Music: The Ultimate Physician to a Chronic Condition Called “Life”

“We Gypsies know how to listen to music and we drown ourselves in the song so that the song will bring us back once again to ourselves… to our pains and joys, to our dreams and our aspirations, to our tears and laughter. The song becomes our refuge in the midst of the harshness of life.” This was what the Gypsy street singer and teenage girl named Shebnem told me in downtown Istanbul, way back in May of 2008… Her poignant words vividly and emotively gave me beautiful insights on the role that music plays in our ephemeral life and transitory human existence…

Music, for me, is the cure for the many ills besetting our human life, namely: depression, angst, boredom, hurts, ennui, dejection, despair, failures, and meaninglessness of existence. Music is the ultimate therapist to the terminal sickness affecting us all—life’s impermanence and uncertainty. Music is both a potent panacea and an effective stimulant with no side-effects—when you are down and in the brink of being tempted of giving-up on life. I have experienced many times the exhilarating effect of music to my tired, stressed-out, and nerved-wracked soul. Music can also be your psychologist, your psychiatrist to life’s tempests and vicissitudes. Music gradually brings into the open how you feel deep inside; it makes you aware of the various emotions and conflicting priorities hidden in the core of your being. Music processes your inner psyche and makes you realize that whatever circumstances you are going through right now do not only befall you, but are parts-and-parcels of human situatedness that every person must encounter in their life’s journey.

Music is an effective venue for collective solidarity and emotive empathy that lies at the heart of being human. Music brings deeper companionship despite differences in age, in circumstances, and status in life. For instance, I have seen how my students opened-up themselves to me: I just simply asked them their favorite song, and myself knowing that particular song, we then began to sing: humming its melody and savoring the meaning of its lyrics. Friends and lovers share a particular song which becomes their “kantang pang-inuman” or “kantang pang-barkada” or lover’s theme-song, as the case may be. This strongly illustrates that such-and-such piece of music is the common cry of their heart and its lyrics are the shared expression of what they feel from deep within their innermost being.

For me, the criteria as to what constitutes beautiful music cannot be based on mere popularity like request charts and platinum sales; nor does music becomes beautiful just because it is classical, standard or the music of pop-culture—these are just capitalistic, commercialistic and consumeristic classifications of music. I also do not believe that the determination of what constitutes beautiful music has to be confined to those self-proclaimed intellectual music elites whose criteria of beautiful music lie in rigidly following the stringent rules of musical composition and in applying the puristic melodic and rhythmic patterns governing classical music. I feel that the criterion as to what can be considered beautiful music should be based on the existential connectivity of this music to our individual and personal search for significance. Therefore, beautiful music is that which is “meaningful music to you”—that which touches you to the core of your very being: that which gives you your existential relevance and self-worth as a human person.

For me, beautiful music is that which brings you to realize how you honestly feel about yourself and about others; bringing you to a realization that you have unique value, unrepeatable identity, and irreplaceable significance within the Greater-Scheme-of-Things. So next time, whenever you hear a certain song, instead of dismissing it as something alien to your taste or as something “bakya”, “baduy” or as something “jologs”; why not listen to the inward heartbeat of the song? Does its heartbeat coincide with what is in your heart? Find yourself in the song, discover yourself in its lyrics, unite your whole being in the pathos of its melody and rhythm. Endeavor to enter into the very pulse of the song—be one with the music, be lost in its playfulness and experientially feel its pain and hurts: this is the only way how to truly appreciate music.

Music is life’s ultimate physician because music is life itself; music portrays to us the intricacies of the movement of life and the dynamics of existence—it knows life’s secrets, and it longs to reveal life’s secrets to us; if only we are open and receptive to it. In the words of the teenage girl Shebnem, the Turkish Gypsy street-singer I happened to converse-with in downtown Istanbul, more than seven years ago: “We Gypsies know how to listen to music and we drown ourselves into the song so that the song will bring us back once again to ourselves… to our pains and joys, to our dreams and our aspirations, to our tears and laughter. The song becomes our refuge in the midst of the harshness of life”. Hearing these insightful words from a teenage Gypsy girl Shebnem, made me realize how her appreciation of music transformed this street girl to a mature and optimistic individual, full of life’s vigor, vivaciousness and virility—literally singing her way to life! It was her deep appreciation and reverence to the miracle of music that differentiated her from the many street children I met in the past…

Let us, therefore, continue the voyage of our own self-discovery through the vehicle of music. Music is life! A song is not just tune, tempo, melody, rhythm and lyrics wrapped together; the song is the sum total of the dynamics of life and existence… Go get a life! Discover a new song today! Become the music that you love!