The Music Experience
So if music is able to speak a deep emotional language and awaken an often dormant but poignant human longing, what can it not do? Great question. It is important to know the limits of a particular art’s scope before we can utilize its ultimate purpose.
Music is debatably the best tool for story-telling. Some in the folk-loving tradition would argue it IS best way. Certainly music includes a unique memory-inducing power, useful when telling ancient stories. In many cultures, songs were the medium of history.
In today’s world, though, there is a whole new medium to bring alive story: film. Unlike any time before, we can make any period of history come alive in the most real senses. Movies have for this reason become the primary mode of story-telling today.
There is something music can do, however, that movies can not: gather thousands of people into a large venue to experience, sing, dance and invigorate community among strangers. Music alone has this superb power in its live experience.
There is just something innately powerful about mass gatherings.
Experiencing things on a large scale is something deeply human, it be around in forms throughout the history of humanity. There is some irresistible quality to the crowd experience.
It is not all the different from a football game. The crowd mentality carries each person beyond themselves. Normally isolated beings find themselves smack dab in the middle of a shared experience on a mass level, and it feels really good in many ways.
There is a hunger in the human heart to beyond our isolated selves.
When we add music to that crowd experience there is a sort of sacredness to the whole thing. Instead of hollering for our favorite team, we are brought together literally to combine our voices in shared longing. This is the power of a mass group experience.
There is simply nothing like 10,000+ people singing together, feeling together the emotion of a particular song. Remember how deeply intimate music is (we already talked about its rootedness in our emotional longing). Here, private goes public.
On paper this shouldn’t work, but something about the group size opens this potential.
As powerful as that experience can be, it can also be (of course) manipulated, coerced, and downright used for harm. From the promoter only wanting to make a buck (and not caring about music fans), or to the attender only trying to keep a high going, music experiences can be fabricated.
Consider “Deadheads” to reflect on the point. These fans are so moved by the live show experience it becomes a bit of an obsession, even a reality of sorts for the most dedicated. The solace initially found and the community created leave such a mark that it is worth the leave from work, family and other things.
Deadheads literally follow the band to continue the experience of overwhelming emotions night after night. Does it get old? Probably. Do the experiences feel coerced after a time? Maybe. Is this a good use of time and money? Debatable. It can be a fine line between enjoyment and escapism.
What can not be debated, though, is the power of the live music experience.
Even though live music, Like recorded music (listening to a song over and over again), can fall prey to a manufactured experience [it’s true, we can ring dry the magic of music by trying to manipulate it to our own experience over and over again], nothing can compare to its connective power.
Maybe just for a night, maybe a few hours. But perhaps that makes it all worth it!
