MUSIC?… I THINK I JUST HAD A BRAIN WAVE

“Some­thing touched me deep inside the day the music died” (Don McLean)

Have you ever wondered why music has such a potent effect on our mind, our emo­tions, our brain? The fact it has such a pro­found influ­ence on our well being and men­tal health, listen­ers and artists alike. That old adage about the com­mon link between music and ‘mad­ness ‘. A pro­fess­or at John Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity notes how music provides a total brain workout. It reduces anxi­ety, blood pres­sure and pain, and pro­motes sleep, mood, alert­ness and memory. Our love of music shaped the brains abil­ity to per­form at the highest levels. Even­tu­ally, after many thou­sands of years, it has become evol­u­tion­ary import­ant to us. Music can be cent­ral to our Iden­tity. Think of the times you’ve met people and they’ve very quickly asked what kind of music you like, often look­ing for com­mon ground. That said, music can also stoke up pain. But the joy music brings – not much else in my life can do that.

So music can cre­ate or open up cages of emo­tion­al dis­tress for artists and listen­ers alike. But for the most part has brought solace to me, to the extent that at times it has saved me. When depressed it has giv­en me some­thing with which to identi­fy with. Take Pro­fess­or Green : “You’ve seen me cry, now you’re gonna have to see me hurt­ing, cause pre­tend­ing everything is alright, when it really ain’t, really isn’t work­ing”. Where does such life chan­ging power come from? As neur­o­lo­gist Oliv­er Sacks writes in his book ‘Musi­co­phil­ia’, we prob­ably don’t bio­lo­gic­ally need of it for sur­viv­al, unlike food and so on.

Daniel Levitin strives to explain this mys­tery. ‘This is Your Brain on Music ‘ explains how music activ­ates neur­ons in more regions of the brain than more than any­thing else sci­ent­ists know of and causes the release of neuro chem­ic­als in our brains. We “know that the brain is music­al because there are spe­cif­ic neur­al cir­cuits”. This mir­rors Oliv­er Sacks who con­tends that the brain has a great­er capa­city for music than just words alone. Even fur­ther, it shapes part of who you are as a person.

The lyr­ics of pop rock band, The Script, in ‘If you Could See Me Now’  describes our needs emo­tion­ally for music, using the words his late Fath­er gave him: “He’d say music was the home for your pain, And explained I was young, he would say, Take that rage, put it on a page, Take that page to the stage, Blow the roof off the place’.

In the Journ­al of Cog­nit­ive Neur­os­cience (2019) the author talks of how our love for music has shaped our brains abil­ity to per­form at the highest level, and has become evol­u­tion­ary use­ful to us, so much so that it could have dated back many thou­sands of years ago. That’s how long it can take for an adapt­a­tion to show up in the human gen­ome. So music must have made some things bet­ter for humans that we devoted so much atten­tion to it. 4

For Oliv­er Sacks “Music is part of being human”. There is no cul­ture in which it is not highly developed and esteemed. Vitally, “Music can pierce the heart dir­ectly”. Deeply and mys­ter­i­ously, music is mul­ti­fa­ceted. On the dark side we see artists and listen­ers suf­fer­ing. From the  pro­fessed dia­gnos­is of bipolar car­ried by Kanye West, the admis­sion by Jay‑Z that he is in ther­apy, to the sad sui­cide of Chester Ben­ning­ton from Linkin Park, along with the ter­rible suf­fer­ing of those who took their own lives, such as Kurt Cobain to Chris Cor­nell. The empti­ness can be sur­mised by Chester in his lyr­ics: “I tried so hard and got so far but in the end it doesn’t even mat­ter”. But there is hope. Those artist’s, whose com­pas­sion and empathy over­rides means everything: “For any­one going through depres­sion, you feel anxious when you go out of the house, you’re not alone, and you can come out of the oth­er side. Trust me. “ (Bug­zy Malone). Like­wise, Logic, “ I made this song for all of you who are in a dark place and can’t seem to find the light”. Here in lies the heal­ing psy­cho­logy in hip hop. Not much more in life can give me that. There can be, as an art­icle called ‘Moods, Mad­ness, and Music’ in ‘Com­pre­hens­ive Psy­cho­logy’ journ­al (1987) pur­ports, a link between ‘major affect­ive dis­ease’ and music. For Bob Dylan, “At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I’m on stage”.

It is now becom­ing recog­nized that Hip-Hop as a genre, can help depres­sion. Pro­fess­or Becky Ink­ster, a neur­os­cient­ist at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity, co-foun­ded a social ven­ture called ‘Hip-Hop Psych’  pro­mot­ing use of the said music to aid the treat­ment of men­tal ill­ness, arguing that an aware­ness of men­tal health is erupt­ing in hip hop. Hip hop her­ald­sp hope.

In tracks such as Lowkey, “Voice of the voice­less” we can see that when things are hard, you have a weapon. When you have noth­ing, you still have an instru­ment, your voice and music. That’s how music evolved, and how hope­fully it will stay, grow­ing ever­more power­ful. It self med­ic­ate with­in, and also gets your anger, sad­ness, joy out as a won­der­ful mode of cath­arsis. As pro­fess­or Green states, “You’ve seen me cry, now you’re your gonna have to see me hurt­ing, because pre­tend­ing everything is alright, really ain’t working”.

Look at those suf­fer­ing from forms of demen­tia. They often have little short term memory. But put music on from their young­er years and they come alive. Demen­tia UK expand by explain­ing how use­ful music ther­apy can be. Music accesses dif­fer­ent parts of the brain than lan­guage, so music can com­mu­nic­ate or engage someone dia­gnosed, even if they no longer speak or responds to the words of others.

So, dear music. This is my brain­wave. We’ve had some tur­moil in our time. But no mat­ter what, you’ve always been there for me. My best friend. My first love.

“Music is your own exper­i­ence, your thoughts, your wis­dom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn (Charlie Park­er, sax­o­phon­ist, 1955).