The Healing Power of Music

My week has been filled with musical musings!

For one, reading Elena Mannes’ book “The Power of Music” has me thinking about a number of things that remind me of other books I’ve read on this topic. Want a reading list? Here ya go!

1. Why You Love Music, by John Powell
2. Biomedical Foundations of Music as Therapy, by Dale B. Taylor, Ph.D.
3. Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, by Candace Pert
4. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks
5. Music, Language, and the Brain, by Aniruddh D. Patel

And several others as well… you might say I’m interested in the physiological, psychological, and emotional effects of music.

What’s great about the Mannes book is that she has interviewed a number of researchers and has brought it all together in a book that is easy to read, so I do recommend it if you want a good taste of what had been happening in the field up to 2013 when the book was published.

She has also directed and produced films and documentaries that would be worth looking into if you are interested.

So, here are a few points and quotes that are standing out (I’m only on Chapter 9, about halfway through the book at this point):

• There is evidence that music came before language as an expression of emotion, as Darwin indicated in “On the Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” (which I read as a grad student in “Art and Science of Voice.”)
• “… music was first used to convey information, share emotion, soothe infants – all the ways to facilitate human interaction.”
• “It is notable that lullabies have the same stepwise motion between the notes of the tune, with falling pitch contours and a narrow pitch range. They’re quiet and repetitive.”
• “I can sit down and listen to the music made by Inuit Eskimos, or Amazonians, and to an extent, I can feel the same emotions they do. I can enter into their musical world. And yet, if I listen to them speak, I have no idea what they’re speaking about.”

This is a theme that keeps coming up for me – the healing power of music. The What, Why, and How of it.

I had written a paper for a World Music graduate class at San Jose State University called “Sorrow, Comfort, and Joy – Healing Powers in World Music” that addresses three types of music that may be universal. If you’d like to read the paper, it’s on my website here: https://verlene.com/pdfs/HealingPowers.pdf

And for further reading, my works cited can be found here: https://verlene.com/pdfs/WorksCited.pdf

Also, if you’d like to watch a video of me telling the story “Sorrow, Comfort, and Joy” here’s the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlIWL3irRYM

So, that’s one thing (or really several things) that I’ve been musing about this week. I’m also taking a course for Educators on Performance Psychology with Noa Kageyama (every musician should be reading his blog: https://bulletproofmusician.com/blog/) and learning a few new tricks for practicing that I’ve used myself and have tried with students. I’ll share a few of those in future blogs, but I’d recommend checking Noa’s blog and also signing up for one of his courses if you want to really dig in!

I've also started digging into Irish fiddling techniques to up my game with the fiddle in Gaelic Muses, which by the way has two gigs this coming week! For those who are local (or if you have friends that are local) to San Jose, or Fremont, California, here is a link to the Gaelic Muses flyer: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dk58QGvkLfi793Prpa4_MROoNi7um2LO/view?usp=share_link

💕Verlene