There’s a meme floating around the Internet that says, “With the right music, you either forget everything or you remember everything.”
It may be a simplified view, but it reveals how we feel about music — or perhaps more appropriately, how music makes us feel. A song may bring back a happy memory. It may help us cope with a sad moment. It may relieve stress or help us better focus on a task at hand.
Whatever the reason, music has the ability to reach across all kinds of boundaries and bring people of all kinds of backgrounds together.
“I think art in general including music, it gets to the soul, the heart of you,” said Erin Enderlin, a Class of 2000 alumna who is a songwriter and performer in Nashville, Tenn.
Enderlin is the reigning Arkansas Country Music Association Female Artist of the Year and two-time Songwriter of the Year as well as earning awards for Album of the Year in 2018 and Song of the Year in 2019. Her songs have also been recorded by country music artists Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, Luke Bryan, Terri Clark and others.
She has been holding Facebook Live performances twice a week while the COVID-19 pandemic restricts travel and in-person concerts. She also has watched other artists hold streaming performances. In each circumstance, she has seen people from around the world participating in the chats, hanging out and visiting with friends they may have met either at concerts or made during virtual performances. That speaks to the power of music, she said.
“Music in a sense is an international language. You can hear a song — you might not be able to understand the words, but you can understand the emotion that’s there. All those things come together to connect people through music,” she said.
“I think when you’re going through something, like a lot of people are right now, that connection, that tie into emotion helps you deal with it. You can help your mood by listening to a song. Sometimes you want to listen to a sad song to make you happy. Sometimes you want to listen to something to get you fired up and get you ready to go.”
Staci Stich, ASMSA’s licensed professional counselor, said that listening to music has a physical effect on the listener. Science has shown that listening to music can lead to the release of dopamine and serotonin, naturally produced neurotransmitters that can affect our moods, into our systems.
“Anytime there is a crisis in the world, they have some kind of music fest to raise money or awareness of what the situation is. What other way can a group of people change the mood of millions of people at the same time? They do it with music,” she said.
That effect is also why we tend to include music in life events that have deeper meanings for us such as weddings, funerals, religious services, etc., Stich said.
“Most of our big events that we have in our lives, music is there. We then have what I call an anchor. You connect the music to the feeling to the memory. So it anchors all of that together. So anytime in the future — if that music is played you automatically remember that memory and how you felt at that time,” she said.
Sydney Crabtree, a junior from Lavaca, is studying the effects of film music on a person’s brain and their reactions. Her capstone project focuses on how the leitmotifs of composer Howard Shore’s score for “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy interact with each other and with the audience to create a better movie-watching experience.
She said the films are among her favorites to watch. She first watched them with her family as a young child. She has watched them several times — with family members, with friends and alone.
“They bring a sense of home to me or summer nights because I would watch them after we had a family dinner after a nice day outside,” she said. “We would watch them as a treat so I have positive feelings associated with those movies.
“When I moved to ASMSA, I could watch them whenever I was missing home. I associated feelings of my family with that. Even when I get sick, I could watch all three movies, and I would finish and feel a lot better.”
Crabtree also listens to the trilogy’s soundtracks. When she does, she can hear the words and see the scenes with which they are associated. She said that’s because Shore’s leitmotifs are specifically tied to locations, events and the ring itself. For example, she said, the ring that is the plot device used to move the story along has its own leitmotif. The ring may not even be used in a scene, but if its motif is played, the audience can relate what’s going on in the scene to the influence the ring has on it.
“There is a purpose on why you’re hearing those motifs even if it’s not directly on screen. There is one for the Shire (the homeland of the story’s Hobbit characters). So when you hear its notes, you picture the rolling green hills. It can bring you these good feelings. If you know the songs, you can know the story without the visuals,” she said.
Another film example she used is the “Star Wars” theme. “Whenever you hear it, you can picture the big yellow letters rolling across the screen,” she said.
Familiarity plays a pivotal role in how you interact with music, Crabtree said. The more often you hear it, the more likely you may develop a certain feeling or emotion to go with it.
To accompany this story, we asked ASMSA students and employees to share songs that they turn to when they are happy, sad, ready to dance or has some special meaning for them. We have created a Spotify playlist featuring those songs. You may also listen to the playlist at https://asmsa.me/ASMSAmusic2020.
Various forms of art offer us the opportunity to find a community and a way to connect with each other, said Dr. Thomas Dempster, a music instructor at ASMSA.
“Performing music itself is something that’s rooted in cooperation and collaboration,” Dempster said. “Humans – we’re probably the most collaborative, adaptive species on the planet. There’s something almost primal about that connectivity — when we perform music or listen to it or seek it out.”
We are seeing storytelling in various forms come to the forefront during this time, he said. Whether it’s the residents of Italy singing together daily or artists coming together for special digital concerts or individuals rediscovering instruments in their closets or attics and playing them online for others.
