How Music Changes Your Perspective at the World Around You

Written by: Andy

I don’t think I’ve met a single person that genuinely dislikes music. One way or
another we all have a favorite band, or a favorite singer, or a favorite genre of music that
we all listen to whether it be to study, for comfort, or just to relax. From the chantings of
cavemen in the early days of Man to the symphonies of Beethoven in the 17th century,
the form that music has taken has shifted quite a bit as the centuries flew by. At its core,
music is just a form of self-expression; maybe it's a way to vent out your emotions or a
way to get back at your archnemesis, maybe it's just a song written to flaunt your riches
to your fans. I believe it can change your worldview, shifting and moulding it in a certain
way, like how a potter can change a lump of clay into a fine ceramic pot. Constantly
listening to a song that tells you to go on a diet will eventually lead you to start looking at
ads for dieting pills in your local newspaper. Supermarkets produce jingles that have a
sole purpose to get stuck in your head on repeat, forever and ever and ever…

An instance where "music = changing of views" can be seen is in the songscapes

and powwows of the indigenous peoples of North America and Canada. A songscape is
described as Native American musical expressions that employ traditional singing
styles, native languages, and instruments (drum, flute, shakers) to evoke the beautiful
landscapes and ancestral places of Native America. Powwows (pow-wow) are a sacred
gathering held by indigenous communities. Tribes such as the Blackfoot, Cree, Métis,
Cherokee, and many others often performed ceremonial war songs before they went to
battle with other natives. Not only did this strengthen their already war-hardened spirits
on the battlefield, but it also brought the whole community together as one in times of
need. Of course, the powwows, songscapes, and ceremonial war songs didn’t exactly
brainwash people into becoming mindless drones wielding tomahawks, but I think it still
changed how some members of the clan viewed the world around them.

Another take can be seen in the Nazi party ruled by fascist Adolf Hitler. The
Nazis did not have any outlandish songs that outwardly proclaimed that Jews were the
scum of the earth, but they still used music to celebrate and facilitate murder.
20-year-old Ruth Elias arrived in a cattle car at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration
camp in December 1943. She was assigned to Block 6, a barracks that housed young
women and the camp's male orchestra: an ensemble of violinists, clarinet players,
accordion players, and percussionists who played their instruments not only when the
prisoners marched out for daily labor, but also during floggings. Performances could be
impromptu, ordered at the whims of the SS. Sometimes drunken SS troops would burst
into the barracks at night and tell the orchestra to play as they drank and sang. Elias
often recalled that “the music had to play”, even when fellow prisoners were tortured
and humiliated. I'm sure the entirety of the orchestra would no longer see music as an
inherently positive thing after their experience with the Nazi party.

The last point I'd like to make is the songs of hate made by the Ku Klux Klan. I
think it's pretty obvious why these songs can borderline brainwash you into following
their white supremacist ideology. “The Bright Fiery Cross” is a song endorsing the KKK
written in 1924 by a fellow member. The very first verse talks about being “forever true
to the Red, White and Blue” followed by “Americans we remain”. Imagine listening to
this “anthem” day and night, singing it at the top of your lungs at the crack of dawn and
again when the moon shines above. No wonder the KKK is still an ongoing terrorist hate
group after nearly a century and a half.

Music is often thought of as inherently good, a view exemplified in the

playwright Wilhelm Congreve’s oft-cited aphorism “music hath charms to soothe a
savage beast.” It is also often seen as a form of art that entrances those who play and
listen to it. Its aesthetic qualities seem to transcend the mundane and horrific. Yet it’s
also been used to facilitate torture and punishment, a topic I think is also worth
exploring aside from it shaping your worldview.

I think music now doesn't have the same effect as it did back then in the
Middle Ages, where people were being sacrificed and burned at the stake left and right.
Music can change your worldview, as we saw earlier in the examples above. Nowadays
I doubt artists on the billboard can seriously change how you look at an aspect of the
universe. I'm a fan of the heavy/death metal and rock genre, which has often been
stigmatized as "rotting your brains" and "enabling violent actions among young adults". I
don't feel like my perspective of anything has changed ever since I started listening to it.
I don’t feel unhealthy, or “mentally scarred” despite the hoards of parents claiming that
they have irrefutable proof that it does indeed affect the youth in this way.

Regardless of genre, music can definitely change you; it’s just a matter of how
much, and how seriously you take the lyrics to heart. If you genuinely believe that
“eating dirt off the ground leads to happiness in life”, then you will start eating dirt off the
ground, in hopes that it leads to happiness in life. Music is the eighth wonder of the
world, making it able to communicate with other people without words or body
language, instead expressing your emotions with symphonies and rhythm. Just like the
pied piper of Hamelin, we, again and again, let ourselves be blindly led along by the
magic flute.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

*archnemesis

*flaunt

*brainwash

*mindless drones

*tomahawks: 원주민들이 들던 무기.

*fascist

*outlandish

*scum

*facilitate

*concentration camp

*barracks

*ensemble

*percussionists

*floggings

*impromptu

*whims

*tortured

*inherently

*borderline

*white supremacist
*ideology

*anthem

*exemplified

*playwright

*aphorism

*aesthetic

*mundane

*stake

*stigmatized

*irrefutable