The not-so-secret secret of how music informs and forms us

We can definitively say hands down that the music industry is an influencer. Music married to lifestyle can influence the way we view life; the way we move within it and what choices we make, even down to how we dress and the words we speak.

Just like fashion, styles in music have moved rapidly over the 21st century. Never have there been so many genres to cover every aspect of the human condition on a global scale. To name a few – Psychedelic, Classical, Ambient, Rock, Pop, Rap, Country, Grunge, Indie rock, Electronica, Goth, Punk and Post-punk (more serious, darker version) and many more. An ever-widening kaleidoscope of genres and sub genres on offer. And every new movement breaks away from its former classification, diving deeper into next level intensity or whatever is required to fit the next desire, and each has its own flavour complete with moves and looks to boot. We wear, emulate, move to and so become the said crafted culture – a never-ending supply of surround sound for any denomination or trend to be lapped up as a feel-good moment or to confirm us in our deepest lingering fears or grief.

You could say that with the full gamut of lifestyle choices provided, everyone and every subject is covered. The full array of human life is represented in the culture of music, everything you could possibly dream of, every shade, shape and flavour is on sale for your soundtrack to life.

Sounds a bit over the top? No, not at all. Uppers, downers, satisfiers and drowners, we have the lot. When Jimi Hendrix famously said, “Music is my religion’, he was speaking a truth. Music was his religion and he lived and died by everything that portrayed, and thousands of followers follow.

But what allows us to be responsive, attracted to or pinned by any particular style of music? It is possible to feel how our energy or state of being changes as we listen. Our body relaxes or tenses, thoughts pop into our head, memories are re-visited. Music can literally change our view of the day. And everyone has their opinion about what is great, good, bad or just plain ugly in music. What is the ultimate for one can be distasteful for another, it all depends on the ear of the beholder you might say.

But what does our body say? What does the body that feels everything and clocks the slightest disturbance, tell us? Can we stop and consider, how does what is coming at us in the form of music truly feel? Heightening, depressing, blissful or enlightening? In the most practical sensory way, it is the energy behind the music that has the effect and this goes way beyond any genre or style.

Meanwhile, the feel-good piped music chosen by the supermarket’s marketing team, designed to stimulate our desire for unnecessary things and bloat our shopping list as we weave our way through the aisles, plays on. Slow-tempo music helps to fill shopping carts – yes, a proven fact. And then there is the music that triggers emotional moments, needs and wants, that ties us to our unresolved hurts and nostalgic desires that lie dormant under our skin.

We have the ‘designed to disturb’ hard core denigrating lyrics that shout their message loud and clear. But why do we assume that a love ballad is lovely? … What if it is dripping with sadness, emotional dependency, melancholy and just as empty of true love as the obvious song that struts suicide lyrics? Can we cheer ourselves up with a feel-good song? What if the words sung and tunes played don’t go anywhere close in representing the constant settlement of true joy because any up moment is going to, sooner or later, crash to a down?

It is no secret that music is used to stir, quell, disturb, soothe, harness and uplift. The energetic subtleties that lie within a composed piece, like the ingredients of the recipe of the cake we ingest, can affect the make-up of our body, our behaviours follow and taken by the moment we can find ourselves doing things that we would not have predicted, from simple daily lifestyle choices to the extreme. There are many examples of the ongoing emotional impact of a song ear-worming the mind of the perpetrator as he or she commits acts of atrocity they could never have imagined they would. Suicide, torture even mass murder have been carried out to the tune of music.

However, free from the clutches of existence is the music that completely leaves you alone, that leaves you be. Music that is composed with an energetic integrity that does not have an agenda nor impose any sensory overload, but simply holds you in the truth of who you are as every sound and frequency played offers vibrational pull and inspiration as opposed to vibrational compression.

Music that holds unwavering energetic integrity that does not impose or cross any personal boundaries, that simply leaves you to be is not about the sound or beat, it is about the energy that it lands with. This music resonates with the particles in our body, lightens vibrationally and simply reminds our form that we are more than our everyday existence, that we have a body that feels everything and is sensitive to the energies at play around us.

So if music is a religious moment, let it be one of true intimacy, a body of Love that deepens awareness and offers evolution in the true sense of the word. This music is not a said style, but a quality of vibrational clarity that can be played in any so-called genre as it does not depend on a flavour or theme but the impulse of its source, the energetic truth of how it is composed and played.

Radiant with vitality it is music that you can deepen with and rest upon. No need for uppers or downers, the consistency of a body of Love is represented in this music. And your body loves it.

So what a vast responsibility we have when we produce music, or anything for that matter. And how crucial it is to be aware of what we ‘take on’ and get taken by and how that changes our behaviours, hence we cannot help but affect others. Science shows us, we are made of energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed … It can only change form. And that it does, and so it is left to us to consider that the quality of life we align to is what we live, move and therefore emanate. To write and sing a love song that has the true quality of Love, do we have the deep care and beholding love in our own body? The energetic emanation of what we live in our own lives is felt vibrating through every note sung or played, no matter the style or beat, loud or soft.

The truth is that we are all influencers. The quality of energy we emanate and emulate runs through everything we touch. Let music produced in energetic integrity be the new style in sound!

Filed under

Culture, Energy in music, Music, Responsibility