Music — it binds us together…
Today, I got sent a link to a YouTube video with just the phrase “you got to listen to this”. I did. First, it’s a song that I really, really like and it means a lot to me. Second, I found the Bill Moyer’s interview with Mark Johnson who has spent years getting this project, Playing for Change, together, planned, recorded, and working.
There are so many phrases and saying about music. We use them all the time:
“They’re playing out song.” — just about everyone I’ve met and talked with.
“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” ~ William Congreve
“All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!” ~Thomas Carlyle
“Music is what feelings sound like.” ~Author Unknown
“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” ~Leo Tolstoy
“When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.” ~ Edgar Watson Howe
I’m sure you get the idea that whether we think of it or not, music is a part of all of us. Music is everywhere in every culture — jazz, rock, chants, classical, R&B, blues, whatever. It’s part of the fabric of movies and TV shows — the music in films plays with our emotions and when well done, we never even notice.
Music has the power to lift us up or to bring us to tears. Reading about the Playing for Change project, I began to think that music could also be the glue that could pull the world’s people together. We share music. We share songs. The music speaks to us no matter who we are or where we come from — a song played in New Orleans, New York, Amsterdam, South Africa — it speaks to the people who hear it. We may differ in culture, economic status, education, and beliefs, but a song may still speak to our hearts equally. Maybe music will help to bring us together — to look at our commonalities and not our differences so that we can achieve peace.
What can I say, I’m a liberal/romantic/optimist. I have hope and I listen to the music.