Skip to main content

What can Music Do?

What can Music Do?

In my class Music History II our professor asked our class at the beginning of the semester the questions of “what can music do?” To help the world and all of the horrible and awful things that happen, how can we offer a balm or what resources do we have as musicians to help. How can we use music in a vocational way. It has been the theme of our class. 

I have been thinking about it all semester and will probably keep thinking about it for the rest of my life. I have thought about how listening to music can provide a refuge for people, how teaching music to someone can help them have an emotional outlet or a source of joy. Music can be used for therapy. What struck me most is how music is used to make political statements. Nationalist composers would compose to make a statement for freedom. Germany and Italy they used music to fight for unification of the states. Even in America our pop songs can have a political message.

I am not sure how I will use music to help others or make a difference in the world. I cannot even guarantee that it will always be one way for my entire life. I know I want to use it to make a difference and help people. I know I want to educate people so I suspect my music will take on an educational direction.

While my professor asked this question specifically of music I think it can apply to other things. For me how can I as an activist make the wold a better place? How can I in any skill, or identity use that to make the world a better place and to help others?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thank You DJS Leaders

Rosario Jesús Treviño Yoson is a 2nd year majoring in Economics. They identify as a mixed queer transmasculine person using he/they pronouns. He plans to use their degree to address food insecurity. You can find him in the Diversity Center, the library, or the student radio station in the Neeb building. Dear DJS Student Leaders,      It has been an honor to organize your stories this year. When I started, I was a little lost. I hadn’t attempted something like this before. What I uncovered became larger than the website. In conversations I had with each of the writers, I sought to go deeper into their motivations, why they are committed to the work they do towards anti-racism; outside of school and sometimes unpaid. It is the right thing to do, but these students stepped farther, they took initiative and leadership in their own communities, rather than waiting for direction.       I was encouraged after hearing from a few writers “this conversation help...
Post a Comment
Read more

#WeAreOrlando

Devastated about what happened in Orlando last night. We are lucky to live in a country where we finally have equal legal rights, but the fight for acceptance and equality did not end with the Supreme Court decision last year. Homophobia continues to be a harmful and dangerous ideology that is taught - yes, taught - and passed on from one generation to the next. It is espoused by politicians in power, it is preached from the pulpit, and it's passed from parents to their children any time they tell them homosexuality is wrong, or think that depictions of gay couples in books or movies are inappropriate for children, or when they teach their kids to "love the sinner but hate the sin." This disguised insult perpetuates the idea that our families are wrong, dirty, and shameful. All for something we had no choice in and for loving someone of the same sex.
Post a Comment
Read more

Upholding Community Guidelines

Community guidelines, agreements, or tenants are used far and wide in social justice education settings.   Creating, stating, and agreeing upon community guidelines is typically at the top of the agendas of workshops, institutes, and new community meetings.   Lately I have noticed myself being disingenuous about the idea of establishing community standards over and over again.   What’s the point of spending time creating a list of agreements - ways in which we would like to hold each other accountable as a community, ways to create a community of learners and leaders, and ways to create a brave space that acknowledges conflict and difference exists and welcomes diverse perspectives and a range of learners – if too often we do not hold each other accountable for upholding them?   What I have notice is when time goes on, and communities have long since upheld and or revisited their commitments and guidelines, people begin side stepping around each other and issues, bl...
Post a Comment
Read more