Historical background
Music is a crucial part in every man’s life regardless of his nationality, culture, age, life story or other particular details. This is because this set of sounds accompanies us as a species from time immemorial at every stage of our lives and during every emotion we feel. Every moment certainly has a musical background with which we can accompany it without any problem, so we can say that this union of melodies has a very deep connection with what we feel.
Our ancestors already knew how important this tool would be for the future when they began to realize that music and other sounds were extremely useful when communicating, warning others about possible dangerous situations, among other things. At the same time, this element was a great help for humans to develop social skills and create a language with which to express their ideas.
Let us not forget that naturalist, geologist and biologist Charles Darwin speaks at great length on the issue in his text On The Origin of Species, in which he comments that the rhythm and cadence of human speaking has certain musical sounds. This is one of the indications of a possible active role in speech development, but the influence of music goes far beyond, but also seems to be able to alter our emotions at surprising levels.
How this connection works
When analyzing the evolutionary process our brain has gone through over time, sounds are an essential part of the creation of patterns and emotions. In fact, emotions are responsible for making sounds understandable to our minds without even realizing it. This association between sound and emotion is what enables us to manage our reactions depending on the context in which we find ourselves at a certain point.
The above is what lets us know if a person is happy or sad just by listening to the tone with which he or she speaks. For the most part, we usually relate sadness to a deep low sound, but the contrary happens with happiness. This differentiation we manage to make is what lets us know how we should act depending on the situation.
According to information available from plenty of neuroscientific studies, music is perfectly capable of altering our moods by activating certain areas of the brain entirely linked to emotions, which has led to truly amazing changes in brain stem activity.
Something quite revealing to say on this subject is that music activates the areas of the brain that are responsible for imitation and empathy. At the same time these are the parts in the brain where mirror neurons are found, which are activated when a person performs an action and sees another one do exactly the same thing. This is how we are able to feel pain for what others suffer, to rejoice over the good things that happen to them. That is the reason why music is able to bring so many people in one voice and make them feel the same just by listening to a song.
When words are not enough to express what we want to say, we can use music to achieve that purpose, since it helps us with the sensory description. This is how we get message recipients to understand our ideas perfectly.
