Two weeks ago, I wrote about music as a cultural tool. Music allows for expression of the self or group. Music gathers us and captures our identity. In many years of work as a music therapist, I witnessed the power of music to facilitate transformations, shape attitudes and alter behaviors.
What is this cultural and therapeutic tool we call music? Ian Cross (2001), explored the concepts of music as a “universal” phenomenon through the perspectives of cognitive anthropology and evolutionary perspectives. Cross offered the following definition:
Musics can be defined as those temporally patterned human activities, individual and social, that involve the production and perception of sound and have no evident and immediate efficacy or fixed consensual reference.
This definition emphasizes music as a biological and psychological phenomenon. The final part of the definition reinforces the importance of making meaning of the stimulus. Cross contended that music has no efficacy until humans react and respond to it. The universal aspect is our ability to respond and our capacity to have a relationship with music. The nature of our relationship with music is based on personal factors.
Our cultural context helps to define how we make understand the music, but the capacity to make meaning is the universal human response.
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