The Transformational Power of Music Research Paper

The Transformational Power of Music - Research Paper Example Music has the power to move a person through more than just the sounds within the ear. Music is emotional, editorial, and connected to memory. The way music sounds gives cues to the meaning of imagery. Music is a culturally defined experience, the language of music designed by learned understandings of associations. How the memory creates emotional responses to music is defined by the associations that have been made. This is one of the reasons why writing about music can be difficult as it is better to describe the feeling it evokes than to try and write about the sound. How it feels can be described from one point of view, but how it sounds is defined through the interpretation of each individual. Music is a complex experience that stimulates the emotional memories within the mind. According to Meyer, the meaning of music is based upon cultural learning, societies determining how to take the cues that are placed through the sounds that are made in their music (2). Sounds are not un iversally understood, the semiotic language developed through the associations that are made to the music. According to Cohen â€Å"when we emphasize music’s universality, we might mislead ourselves into thinking that musical elements can be borrowed from here or there, without paying sufficient attention to distinct cultural meanings, such as the sacred dimensions of performance† (27). However, she goes on to say that the aptitude and capacity for music is universal even though how those capacities are shaped is defined by cultural learning (Cohen 28).