Using Music to Communicate and Educate: More Than Just a “Sing-Along”
It's been said that out of all of the languages on Earth (which currently stands at a little over 7,000), only two are universal—mathematics and music. As the saying goes, we use mathematics to explain our position in the universe, and we use music to explain how we feel about it.
Ever since Man started banging two rocks together to invent tools and accidentally made music in the process—right after he discovered fire and before he knew what a "wheel" was—humans have been creating music. We use music in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons—as expressions of our culture, to give our emotions substance, as a way of telling stories, and a general means of having fun (and making a lot of noise, according to some people who don't know what "fun" is). Music has evolved through the millennia across generations and continents, from the transistor radio to the music on your phone (that is a different story for another day), and it even found its way into space—when they launched in 1977, both Voyager spacecraft carried a 12-inch "Golden Record" that included, among other things, music from Mozart, Stravinski, Chuck Berry, and Beethoven. As of this writing 44 years later, the spacecraft are 11.8 billion miles (Voyager 2) and 14.4 billion miles (Voyager 1) from Earth—and they're still going.
The 12-inch phonographic Golden Record mounted to the Voyager spacecraft.
While it's important to remember where music came from and where it's going, it would be remiss of us if we didn't talk about how we actually use it. As mentioned earlier, music is used for many reasons in many situations, but since there are too many to list, we'll only focus on four—Cultural Expression, Emotional Conveyance, Storytelling, and Education.
1. Music as Cultural Expression
When ancient humans weren't busy hunting, seeking shelter, raising families, or trying not to be lunch for any predators, they needed something to occupy their time while they were gathered around the campfire. Naturally, they turned to music (although we'd probably call it "noise" anyway). Not only has music evolved, but it's also survived long enough to be played and enjoyed by succeeding generations to this day.
Take, for example, African music (since everyone and their mother knows exactly where modern humans came from). Sure, pop and rock music settled in Africa like they did on every continent, but traditional African music has also kept up with time. Although Africa is a large continent, its music can be categorized by its five geographic locations:
1. Northern (including Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco)
2. Southern (including South Africa and Angola)
3. Eastern (including Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda)
4. Western (including Senegal, the Gambia, Nigeria, and Liberia)
5. Central (including Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia)
Because of its highly rhythmic call-and-response nature, traditional African music was easy to memorize and thus easy to pass on, but it's also highly vocal and functional—everything from childbirth to marriage (and even hunting) is greeted with song.
Another example of music as a means of cultural expression is the sea shanty. First used as a "sailor's hauling chant" in 1549 (although it's never been identified as a concrete date), these folk songs were used as work songs by sailors whether they were on shore or underway—ironically, they were banned by the Royal Navy for a time as it was believed that too many men singing in unison would make it impossible for those over them to issue commands loud enough to be heard above the din (in time, the brass relented and the men had their shanties back). Some of the more popular tunes were "South Australia" (first published in 1888); "Santianna" (which dates from at least the 1850s, though no one really knows); and "Leave Her Johnny", which was actually song toward the end of a voyage (this one, unfortunately, also doesn't have a definitive origin).
2. Music as Emotional Conveyance
Now, I think I know what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will
- Don McLean, "Vincent"
Quick, when you hear music, what do you think of? Better yet, what do you feel?
Hector Berlioz
No matter what type of music we listen to, we always associate emotions with them—whether they be the thrill of victory conveyed in Queen's "We Are the Champions", the quietly haunting melancholy of Don McLean's "Vincent", or something in-between.
No song, however, can hold a candle to classical music. Because there are no words, the listener has to imagine what the composer was feeling when the piece was written, and the beauty of it is that because of its complexity, listeners can feel all sorts of emotions—the boundless joy Beethoven expressed in his Ninth Symphony's Ode to Joy (which was actually adapted to music by the composer in 1824 from a poem titled "An die Freude", written in 1785 by Friedrich Schiller), as well as Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" featured in his Messiah (which, ironically, details the Second Coming despite the chorus); the twins of sadness and loss as experienced in Beethoven's "Für Elise"; and hope as conveyed by Aaron Copland in "Fanfare for the Common Man".
Sometimes, the composer can go absolutely bonkers and bombard the listener with every emotion at once, as Hector Berlioz did with his Symphonie fantastique, somehow managing to cram everything from joy, happiness, and hope to fear, doubt, and despair into a five-part performance that lasts under an hour.
3. Music as Storytelling
They were singin', bye- bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin', "This'll be the day that I die"
- Don McLean, "American Pie"
Music is, above all, about stories. Whether the genre is classical, rock and roll, pop, or one of a million others, we use music to tell stories. While classical music is great for feeling emotions, it's almost impossible to know what's going on unless you either know the story by heart, or have a cheat sheet handy to tell you. In this regard, rock and roll as well as country music are two of the best when it comes to storytelling. While songs such as Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" do a good job of using music to tell the story, neither can compare to Don McLean's almost-nine-minute-long magnum opus "American Pie"—a roller coaster ride through the "loss of musical innocence" that was suffered after The Day The Music Died, a 1959 plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr.), and Ritchie Valens.
The art of storytelling is so ingrained in music that VH1 ran a show for 15 years showcasing musicians' songs and the stories behind them. Appropriately enough, it was titled VH1 Storytellers.
4. Music as Education
"Of course music is educational, there are literal schools devoted to studying it!" Well, yes, there are music schools like Juiliard and the USC Thornton School of Music that will teach you the difference between piano and fortissimo (soft and very loud), but we're talking about how music itself can be educational.
Music and history are two of my passions, so it was surprising to me that I went my whole life up to now without knowing of Sabaton until the day my best friend sent me a link to on of their albums—and I was hooked. What's even more surprising is what other people have to say after listening the band for the first time—a common refrain among all of them is that they would have paid a lot more attention in history class had the band's music been playing.
Sabaton (L to R: Tommy Johansson, Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Chris Rorland, Hannes Van Dahl)
It's not hard to see why—with songs like "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" (the exploits of T.E. Lawrence—"Lawrence of Arabia"—during WWI), "40:1" (where less than 1,000 Poles held out for three days against approximately 40,000 Wehrmacht during the Battle of Wizna), "The Last Stand" (in which 189 Papal Swiss Guard defended the Pope during the 1527 Sack of Rome) and "Shiroyama" (which inspired the final battle of The Last Samurai), Sabaton have proved that not only can music make history fun, but you might also learn something along the way.
About the Author: Ronald Hamilton, Jr. is a graduate of Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Media Studies. When he's not writing for COM-GAP, Ronald is a volunteer with the nonprofit Live Forever Project.