When I was kid, my buddy Sother and I would spend our after-school hours at our homes talking on the phone. We were notorious for making prank phone calls and loved to come up with new ideas to aggravate unsuspecting random people in the phone book. One particular day, we decided to incorporate a musical element to the chicanery.
Sother at the time was taking piano lessons. We figured that it might be fun to put his phone on speaker and have him play the one song he knew – “Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring” – to the chagrin of whoever answered our calls. I would play the role of a salesman trying to sell “piano tunes.” Naturally, most people hung up within seconds of answering. But on this day, a lady answered and stayed on the call. She sounded irritated before I even started my pitch.
“Hello!?” she answered in a voice that sounded like it was through clenched teeth, just an octave below irate. She was breathing heavily.
“Well hello there,” I started. “Are you interested in –”
“Who is this?! What do you want?” The elevated tone in her voice revealed her growing frustration. Her breathing pace sped up and now it seemed like she was hyperventilating.
At that moment Sother began to play his piano. We were further along in the prank than we had ever been, and he figured that he ought to perform before she left. He played each note gracefully, which made the tune sound warm and melodic. Even my own mood was uplifted hearing his song. After he finished, there was a brief silence.
“Good good good!” the woman exclaimed. Somehow, I could hear the smile through her words. Her teeth no longer sounded clenched. I could imagine this woman’s jaw muscles relaxing as she exhaled calmly. As her breathing slowed, one thing was clear: Sother’s music helped this woman relax. We were stunned. Little did I know, back then when I was 12 years old, that a simple prank telephone call could lead to such a profound understanding of life.
It would take me several years to realize just what had happened that day. Listening to music, I finally understood, can help lower tension levels. Music can calm down road rage. Music can even improve your sleep.
Dr. Deforia Lane is a music therapist who has witnessed the healing power of music for over four decades.
“I have seen many a doctor and nurse and social worker and everyone else sit there in tears listening because they see what a song can do, and they experience it for themselves,” said Dr. Lane. “If it’s relaxation, if it’s pain management, if it’s communication, if it’s releasing this sense of anxiety, you target what you want to do with the music and then you choose the music accordingly.”
The psychological and physical healing power of music is scientifically proven. An article by Harvard Health Publishing states that music can improve “medical outcomes and quality of life in a variety of ways.”
As a musician for over 20 years, I’ve not only seen the healing effects of music on others, I’ve actually felt the difference that calming melodies can have on my own life. Whenever I go through bouts of depression, I sit behind the piano and start riffing to music from my jazz idols like Jeff Lorber and Marcus Johnson. My disposition immediately improves, and I regain the energy needed to get through my day. The same thing happens when I get ready to play basketball. My nerves always race before a game. The cure for me is rap tunes from Jay-Z or Lil Wayne. Their music makes my confidence go through the roof. I could listen to their songs and step on the court ready to take on LeBron James himself.
***
“Here we go again,” Sother thought to himself while boarding the school bus. His fellow classmate Melvin stood up from a bus seat and started berating Sother with threats and curse words. An argument between them that began back at school now reached a boiling point. They got off the bus at an apartment complex and a crowd of kids started to gather around the two boys.
While Melvin was in mid-sentence, Sother punched him square in the jaw.
It wasn’t peer pressure from the eager spectators that triggered this act. It wasn’t even the words that Melvin said. It was just Sother’s urge to hit him. The fight was on.
This brawl occurred a year before our prank call and Sother found himself in plenty of fights as an adolescent. He carried a buried fury within him but couldn’t pinpoint its source.
Sother’s anger gave him the guise of bravery. He bottled up so much of it inside that whenever he found himself in a situation where he was backed into a corner, it didn’t take much for him to unleash a rage in his heart that would be translated into a frenzy of dizzying punches and karate kicks if necessary. His parents, concerned that their son was on a life path towards self-destruction, decided to enroll him into a new hobby.
“They decided to put me in piano lessons,” Sother said, “and it changed my life.”
Sother instantly fell in love with playing the piano and refocused all of his energies on perfecting this new craft. He also started to see a difference in his behavior.
“My head was clearing up. That cloud of anger just started to disappear,” Sother recalled, “I actually walked away from fights. I would’ve never done that before.”
He felt himself regaining overall control of his life after the addition of music. He became a happier person.
This experience supports a study from Nature Neuroscience that says that music is a “potent pleasurable stimulus” that has direct links to dopamine. Dopamine controls a person’s feelings of pleasure and excitement. For people like Sother, music can be used as a therapeutic mechanism for combating anxiety and anger issues.
Music is even a way to empower people who have physical disabilities. David Byass, a music instructor in Takoma Park Maryland, has been teaching middle and high school kids for eight years. He says that he often sees the power of music through his students, particularly those with special needs.
“Even though they had communication and behavior or social issues, they were very bright when it came to learning music,” Byass said. “Some of my best band or piano students are autistic.”
Music is proven to reduce levels of cortisol, which is the stress hormone in our bodies. A coalition of psychologists published a study cited by the National Institutes of Health that concludes “significant positive changes in cortisol” were noted whenever people listened to music before or during medical interventions. And if you listen to music after a stressful medical procedure, your cortisol levels drop even more. It’s no coincidence that playing our song for that lady during our prank seemed to relax her. It’s also not an accident that Sother changed from a firebrand to a peacemaker once he turned to music.
***
At 31 years old, married and with a newborn son, the now-tranquil Sother resembles nothing like the kid who harbored angry thoughts and started trouble with others. He now regularly performs in churches and has a passion for uplifting others through his playing.
“Music has the power to change your mood,” Sother said with a smile. “If I’m sad I’ll play or listen to music to help lift my spirits.”
In the middle of a recent phone call, Sother’s newborn son Sam started crying.
“I don’t know what it is this time,” Sother lamented. “He’s been fed, his diaper is changed, I don’t know why he won’t quit.”
The sound of his son’s unexplained wails is most annoying to Sother. Yet somehow, it’s also his favorite tune.
“I’m going to have to put this boy in voice lessons,” Sother quipped. “He already has ‘shout music’ down pat!”
We both laughed. Even when Sam is getting on his nerves, the love that Sother has for his son is conspicuous. The sound of Sam’s cries is, in a funny way, music to Sother’s ears. And sometimes, to help calm his irascible child, Sother plays piano to him before bedtime.
“Sometimes it puts him to sleep and other times he’s just sitting there staring at me,” Sother said. “But either way, he’s at least preoccupied with what I’m doing.”
A study by the National Library of Medicine concluded that the sleep quality of children improved when they had background music on during naptime and bedtime. So far, the results have been mixed for Sother as far as trying to get his son to sleep. But after all the positive effects that music has had on his own life, Sother isn’t quick to give up.
“I’ll wear him down eventually,” he jokes. “Hopefully, I can find out which songs will put him to sleep the fastest.”