Music--A Human Need Pt. 1

Music, I posture, is a human need. We have to have it in some form or another. Because it exists naturally around us and because music is an extension of vibration and because vibration demonstrates the energy of matter in motion, music is a practical result of external stimuli that modulates smoothly into a metaphysical art. In other words, music exists apart from the human element but is improved (debatable) by human interference.

Now many would say that music is by definition "pretty sounds" or "organized noise" or filled with melody, rhythm, and harmony, or some might take a more personal approach and say that music reaches the intrinsic sublime of the human spirit and creatively or in some cases, dangerously, lifts the eidolon of man to another world. Of course, in many ways all this is true, but it does not tell the whole story for music has collective properties, personal properties, and a diversity that is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to label and categorize.

For me, music is all sound resulting from vibration. I like certain sounds more than others and I prefer an organization of the sound into a prescribed musical system, but I also recognize that all sound has musical properties. Now, before going further, I admit that such a broad definition is frightening to those who have narrowly placed music into a small box for personal pleasure. In this box, most people open it and take out that which appeals to their own taste. While I begrudgingly respect this myopic view of music, I myself cannot abide by such a tiny, prejudicial view of what music is and or what music should be. So I widen my scope to include all of sound as being musical.

Imagine for a moment, a world without any sound. Imagine the complete absence of sound in our society. How long would we last before sound crept in, before sound invaded silence, before we begged for the vibrations to create noise? Even a person who is hearing challenged participates in internal sound and is aware of vibrations. John Cage, the iconoclastic experimental composer of the 20th century, in his effort to experience zero sound, discovered that his own blood and heart had sound. We cannot get rid of vibrations, we cannot get rid of sound, and we cannot get rid of music. We may reject the appeal of particular sounds, and may even seek to stop particular sounds and in particular stop certain vibrations, but we cannot eradicate sound from the world. It occurs beautifully (forgive the descriptive adjective for now!) in the birds. It occurs violently in the coyotes. It occurs tenderly in the wind blowing through the trees, and occurs intermittently in the crickets as they chirp their aria at night. The great philosopher Schopenhauer said, “the phenomenal world, or nature, and music [are] as two different expressions of the same thing.”

The natural musical phenomenon--music in the broad sense of sound--that results from vibration and occurs in everyday life whether man-manipulated or through entirely natural means, cannot be avoided and is in fact, both covertly and overtly, embraced in our culture, not as means to specific product, but rather as an intrinsic psychological and emotional requirement. In other words, we need music. We may not be consciously aware of this need, but it is there. This cannot be denied.