From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
There are multiple connections between human beings and music. Most fundamentally- we respond emotionally to music- sound is communicative, it affects us, it causes feelings and connections. Sound making and listening are communal activities, they're communicative activities… music moves us, and when we listen to it, we feel transported.
The crucial bit came when I was 20 and we got dropped from our record deal, leaving us high and dry. That was when I thought, 'am I going to be someone who only wants to do music when it's all going well? And only when it's served to me on a plate? Or do I want to do this… no matter what…' For me, there was nothing else, I wanted to make music.
Sometimes, rappers' lyrics really do offer gripping tales of loss, sorrow, exploitation, rage, confinement, hopelessness, and despair about conditions that are denied in the larger society.
Previously, there were a lot of gatekeepers that controlled how you were supposed to listen to music… you'd walk into a record shop, and there was a special room for classical, and different genres in different places… that's all gone now, and you can follow your enthusiasm and affection for music however you want to. There's something beautiful and liberating about that.
I don't really think about legacy, I'm more interested in my next thing, my next project… my writing is driven by a love of music, and an affection for being around music, and for telling stories… I don't have a grand plan; this is my life.
Music can help us heal and achieve therapeutic outcomes by tapping into various neurochemical circuits that influence mood and behaviour. Ours was the first lab to show that listening to music releases the brain's natural pain relievers—opioids. Relaxing music can modulate prolactin, a soothing, tranquilizing hormone. Music also releases dopamine which helps us to focus and motivates us to stay on task.
I walked in completely anonymous and meanwhile these people are responding to my work and have no idea who I am, and it was just 'this is the most incredible feeling in the world'.
Music can reveal the nature that lies within us, the part of us we cannot hide. When you hear a single note, a C, it's not a single sound, it's the result of many harmonies. It's like God hiding in plain sight.
Music is often better than speech at conveying and understanding emotion, because music has a kind of openness and ambiguity to it. Words, on the other hand, tend to put things into boxes.
The process can kill their musicianship. The process can drown-out the music so much that you can't hear it anymore… you end-up so cut off from your intuitive self that it's a series of obstacles playing a piece of music rather than something which is an expression.
In our low moments, music is our therapy, it helps us to cry, to breathe, or gives us the encouragement we need… it's our therapy. In our moments of happiness, music is our celebration… it's extraordinary.
Music is woven into the fabric of the universe. As far back as Pythagoras and Kepler, scientists were writing about the fact that music was intrinsic in the planets… part of the harmonic series in sound. We also have a whole branch of knowledge called zoomusicology, which shows that an appreciation of music and sound is a part of nature, not just unique to humans.