Salesian Bulletin Magazine

MUSIC Wild Sound Civilised into Time and Tune

Music used to be an agent of transformation, medium of socialisation and a means of community experience. Today, it has become an individual affair. Latest gadgets have facilitated a narrowing down of the communitarian aspect of music into an individual experience; a shared experience into a private experience. Fr. Jesudoss Periyanayagam looks into the history and evolution of music to trace its civilisation process from being a wild sound to rhythm and harmony, time and tune.

t is common to see people using latest technologies to listen to music irrespective of the age, gender and social status. It makes us wonder why the youth in particular have so much affinity to music more than any other medium. To explain their experience of music they had to fall back to the gadgets they use to narrate their experience of music. Obviously these devices had changed their external life and even their character as well. It has become an individual and personal experience. But can these gadgets become a social experience? That music is meant to be shared is not anything new but a forgotten one in the modern industrial civilisation. Sharing music in fact refers to sharing the experience of music. It means sharing faith, culture, experience, occasions, events, power, energy, feelings, opinions and reactions, and talking about it in real time. David Tame notes, “as in music so in life”

Following the idea of George Christoph Lichtenberg we can say, from time to time one must return to investigate music; for music can move away while music stands still. My memory goes back when I was a boy in my native village Thurinjipoondy where we would all gather instinctively and instantly at the crochet sound ( ta da tat, ta da tat, ta, da tat, ta da tat ) of the village drums known as pari, melam, to participate in social events. This is what Max Weber meant when he said that music is a social activity directed toward the production of sound-events intended for others. This melam is a call for all of us to spend together as a community in the church, temple, marriage house and in the house of the dead in order to share and celebrate the occasion. The joy and happiness of the village was seen at the occasion where the young and the aged danced to music played during the celebration.

Church singing, and carols made us experience faith, fraternity and charity. The shared experience of faith right here in the church was manifested in singing and praying. Understanding music for us in a village was reacting to music in a culturally defined fashion, which includes dance, singing and playing the instruments. This could be called as a musical community. Ten people can not talk at the same time and make sense out of it but many people can communicate, converse together and have individual and community experience by singing. Community bond was experienced in singing and dancing during the marriage and the social unity was experienced in mourning the dead. In this way the importance of music was measured by the various occasions of time the village participated in it.

As Budd explains about music the people in villages had the human capacity to hear sequences of bare sounds in various ways. They were able to hear two simultaneous rhythms in serious of sounds, along with melody, able to distinguish the various sounds and melodies, had the capacity to hear the sound as a whole. It can be explained better in the words of Rameau who says that music is regarded not as science but as the art of sounds. when the youth listen to music they are entering in a world of energy and our eardrums move in resonance with these patterns of energy. This musical energy moves both individual and the universe.

In my village music has always been a social art form, created and enjoyed by people in groups I still remember the names of the famous artists of our village being referred as melam adippar Marimuthhu, periamelam Govindan who used to perform the music in such an artistic manner. The village used to stand and participate in it with smile and admiration. This experience realised its values as music which is purely auditory. It consisted of interconnected modes of hearing mere sounds. The value of music was inherent in the forms of sound that compose the music. It is very much rooted in the context and culture with a reference to their lives. It was true that music was one of the primary means by which our people communicated, entertained and maintained the social bonds that held their families together. According to Robert D. F. Christenson P. G. and Gentile Douglas A. G. music had its importance and uses in both quasi-social and socializing. By quasi social they mean standing alone in a crowd and listening to the music still serves as a means to achieve the social need of an individual and social relationship that one longs for maturation. By socializing they refer to social events such as puberty, marriage, village feast, auspicious occasions, ceremonial events and death which help us to understand the social occasions, define the social boundaries and help to maintain the relationship. The music in the village helped us to express, create, and perpetuate the essential concept of community.

