Unleashing The Power Of Music

“Music is the language of the soul”

Music is said to mend the soul and heal the wounds which cannot be touched by medicament. It is something, everyone loves to be lost in. But, do you know why it’s so?

In our day to day busy schedules, we are often surrounded by cut-throat competitions and performance pressure. In our pursuit of self-goals, we often participate in the competitive rat race and, in the process, lose ourselves. All this and more negatively impacts our mind, body, and soul. Be it our emotional stability or our mental sanctity, owing to the hustle-bustle of daily life, we often compromise on one or the other aspect of our well-being, and probably that is where music comes in as a healer.

Music – Food For Brain

Have you ever felt happier listening to your favorite tune? Have you ever been teary-eyed after listening to a heartwarming music piece? If yes, then you probably have experienced the power of music. Music, be it in the form of Sanskrit shlokas or Classical Bandishes or be it the soothing instrumentals or rapid raps, all are scientifically proven to affect the brain. Music- a part of acoustics in physics, reaches our brain through our ears wherein the sojourn of different frequencies affects the neural activity of our brain.

Scientifically speaking, the human brain releases 5 waves, namely alpha, beta, gamma, theta, and delta, which affects and drives everything that we say, perceive feel, etc… and so, when music comes into the picture, being a wave too, there are different phenomena which take place, as a result of which the intensities of the brain waves are modulated. Thus, the result of this is what the field of musicology works upon to derive benefits.

Unleash The Power Of Music

The first attempt towards this was done by Alvin Lucier, who created a music piece – “Music for Solo Performer” in the year 1965 from the sonified EEG of himself, thus establishing a strong relationship between both – music and neural activity. Since then, there have been several attempts to establish it fundamentally and quite many evidences have been drawn to prove the effects of music on the human brain. It has been seen that Alzheimer’s patients have been cured to a great extent through music. Not only this, people with muscular dystrophy or another kind of locomotive or movement disorders or genetic problems like dyslexia also have been greatly benefitted through music therapy.

And probably that is the reason why research on the scientific aspects of music- known as the field of Musicology is a hot-shot around the globe and all the universities, name any, be at MIT, Harvard or Berkley are all investing crores in it. It is a field that possesses the immense potential to revolutionize the medical field and open new non-destructive ways of treatment. Not only in the foreign countries, it is quite pleasant to know that centers have also been set up here in India for carrying out such novel researches.

Let The Brain Sway To The Tunes

To name a few, in the recent past, Jasola Apollo established a special branch for music therapy which is led by Smt. Zila Khan- the daughter of the sitar maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan. Not only this, recently AIIMS too inaugurated a department related to Musicology for R and D in music and interdisciplinary fields.

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