The Benefits of Music. 16 Reasons Music Education Is Required And Therefore Should Be Promoted.

Who invented music?

Maybe the right question to ask is, rather, this one: Who discovered music?

Nature is full of rhythms. And rhythms are the embryo of what we today call music.

Certainly music has some evolutionary benefits.

Charles Darwin believed music was created as a sexual come-on.

Today evolutionary biologists are more inclined to see music as an attempt at social glue, a way to bring early humans together into a close-knit community.

We all know that music has a unique ability to influence the mood and behavior – often in the same way – of many people at once, at the same time.

Because of that, music makes it easier to mold individual beings into a coordinated group. Just think of military music, or music played at sports games, and, why not, ritualized drumming in order to experience altered states of consciousness (think of shamans, and Christian liturgical worship).

In his brilliant and scholarly essay – now to be reblogged by me – my friend Charles Clanton Rogers enumerates 13 positive effects of listening to music and/or playing musical instruments.

In short, he shows – by referring to research – that music had a variety of health benefits:

1. Learning music has a positive effect on teenagers’ brains.

2. We can all be taught how to achieve perfect pitch…

3. … but neurological factors can stand in the way of true mastery. “

4. Music can help improve patients’ recovery after surgery…

5. …as well as improve the surgeon’s performance.

6. Our musical taste can effect how we think.

7. The way we respond to music is largely universal.

8. Singing can promote social bonding better than just about any other activity.

9. Synchronized dancing can be great for one’s health.

10. Personality traits can predict one’s musical aptitude.

11. Music can help quell testing anxiety.

12. Men and women have different capacities to regulate anxiety through music.

13. Music developed to bring people together.

To “complete” – or rather add to – the list I can enumerate three more benefits of music:

14. Music can relieve chronic back pain.

15. Music can improve your bodily workout and make it feel easier to do, less strenuous.

16. Music can help people remember better. Slow down the memory loss in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s.

The issues #1-13 are explained in professor Rogers’ own blog post (now reblogged by me). For more details about the issues #14-16, have a look at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-137116/Why-listening-music-key-good-health.html .

Charles Clanton Rogers

Art is the most nearly true mirror of our culture and our heritage. One requires music and art to celebrate our culture and heritage.

Art is our oldest recorded history; an unvarnished record of History, ccr

INTERNATIONAL BLOGGING   – Supplement for Financial Support of The Music Education 

I.B. MUSICAL EDUCATION SPECIAL EDITION

This is dedicated to my personal musical Troika:

Evan Rogers, director of operations , composer, and guitar

Jessica Abel, soprano, director, development/fundraising

Steven Rogers, teacher, director, and saxophone

Why do we make music?  How does it affect our emotions? What role does it play in our lives? [1]

This year’s studies produced some fascinating answers. Yet, each bit of research only prompts its own set of further questions. In August, we compiled seven of year’s most intriguing studies. Those appear again here, along with six additional studies that further elucidate the power music exacts over the human mind.

1. Learning…

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