because both music and language have rhythm as their basic unit. They are constructed and manifested through rhythm, and to each specific rhythm there correspond specific neural frequencies. And these neural rhythm sequences are nothing more than rhythm recapitulated at the biological level. There are, however, scientists, such as Dr Connor Wood, who believe that music and language have developed together, and that they are basically expressions of how humans perceive themselves, both as individuals and as members of a community. Language helps us construct symbolic and abstract categories that facilitate communication and lead to order, structure and efficiency, while music brings us together from our singular, yet exclusive languages that we continually practice in our minds. So, from a practical efficiency, as proposed by linguistic logic, music takes things to a socio-emotional logic, where through common belonging we can come to cooperate effectively. Therefore, music becomes the universal language of the human community.
Humans are the only species known to us, biologically speaking, that is able to synchronize in a group through music. Through synchronization achieved in music, especially in ecstatic rituals, as we see in primitive religions such as Voodoo, man overcomes the critical barrier that the prefrontal cortex imposes on him, and in this way relives the sense of trust and social belonging. The secretion of endorphins, which are substances secreted by the body to reduce the sensation of pain, also occurs in such contexts. This also leads to a much higher tolerance to pain, which can be observed in such practices where elements of bodily harm or self-harm occur. The loss of control through music, through the irrational abandonment of a rhythm, has real power over the body.
But where does this desire to lose control, to get out of critical thinking and release oneself into ecstasy come from? It takes courage to have such an experience, because at such times you become suggestible, and the trance-like state that manifests itself on a cognitive level is one of hypo-awareness. In any case, we are not talking in these situations about an awareness of reality and the critical discernment that derives from it. So in such moments you are deeply vulnerable if someone intends to harm you. This is why such states are practiced in groups, where the aim is to strengthen trust at a community level.
Man seeks such states because he is tired, tired of endlessly discerning what is good and what is bad for his life. He is truly exhausted from thinking about his life, from remembering what his priorities are and what he really wants. After all, how many of us really know what we want? We want first and foremost to be, to live, not to die, and that’s where the discussion starts. Some say that man uses about 40% of the energy he has at his disposal for his prefrontal cortex, his decision-making center. That place from which he endlessly sorts the world, so that he can continue unaffected, to pick the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is enormously consuming to use so much energy for such a process, but the main problem is that the product of such used (wasted) energy, namely the illusion of control of the world’s horizon, is addictive and still almost irresistibly powerful, I might add.
But where does this greedy and unrestrained predisposition to overthink one’s own actions come from? Where did this Sisyphean activism of questioning our decisions all the time come from? I began the text by talking about how music envelops individual experience through the neurological system and how the whole body transposes music on an organic level. But isn’t it a burden, in the end, to just be individuals? To be unique and unparalleled, to be just men, just women and never human together, part of a deeper shared identity? Yes, it is, with necessity it is. Man is not able to find his identity only through his social function, not even through belonging to a common body of individuals, such as males, females, children, Romanians or Christians, etc. He needs the sense of community, he needs to have those around him close to him, as different as they are. Otherwise others will become the enemies of his otherness, and mutual differences, which preserve the beauty of individual unicity, will become inaccessible boundaries, which will isolate him from his neighbor, and he will limit himself from the feeling of unity and related cooperation. That which arises from true unity, that which leads to prosperity and common well-being.
The categories that separate us are reinforced by doctrinal rituals, according to anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse. Through them the basic categories and concepts that guide us are remembered, but to bring us back together as a community we need ecstatic rituals. And when I speak of ecstatic rituals, I am not just referring to their primitive and pagan component, where manifestations can take extreme forms. Here I am talking about things that are within the reach of all of us. To be precise: folk dances and folk festivals, the joy of singing in community, whether we’re talking about music around the campfire, or we’re talking about choral music. What’s really surprising is that scientific studies primarily validate the choral experience. So research shows us that people are most likely to synchronize socially when they sing songs together in harmony.
Through music we synchronize as a group, as a social entity. We humans, especially here in the West, tend to have a centrifugal movement. A movement away from the common space, we seek to be exceptional, to realize a unique individual identity and so, beyond the possibility of the other to understand. To counter this excess, we need to exercise a centripetal movement, of remembering at the level of the body, of a common identity, of the original place where we all belong. For life to manifest itself freely and harmoniously, we need to practice both centrifugal and centripetal movement.
We need to know both the song of our individual hearts, but we also need to know the song that the heart of our community sings across generations.
We here at Much To Be TOLD want to warn you about the illusions and lies that un-TOLD wants to sell you. Remember, find out who you are and be free to enjoy life as it is offered to you in the uniqueness of your personality. But choose in equal measure to practice communion with a group of people you know closely, so that you can therefore, love them completely, and not just the parts of them that appeal to you directly. Don’t run after the herd, the one that moves chaotically and the one that elevates its confusion to the level of moral principle. Do not seek cheap, commercial ecstasy! Be yourself, but at the same time seek to belong where reality has given you the joy of individual and community life. Love yourself and love others equally! In this way you will have the chance to let yourself be surrounded by music, in a harmony where diversity is practiced in unity and reality and responsibility accompany good living.
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