Young man listening to music (stock image)
As a teenager, I have always found music to be an outlet to a dimension where the expression of my various feelings come to light in the brightest and darkest ways. Different genres of music like R&B, heavy metal, jazz, and hip-hop help me cope with some of the depressing and even overwhelmingly happy aspects of my life.
Music is important to me as an adolescent and musical person. Here is the closest I could get to a proper analysis of it.
What is Music?
According to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, music is “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.” The web also says music is “vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.”
These definitions describe music as a set of various tones combined or put in a specific sequence to produce a composition of sound using the emotions of musicians. So when you think about it music, whether vocal or instrumental, is a form of speech.
What is Speech?
The web defines speech as “a human expression of themselves through language or the ability to express thoughts and feelings by using sounds or movements using phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form words.”
However, when it comes to sign language and something as mysterious, and uncontrollably compulsive, as music, people would need to expand the definition based on all forms of human expression.
Music is a system of communication that I believe touches every living soul. It is one of the only languages that allows the listener to make their own observations and interpretations of each new sound they come across. It is also one of the only languages all humans can interpret in similar ways, even if they speak different phonetic languages. This is because, when people usually listen to music, the sounds and the vibe of it directly translates into their emotions before they actually understand the verbal part of the song.
Psychologists have described music as similar to human interaction or comfort because of the familiar emotions that come from a song. This is how music has a great effect on the human psyche. It is a creation that is supposed to resemble the human experience. It could lead you into healthier, or toxic, relations with society and one’s self. I’ve noticed that when people allow music to fully take over their being, they seem to float and disappear with every vanishing note, becoming close and one with the music. It seems like they literally become the embodiment of their spirit, and that they feel like they can see the world through the lenses of that particular song.
Music is an important part of the human experience and expression that is used as a healing factor of life. It can also be adulterated to pollute your worldview if you are not in the right mindset.
This is why humans must be careful when listening to a particular song. If they’re not in the right mindset, the music can and will be able to consume them when they least expect it. Teenagers of this generation and the next to come need to understand the difference between a healthy relationship with music, and a toxic one. Their sensitivity during their transition from a child to an adult in this world full of negativity and trauma determines how they will continue to construct their lives through the many challenges thrown at them.
Music plays a big part in building one’s personality. This is the time in a young person’s life where they actually learn right from wrong in a societal sense. Exposure to different situations can have a great mental and physical toll on an adolescent. It is the adolescent and family’s job to make sure that such an intimate relationship shared between music and their spiritual selves is not polluted by the current negative situations that they all have to deal with in one way or another.
The Watoto Speak! 