Can Music Change Your Life?

Can Music Change Your Life?

By Deborah Ross

            Can music change your life? We see people moved by music at concerts, recitals, and church, but does it change them? Titanic is an amazing movie. Everyone can feel the emotion while watching it but when “My Heart Will Go On” comes on at the end of the movie it all suddenly becomes so real. Every movie comes alive with music. The Notebook, Finding Neverland, and Pride and Prejudice are some of the few movies that continue to touch us because of their music. Though these examples may have changed a few people’s lives, music affects us all in one way or another.

Music has been around forever. Cultures sing and dance in celebration or in sorrow. The African tribes made music with their voices and drums. The Jews made music with harp and lyres. The Scottish are known for their bagpipes. Songs have been passed down from generation to generation in the Appalachian Mountains. My mom used to sing me to sleep with the little old folk song her Grandma and mother sang to her. “Marzy Doats” is an almost meaningless song but the fact that it connects different generations of people together is priceless.

Is music solely a form of entertainment or is it more? Maybe music is a form of art work. Who knows music could even be the explanation of our dreams. Music is the one common thing that connects each culture together. I look back on my life and almost all of my memories include music. Whether it is my Memaw playing piano and singing on Christmas, going to Indiana and listening to my family have a jam session in a park, going to my first concert, or my first piano recital, my life has been filled and blessed with music. It has changed me in so many ways.
           

Piano was my first foray into my own personal music journey. I would bang on it as a kid until finally I was able to take piano lessons. I still sing the song “Little Robin Red Breast” that I learned early on in my piano career. Whenever I get mad or sad I go to the piano and just play. I can get completely lost in a song. I can play perfectly in a time of great emotion. Sometimes I play for hours; other times I can’t make it that long and I will just sit there crying because I realize even when I am enraged I can still make something beautiful. Music can make you fall in love, whether with a boy, life, or just the song itself. Music has a power no one can completely grasp.

The real question I am faced with is does music change or just affect our lives? My mother wanted to be a computer programmer but years later she ended up being a violin teacher. She loves it and knows it is exactly where she is meant to be. It did not turn her life around completely but it greatly affected her. Every time I just want to give up on life, music is always there to catch me. It brings me back to the reality that it will get better. For me it changes and molds me, music does more than just affect me.

            My dad always talks of how being a DJ at a skating rink in Indiana helped him get all of the girls. They would leave him notes on his car telling him to meet them after work. Because of my dad’s gift for arranging music girls fell in love with him. The movie Footloose emphasizes the importance of music in our lives. Music brings us the gift of dance. If my dad never started enjoying country music and country dancing my parents would not have met. They met at a country western club and fell in love while dancing with each other. Music brought my parents together, that changed my life because without that I would not be here.

            Music can capture a person’s soul and every essence of life without saying a word. Music is our unspoken thoughts. It can relay a feeling that words cannot even express. My best friend’s parents fell in love with each other because of music. Terri, my friend’s mom, was singing at church one day and her voice just touched Jeff and at that instant he knew that she was the one. Before they had even met he had known it was her because he fell in love with her voice. Did music change their lives or just affect it? Would their lives be the same without music?

           

Music is not just an aspect of life; it is an expression of life. It tells timeless stories of love, war, heartbreak, and bliss. I know music effects the lives of people but does it truly change their life? Can a group of notes alter a person’s fate? Can something as simple as a note turn someone’s dreams into reality?