The Power of Sound

We’ve all heard that the reptilian part of our brain is hardwired for survival, as it seeks to establish predictable patterns that can be used to give us shortcut answers on how to best respond to these patterns for our safety. And a simple illustration of this is the skeptical nature of young babies towards strangers. Meaning that as the child becomes older, they’re able to make faster calculations on the relative safety of a stranger that’s based on more complex environmental factors. But until then, their framework is pretty primitive. So why am I bringing this up? Well, it’s to shine a light on the importance of sound and how it influences so many of the decisions we make about anything. And like the relative assessment of threat levels, how we decipher incoming information will influence how we respond to that information (for better or worse).

According to Neuroscientist Seth Horowitz, author of the book The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind, we hear 20 to 100 times faster than we see. That everything we perceive with our ears colors/modifies every other perception we have. Therefore, in the same way that the world has gotten a big eye-opening look at what the long term effects can be from the use of things like smoking, cocaine, mercury, bloodletting, etc., many researchers can draw pretty compelling arguments now towards the positive and negative effects that certain sounds can have on our physical and mental states. And in this case, I’m referring to the power that music and lyrics can have on the subconscious when you listen to them over and over again.

Here’s a list a popular phrases from songs that have been uttered throughout the years that make up the lexicon of American speech and subsequent thought:

“I’m black and I’m proud.” -James Brown

“YOLO (You Only Live Once).” -Drake

“I like big butts and I cannot lie.” –Sir Mix a lot

“It ain’t no fun if the homies can’t have none.” -Snoop

“Drop it like it’s hot.” -Snoop

“Shoulda put a ring on it.” -Beyonce

“I’m starting with the man in the mirror.” -Michael Jackson

“Don’t Stop Believing.” -Journey

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” -Aretha Franklin

“Don’t worry, be happy.” -Bobby McFerrin

“What’s love got to do with it.” -Tina Turner

“Girls just wanna have fun.” -Cyndi Lauper

“Get rich or die trying.” -50 Cent

“Straighten Up and Fly right.” -Nat King Cole

As you can see, lyrics such as these are instructive in both the literal sense and along value lines. Meaning, they can give a person a sense of direction for what to value if their values have yet to be defined. Now here’s the interesting thing. Because most of the music that has dominated our consciousness since the 1980’s has been associated with a video, it becomes almost impossible to disassociate a particular sound (whether purely instrumental or with lyrics) with a particular image in your head at this point if you’re under the age of perhaps 55. And as such, these sounds tend to get judged more by their imagined cultural associations than by the artistic merits of the song itself. In other words, if a hip-hop artist decides to do a country record, their hip hop fans might discount the merits of the recording strictly along culturally associative lines (and vice versa). The caveat, however, is that people who tend to be more open minded in this regard are usually well trained musicians (within any genre), as musicians are always on the hunt for musical ideas that they’d like to use, regardless of where they emanate—which this type of cross-cultural collaboration has been seen within the world of Jazz ever since its inception.

So the point here is that just like we should be mindful of our air quality, we should also be cognizant of the subtle triggering effects that certain sounds can have on our disposition when we immerse ourselves in them (think a combat vet every 4th of July). And there’s no demographic where the effects can be more readily observed than within adolescents, as they tend to connect more over shared music interests than anything else. And the reason being is the portability factor of it. Unlike something you have to stand still to look at on a screen, music can always be consumed, whether one is consciously focusing on it or not. And because it’s so readily accessible, music tends to serve as an efficient means of establishing clear social boundaries in the sand. Meaning, “people like me (who make me feel safe and validated), listen to things like this.” Another important notion to point out about the effect of music on the psyche is that anything that makes one feel seen, understood/heard, and validated, can greatly influence us. No different than the way we allow ourselves to be influenced by the assessments of a physician who we feel has done a thorough examination on our state of health to show that they really do see our situation for what it is and can validate why our point of view about our condition is what it is. Therefore, when you see a kid who appears to be more influenced by celebrities they don’t even have a relationship with, over the parents or guardians that they interact with daily, it’s because those celebrities are checking all three of these aforementioned boxes for them (for better or for worse).

Suggested Takeaways…

a) Music is central to the life of an adolescent because a job hasn’t become the central driving force in the structure of their day yet. Therefore, they’ll connect to one another through the shared symbolism of a genre sooner than they’ll connect over anything else, as again, the faucet of musical sound is always on, no matter where they are.    

b) Most people don’t take into account that most human learning is incidental and happens more frequently in places that are outside of dedicated spaces for learning. And much of that learning is absorbed through the innocuous and repetitive reinforcement of thoughts that are usually being inadvertently paired with certain sonic textures and visual cues.

c) When you consider how many hours our youth are listening to music on a daily and weekly basis, an argument can be made that it’s more than any other activity. Therefore, the role that it plays in their lives cannot be discounted. In fact, to know very little about the music a child listens to, and why, could suggest that you don’t know as much about that child as you’d like to think; in that it supplies them with not only a great deal of the vocabulary they connect to others with, but it also helps to alter or amplify the moods they may find themselves in. And lastly, the artist they subscribe to can also serve as significant models for how to think about attire, conduct, and social circles.