More mindful music, less noxious news!

Apr 16, 2017 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols
In a world of growing political angst and social agitation, sharing information is a good thing – a

communal right. But too much of the news we hear and read is bad news, which the media and our people seem to thrive on spreading. We need a foil, if for nothing more than to keep us from failing, and falling into the abyss of doom the very news and the newsmakers are creating. Music may be that foil.
It’s the food of love – also the boon or bane of a slew of other human emotions from the comforting to the chilling. It is claimed that from the fetal stage of development we may be hooked on it, mostly in a positive way. Its interplay with the human brain and human behaviour is so complex and involves so many elements, that it will take a sizeable volume to fully explore even the few aspects that I am touching on here, particularly its ability to placate our innate savagery.
It was playwright William Congreve who, in his 17th century tragedy ‘The Mourning Bride’ wrote these oft-repeated words “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast; To soften Rocks or bend a knotted Oak.” Over time, breast was likely misread and substituted with ‘beast’ by some, hence its now popular usage as a metaphor to show music’s calming effect of the heavy, hostile heart. This characteristic has come under scientific scrutiny, and a Time Magazine article noted that music’s effect on the brain is as worthy of scientific study as any other.
It’s hard to exaggerate this. Research appears to demonstrate that a fetus after the 20th week of gestation may react to music played through headphones attached the mother’s abdomen by increasing the pulse rate, smiling, grimacing, breathing in time to the music, and displaying correspondingly different rates of movement. It would be interesting to find out if this is allowed or encouraged at our local hospitals. I think many adults still react the same way. On the street I am constantly surprised to find myself unconsciously walking to some rhythmic beat coming from a minibus or pushcart.
The first strains of music I recall wafted across from the acoustically-challenged wooden structure that was Stanleyville Methodist School, under the ‘conductorship’ of my headmaster-father in the late nineteen-fifties. For some reason they were mostly English/Celtic folk songs like ‘The Ash Grove’, Oh no John’, ‘Early one morning’, and ‘Down by some Crystal Spring’, a tune that was pure magic to my childish sensibility – all four years of it. Sixty years later, YouTube replicates them endearingly and enduringly.
As the years rolled on, hymns, Christmas songs, and gospel music loomed large, but by the early sixties ‘church music’ had a rival for my attention in the form of ‘dance music’ after my family moved to Georgetown. It was the era of West Indian calypso and American pop, especially Doo-wop. Country and Western songs also appeared, and appealed to the cowboy in me, but after I hit high school my classmates and I had to endure the mild torture of classical music played, I presume, for the benefit of our refinement and our redemption. Out of school though, the evolution of Jamaican Ska to Rocksteady and Reggae caught us in its hypnotic embrace, while Indian ‘movie’ songs allowed for a more exotic touch.
On the local scene, our national songs, folk songs and shantos created a big impression on me, but I wasn’t that much enamoured by our version of Pop songs, partly because of the tendency to sound American, and later Jamaican. Then came the deluge of Disco, Funk, Hard Rock, Rap, Hip-Hop, and finally Dancehall, and my mind began to rebel against aspects I felt were too jarring, disharmonious, and vulgar.
Surprisingly, musicologists and researchers make little distinction between genres and forms when it comes to their soothing, healing, and inspiring impact on the human brain. Neurologists, for example, say that basically music engages and changes the brain in several beneficial ways. It affects cerebral function by engaging emotion, memory, learning, attention, and neuroplasticity, and although soft or classical music may seem preferable to many, Rock and Heavy Metal seem to have similar positive benefits on the brains of listeners.
Emotions are stimulated through specific brain circuits while on a more physical level the cuddle/bonding hormone, Oxytocin, can be released by singing. And just listening to music can heighten emotions which increase the amount of the neurotransmitter Dopamine, that controls the reward and pleasure centres in our brains.
Music bridges the brain and heart, they say, and may help us process emotions like fear, grief, and resentment, even if they are held subconsciously. And illnesses like autism, Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s syndrome, Alzheimer’s, and general dementia can be helped by this subliminal response to music.
From individual patients to entire communities, psychiatrist Anthony Storr in his book ‘Music and the Mind’ observes that a primary function of music is collective and communal, to bring and bind people together. He says people sing and dance together in every culture, and this primal role of music is partly reproduced today in modern gatherings like church, concert, and music festival where the collective excitement and bonding are recaptured. He adds, “In such a situation there seems to be an actual binding of nervous systems; the unification of an audience by a veritable neurogamy.”
One aspect of music/brain research focuses on how productivity is affected in the workplace environment. Again, there seems to be a distinctly positive effect if tasks are well-defined and/or repetitive. This is however not the case when the task is creative or more immersive. Generally though, the piping of ambient music in an office setting or the use of headphones in a ‘computer’ office seems to both give a fillip to workers’ sense of well being and increase productivity.
I won’t dwell on what researchers term music’s dark side, except to say that it seems to be a real phenomenon. The New Yorker in a recent article stated, ‘We resist evidence suggesting that music can cloud reason, stir rage, cause pain, and even kill’ while a 10-year-old study by a California Research Centre suggested that young people who listen to Rap and Hip-Hop (Why those two??) are more likely to abuse alcohol and commit violent acts. (What about Heavy Metal and Dancehall?)
So what does all this have to do with Guyana’s social, political, and economic future?
A lot, or a little; let the musicologists, psychologists, and Human Resource managers work on that. But as our gold is coaxed from subterranean veins, as our hardwoods are felled and our oil is sucked up from submarine beds, as our farmers and labourers bend their backs and our civil servants badger their computers, maybe music can hitch its magic to their minds. (And hearts)
And that would be not only for their benefit, but for the resurgence of such a theme like the one encompassed in what I refer to as our second national anthem, Valerie Rodway’s ‘Oh Beautiful Guyana.’ Now that would be music to our collective ears.

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