What Does The Music Do?

Negative lyrics and their trance inducing audio wave patterns saturate radio playlists, streaming services, and digital download platforms daily. Sound has the ability to affect brain activity in ways that scientists clearly understand. Music has the ability to heal and it has the ability to harm, and that is why we should be aware of the music we are exposed to.  How many people are affected?

Researchers have long-known that sound affects us in some significant  ways.  The book, Healing at the Speed of Sound: How What We Hear Transforms Our Brains and Our Lives, by Don Campbell and Alex Doman, states what we already knew by explaining how, “Researchers at the Neurosciences Institute, in Lo Jolla, California, have observed in real time the way brain-wave patterns change to match changing pitches of tone sequences. When the tone sequence grows more coherent-sounding more like a real melody-different parts of the brain interact in a more intense and consistent, or coherent, manner.”   Sounds can definitely impact how our brains react, and we may find other ways that prove our statement to be true. 

What does the music do? Look at the case of Rock ‘n Roll music.  Early Caucasian Rock music legends readily acknowledge the fact that “Black Americans”  invented Rock n’ Roll music. Despite the glowing endorsements by those iconic, Caucasian Rock n’ Roll legends, the “Black American” musical legends and the pioneers of  Blues and Rock music are seldom celebrated or properly credited like they should be. Was that done to influence  the mind’s of Caucasian youth?   In the book, The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and   Privilege, by Ken Wytsma, he states how, “Immigrants whom “judges” saw as most fit to carry on the tradition of the ‘White Republic’ were deemed white and allowed to become citizens and own property.  In summary, white privilege became a quid pro quo for white performance.”  In other words, certain musicians have been chosen to be the faces of popular music to perpetuate “White America’s” supremacist imagery.

Sounds, styles, and methods change, reflecting the aims of those that control the music.  In the 1920s, “Black American” music was called, ‘Race’ music and was associated with the blues, gospel, and jazz music.  When the  popularity of a particular musical genre captures the attention of millions, the faces change. A better explanation is given in the book, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (Reprint Edition), by Ira Katznelson, where Katznelson explains how,  “A combination of social conventions, racist ideas, economic compulsion, theological justification, political institutions, and harsh enforcement by police, courts, and prisons, buttressed by private violence, supported the unyielding inequality mandated by Jim Crow. African Americans who lived in the seventeen states that made it illegal for whites or blacks to step outside the boundaries defined by this encompassing social order experienced an authoritarian police state, not a democracy of citizens.”  Music is just a microcosm of what really happens in U.S. society. For every musician or executive that works within the realm of popular music, their platform has been built on something much more significant.