“The fundamental nature and meaning of music lie not in objects, not in musical works at all, but in action, in what people do. It is only by understanding what people do as they take part in a musical act that we can hope to understand its nature and the function it fulfills in human life.”
- Christopher Smalls in Musicking: The Meaning of Performing and Listening
The quote above was extracted from a Master’s research project I undertook at University College London during the 2008-2009 academic year. I was lucky enough to be invited by the Lake of Stars team to share my research by contributing to their blog. I am very thankful for this opportunity as it was my hope from the very start of my program that whatever research I produced would ultimately have some relevance beyond just the academic world. I think it will also, no doubt, make my financiers happy (my thanks go out to Mom and Dad) that I am putting those international student fees to good use In any case, let me begin…..
My research was born out of a simple but unconditional love for music. Like many others, my life story could not be told without the soundtrack that has accompanied me along the way. Fortunately, I landed myself in a Master’s program that was flexible enough to let me explore the power of music in an academic context. By the power of music, I mean the indescribable ways in which music inspires, relaxes, consoles, motivates and provides a common language for communication. This to me is one of the great mysteries of the human experience.
Whether we are aware of it or not, there are many ways in which we go about experiencing this world in purely visceral ways. With the arts in particular, we tend to think and act with our bodies. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the intense emotional responses people often experience in reaction to music. What my research set out to do was explore the gap between musical experience and how we describe it, where what we feel often escapes words, and literally, takes our breath away.
It was the goosebumps I often get in response to music that really led me to develop a research project that would explore the intersection of music and emotion. I decided this could be explored most critically within the context of the benefit concert where emotions tend to run high. For both their similarities and marked differences, I chose two concerts to look at: Live 8 and Dance4life. I am sure many of you remember the satellite link-up of 8 massive concerts from around the world that served as the culmination of the Make Poverty History campaign back in 2005 (if you missed it, there is a great DVD that covers all the shows available on Amazon). On the other hand, some of you might not be familiar with Dance4life. Dance4life is an initiative that since 2004 has used the Live 8 format to stage a series of biennial concerts in the fight against HIV/AIDS
For more on Dance4life, please visit their website at www.dance4life.com. A clip of the 2008 Dance4life event:
After 5 long months of conducting interviews and soliciting questionnaires, pouring over press coverage and DVD/Youtube footage and consuming inordinate amounts of caffiene, what I discovered was that music can be used to harness political will in a number of different ways that can effect both short term and long term change.
Music is an incredible resource for generating awareness about serious global issues, as initiatives like Live 8 and Dance4life have shown. But we also must be aware that its power is so tremendous as to require that we use it in an ethical and productive manner.
So, what then is the connection between my research and the Lake of Stars Festival? I believe that the relevance of my research to the Lake of Stars festival is twofold. First, on a conceptual level, it provides a theoretical foundation for evaluating the performance space of music and its potential as an instrument for change. Second, on a more practical level, it highlights strategies for the effective use of music in producing concerts and festivals that produce positive change.
Looking back, I think the most important thing about my research is that on the most fundamental level, it draws attention to the ways in which we come together, and how music can play an integral role in creating feelings of solidarity. One of the theorists I read and that I liked most remarked once in an interview that “what you can do, your potential, is defined by your connectedness, the way your connected and how intensely” (For the entire interview, see http://www.theport.tv/wp/pdf/pdf1.pdf). If this is true, than the vinspired Lakes of Stars festival, by bringing Malawi together with the rest of the world, has a bright future to look forward to.
For more on my research see http://music4life2010.wordpress.com/
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Megan is volunteering with vinspired Lake of Stars
If you're 16-25 and would like to volunteer, find opportunities at vinspired.com