Listening to music is an important aspect of every day’s life of the people in general and particularly in the lives of the youth today. This aspect of listening music constructs and organizes the youth culture very much today. Music makes all of us feel and experience the happiness and sadness of life. Music helps us to feel relaxed. It gives energy and creates an atmosphere of life and death. Music becomes part of the people and makes sense of the place, action, situation and occasion. It makes us remember the occasions, situations and emotions. Music is to get people organized in a particular mood and convey social meanings to other people who are socially and culturally different.

As Merritt adds that when the youth listen to music they are entering in a world of energy and our eardrums move in resonance with these patterns of energy. This musical energy moves both individual and the universe. Let us not think that the drummer plays drum only in fact the drummer is playing for the world and the whole world is dancing according to it.

We can not avoid changes in the musical practice, behaviour and beliefs. This change can be accelerated with the arrival of technological development. Every change is capable of influencing the society particularly the youth. In the culture of change in music explains not only why the youth behave in this way but also how they get changed today. Since the invention of music recording however, about a century ago, technological developments have made the experience of music more and more a private activity. Once music could be purchased for listening at home, the possibility of enjoying music in private by yourself became more and more a popular alternative to attending performances. This has led to our current iPod era, where the most iconic image of a music listener is of a solitary individual dancing with mp3 player and earphones attached, rather than the social concert or social experience or village audiences of earlier periods.

We know from our experiences that for various reasons the content of cinema - music has been a serious concern to our society today. This has resulted in the development of considerable connection between the musical culture of our society as represented by our cine stars and that of youth culture which is centred on the world of so-called popular culture made of cinema songs. Highly popular cine stars, music artists, singers can therefore serve as potent role models for our youth. However we can not abhor such relations and it would be rather naïve to deny its existence. On the other hand it is a fact that these cultural impacts are seen as the root causes of many of the problems of the youth of our society today.

The problem of music is universal in its understanding and in its definition. It is so difficult to imbue almost any sound with specific cultural significance. As Ballantine points out in his book, ‘Music and its social meanings,’ the most important force in youth’s musical behaviour and choice of music is a culturally derived one. And so it is a fact that the abstractness of music is one of the reasons for the youth to find it difficult to perceive and understand music. But the most important reason for the youth’s inability to perceive the concept of music is when it is separated from their social context and filled with artificial musical understanding which serves ideological interests. This insulation usually takes the form of repression or of a mystification. The fact that the youth struggles against these ideological distortion is a major concern for the youth workers educators.

Walker R. states that learning for the youth today, have some bearing on the choices of musical sound made by the specific culture. This knowledge can only be acquired through experience and learning of the musical codes invented by each culture. As Bryant puts it, “past experience of any culture is crucially important and it influences the way a person perceives.”

The Greeks commonly believed that the music exerted a powerful and undeniable influence over mind, body and spirit of the listener. The effect of music on character and behaviour was developed most fully in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. These great men regarded musical training as a critical part of a child’s education that helped to discipline the character and elevate the soul. Storr tells that the Greeks of Plato’s days considered that the right type of music was a powerful instrument of education which alters the characters of those who listen to it, and it leads them toward inner order and harmony. Training the youth to have a correct musical experience is an essential concern of the educators of youth. As Aristotle puts it , “music produces certain effect on the moral character of the soul and if it has the power to do this it is our duty to educate the youth towards right attitude.”

Finally, I think we as parents and educators should think that music is important from the point of view of its impact on youth. Because music in everyday life of the youth is common in the form of mobile phone. It is so common in our towns that it is foisted upon all of us against our will be it in the shops, travel, bars, restaurants, public places, school functions, homes, where popular cinema music is employed. It is time that we give due importance to music which becomes a tool for all of us particularly for the youth to achieve desired psychological needs and a means of defining their identity. The youth listen to music just because they like it and so they learn many things of the world. It teaches them things but does not help them to handle what they have learned as emotions and feelings but it does help them to social interaction. Music addresses the needs of the youth as they are in the developmental stage- love, sex, loyalty, affection, independence, friendship, authority which often they don’t get it from the adults. In short music is not a mere means for our living but for our emancipation.

Jesudoss Periyanayagam sdb
jesudosan@yahoo.co.uk