Music is a powerful tool that we, as humans, can all use to facilitate tremendous positiove change in our lives and communities.
Is it safe to say that everyone appreciates some sort of music?
Regardless of where you’re from, how old you are, or your profession, Music — just like air — is something we all have a relationship with.
Music is universal.
Even if we only tap or move along, our universal response to music is to join in. This inclination is deeply rooted in neurobiology — our brain’s neural motor, or movement, system lights up when we hear music, even if we appear to be remaining still.
I grew up listening to Afrobeats, Reggae, and Hip Hop. Over the years, my relationship with music has evolved from listener to keyboard-player, back to listener again, and into a bedroom producer (producers that make music in their bedrooms).
Our relationship with music continues to evolve but also remains the same
Advancements in technology have changed the way we produce and consume music. Music makers require less production and distribution resources to get their music out in the world and connect with people in different regions.
Music itself is a very unique human endeavor.
There is no other species (at least not that we know of yet) that experiences music the way we do as humans. From the moment sound is created to vibrate our eardrums and those vibrations are funneled through the hair cells to register specific frequencies in our minds, a combination of rhythms, melodies, and harmonies not only move our bodies but it moves our thoughts too, while communicating emotions that other art forms can’t easily provide.
That’s why music is used as an important tool during celebrations and ceremonies — child births, birthdays, marriages, and burials.
It is vital in building community and social cohesion. It is also used tremendously to spark — and during — social movements around the world. Music also plays a key part in innovation — because it allows us to question convention and break away from tradition to develop new ideas, methods, devices, and systems.
The music industry on it’s own continues to grow.
In 2018, the globally recorded music revenue clocked in at $19.1 billion — growing for four consecutive years and it showed no sign of slowing down.
UNTIL
COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill.
Regardless, we still see that the power of music cutting through even during one of the worst pandemics in the last century.
As people around the world were forced to isolate themselves within the confines of the home, they turned to music-making as a way to stay connected with their community.
From documented footage of neighbors singing in synchrony on their balconies in Italy, Spain, New York, and China, to classic DJ sets and live performances on Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube, to synchronized live “Couch Choirs” on Zoom, it is clear that we naturally gravitate towards music as a way to bring us together particularly when our community bonds get threatened in difficult situations like a pandemic.
So why do we turn to music in times of crisis?
As social beings, we use music to communicate with one another and to foster a sense of participation and belonging.
Our motor system is particularly responsive to the beat, which has a privileged role in music — capturing our attention and sometimes driving us to move without us even being aware of it.
Music allows a group to synchronize. This in turn increases social cohesion and bonding which is very important in our day-to-day activities and in uncertain times.
A lot of people think music is just entertainment and that it has limited utility. Or that music is “just art” and can only be brought to life by certain people — musicians.
The reality is that
MUSIC CAN CHANGE THE WORLD!
Music is a tremendously powerful tool that can be used to dramatically reduce social issues like inequality, loneliness, emotional turmoil, social injustice, and environmental damage.
It can be used to bring people together, build empathy, strengthen communities, preserve cultural identity, boost self-awareness, and, most importantly, empower people to solve problems. Music can be the innovator’s best friend.
Music has helped me in different ways. It has been a daily companion that has helped me connect with others and their stories. I can empathize with the struggles and frustration of growing up in different circumstances through the songs of musicians that share their stories and vulnerabilities in their songs.
As I became more serious about making beats and creating my own music over the last 7 years, music-making has provided an outlet for me to express myself. I use it as a form of mental therapy. It also provides me with a craft that allows me to practice being comfortable with obscurity and uncertainty — a practice that has also helped me along my entrepreneurial journey.
Music was the spark that ignited my journey to publish my first book. What started as a beat mixtape that I was putting together in 2016, led me to a journey of patching together a fictional story for that mixtape over a two-year period.
This eventually led me down the path to meet a group of writers, editors, mentors, and a publisher that guided me as I embraced a personal journey to talk about a topic that’s very important to me:
Music as a catalyst for change.
Through that experience, I was fortunate enough to interview interesting artists, entrepreneurs, innovators, and designers. I learned even more about the power of intentional music and documented the journey and my findings in my recently published book — Press Play.
Music can help us achieve our goals and encourage necessary dialogue to foster empowerment and globally collaboration at scale.
