Art Beat: Music as therapy

Hi, my name is Jacob Mann. I cover the Art Beat for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.

I’ve heard time and time again that music serves the same purpose as therapy for many people, not just musicians.

There’s something raw and almost unexplainable about the healing power of music. The effect is undeniable and varies from person to person, but it’s all together unifying as an art form that transcends art itself. It’s something visceral that we can not touch but feel around us everywhere as if coming from the very ether of life itself.

Here are some immortal words from important names across genres weighing in on the subject of music as therapy:

“Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.”

— Elton John,

“Music should be an essential part of every analysis.”

— Carl Jung

“Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears – it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more – it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.”

— Oliver Sacks

“Music is life itself.”

— Louis Armstrong

“Each time you play music, it becomes new. This is one way I’ve been thinking about memory and the present, past and future times all fitting together. I called it an exquisite moment. It’s an exquisite moment because the audience and the situation of performing allows us, requires us, to think of that moment. Very often we go through life without thinking about that moment. We talk about mindfulness but we’re not very mindful, most of us.”

— Philip Glass

“Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening.”

— Aretha Franklin

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

— Victor Hugo

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”

— Confucius