The Universality of Music

I wanted to begin this post with a quote on music, something that summarized my feelings about it. I do that a lot - find quotes from others to spark my own ramblings. I simply Googled "music quotes", figuring surely that would find me a basic, essential quote to begin with. Well, I was both right and wrong. There are thousands of beautiful quotes from everyone, from philosophers to musicians to authors, even Einstein. Goodreads.com, my favorite quote search engine, turned up over 2,000 results tagged with "music", and I found myself simply unable to choose just one quote to even begin with.





It's been said that music is the universal language and I find this, at least in my experience, is very true. One might argue that some of what makes most of the music that we as a nation listen to, (or at least, what I know I personally listen to) is the ability to relate with the lyrics. While this is true, if this were the only truth there would be no room for any foreign music, or classical pieces, or a number of other types of music. In the pilot episode of The Fosters, a new TV show on ABC family, one of the lead characters begins to play a classical, non-lyrical piece he composed about his family. Another character asks him then how a piece with no words could possibly be about all that and he breaks down the piece, saying "this is me-" and plays the melody, and then "these are my parents", and introduces the harmony, etc.

Anyone who has ever listened, really listened, to any classical pieces can no doubt pick out the feelings in them. This also goes for music not in one's native language- one of my favorite band's lead guitarist (Simple Plan's Sebastian Lefebvre) branched out and did a solo project in French, his secondary language, and the emotion in that EP is just as raw and full of feeling as anything he's done in English with his band.

Take the music that's played in TV shows. I know that there have been sequences on shows that have made me tear up quite a bit, and this wouldn't be nearly as possible without the music. Think about it, next time you're watching one of your favorite dramatic TV shows. Are you focusing on the lyrics? Chances are you're not, you're focusing on the characters, but the geniuses who direct the music on the shows have matched melodies and harmonies so perfectly that just having that music in the background is able to instill emotion into you.

I've had it argued that music isn't necessarily the 'universal' language, with the counterargument "what about deaf people?" My response is to that, ask a deaf person about music. I don't pretend to be any kind of expert on the deaf community, but because I make it my goal to teach myself as much about everything that I possibly can, I know that many, if not most, deaf people LOVE music. They will put on headphones just like you or I, and turn it up as loud as possible because they can feel the beat.

To me, music is SO important. It's usually my first, and my go-to, talking point when making new friends, forming new relationships, and, as much of an introvert as I am, something that never fails to bring me out of my shell when it's brought up. I truly believe that music is completely universal, and can bridge any gap of age, generation, gender, religion, race, sexuality, etc.... any and all differences can fade away in the face of a beautiful melody.





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https://www.youtube.com/user/SebastienLefebvre05

This is the Youtube channel of the artist I spoke of earlier, if you've never listened to anything except music in English, I urge you to check out some of his French songs; they are absolutely amazingly incredible.