“We’re capturing and documenting something during this moment,” Dempster said. “It’s something that reminds us of being in a community. It’s stuff that makes us human. Creative arts, performing arts — they help define our sense of self. Even if it doesn’t cross our minds, it makes us who we are.”
Music is not the only medium that allows humans to make those connections, he said. We can use TV shows and movies to create shared experiences and memories. Netflix, for example, has recently introduced a watch party capability where users can connect to view a movie together at the same time. Dempster said many people are using collaborative video games to achieve the same feelings. He said people are spending hours on Twitch (a video game channel owned by Amazon) or other live mediums, often just watching others play.
Many people are using this time to rediscover music they may not have listened to in a long time, Dempster said. He has re-explored composers he overlooked in graduate school, but he has also taken advantage of the plethora of music services and videos that are available online to discover new music.
“It’s fun for me to find pieces I didn’t know existed or composers I’ve never heard of before,” Dempster said. “Why not take this time to learn about something you haven’t heard?”
For Dempster, that includes listening to genres new to him such as exotica, death metal and bluegrass from Romania and Czechia. He also discovered that Iceland may have the highest number of composers per capita. “I had no idea how many Icelandic composers there were,” he said.
Senior Benjamin Oliver has already followed that advice. This semester he took a class that focused on The Beatles taught by Dempster and Dr. Dan Kostopulos. He had heard of the famous British band that changed the face of rock music in the 1960s, but he had not spent much time listening to their music.
“I knew The Beatles were an all-time great band, but I didn’t listen to their music and appreciate it,” the Jonesboro resident said. “Now I could listen to their music all day long. I love all the random tracks because somebody helped me gain an appreciation of their music.”
Oliver had a similar experience when a friend recommended he listen to rapper/singer Kendrick Lamar. He had heard some of Lamar’s music, but it didn’t resonate with him until one of his friends insisted he take another listen. His opinion about Lamar has changed, and he and his friend spend time talking about Lamar’s process.
That’s part of the joy of sharing suggestions among friends, Oliver said.
“Listening to music with other people is really fun because they have their own tastes. I remember several times someone coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, have you heard this song? It’s fantastic.’ I’ll listen and may find someone new. I can do the same thing. If somebody agrees with you, it builds an instant connection,” he said.
Music can also provide a way to help identify on a personal level with the artist. There are several songs on the A-side of the “White” album that “are just fantastic” and he can’t stop listening to, Oliver said. Discussions about the album in class helped him learn about what members of the band were experiencing at that time.
“I know that being able to explore an artist’s mind helps you connect more to them. You know what they were going through at that time, so there’s no guessing. That allows me to know that if I’m feeling that way I can listen to this song and relate and find some understanding,” he said.
Stich said many artists use their music as a way to cope with depression or down times in addition to celebrating happier times. They use their talent to find a positive way to get through tough periods in their life, she said. Students often react the same way.
“(Students) may not be able to tell me what’s going on verbally, but they can write it. Some students share what they wrote with me or share a song that shares similar feelings. They can’t tell me, but they will write it down,” she said.
“Some people feel the need to cry and can’t. If they can just cry, they could get it out. Music can help you do that. Sometimes it’s not to raise your spirits but to help you get (your emotions) out.”
It’s not always about the lyrics, either. Junior Jacob Holmes of Rector turns most often to classical music, whether it’s more modern pieces by American composers David Maslanka and John Mackey or piano compositions by Listz, Vivaldi or Schubert.
When he’s in the mood for non-classical tunes, he listens to French pop and Japanese pop and rock music. He is taking courses in both languages at ASMSA. Since he is not fluent in both languages, he doesn’t always understand what the singer is saying. But that’s not a problem, he said.
“Most of the time, even if I listen to popular music that’s in English, I don’t remember the lyrics,” he said. “It’s always how the music goes — the notes are in my head.”
Dempster said he conducts an exercise with his music capstone students where he takes them to various parts of campus, has them close their eyes and just listen. As students respond to various sounds — whether it’s a piece of equipment’s motor or animal sounds or anything else — the message is the same — take time to listen.
“My wife and I were eating dinner, and it was quiet,” he said. “During our conversation she said, ‘I don’t know if the birds have always been this loud or active or if I’m just listening more.’ It kinda stuck with me. A lot of this music, a lot of this content, a lot of this art has always been there. It’s always been lurking, but we’ve all been very, very busy.
“There’s always going to be more content than what we as a species can ever consume in our lifetimes. I think a divine or cosmic intervention — whatever you want to call it — a pause button has been pressed for a lot of people. When you do that, if you’re told to freeze, your senses get heightened and we start discovering that it’s been here that entire time.”
How we choose to respond to the challenging times taking place is up to each individual. Many of us are simple consumers of music or art. Others are ready to step up and serve as our storytellers. Either way, music helps make life a little easier.
“Life has a lot of beautiful parts to it,” said Enderlin, who has taken this opportunity to re-record some of her earlier work as well as work on some new material. “When you’re really, really moved by art in a way that not only connects with you in that moment, it can change the course of your life. It would be a sad world without it.”