Search Results

This chapter examines the influences of musical activities such as listening, singing, or dancing on the endocrine system. The underlying assumption is that psychological processes associated with musical experiences lead to changes in the hormonal systems of brain and body. It begins with a brief introduction to general questions of psychoneuroendocrinology as well as to relevant hormonal systems, followed by an overview of empirical studies, which have begun to investigate hormonal responses to musical stimulation and musical activities. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future work that will be derived from initial evidence showing that music can be seen as a psychoactive stimulant inducing physiological effects that are sometime similar to those produced by pharmacological substances.

This chapter reflects upon the young musicians initially surveyed and the research evidence discussed along the way. It examines these early theorizations and predictions in light of the current lives of these participants based on longitudinal data that has permitted researchers to trace them, some eleven to fourteen years after their first interviews, depending on individual participants and the number of follow-up interviews after a survey that was administered in 2008. Through a survey, interviews, and some observations, a descriptive profile of the participants' musical lives was developed: the length of time they were or are still engaged in music activities, the reasons why they ceased or continued playing, the nature of their ongoing musical experiences, what they had taken from their previous music learning experiences and their beliefs about music and music education.

This chapter examines the types and functions of Sibe music. It provides biographical sketches of village musicians including Ga'altu of the Anjia clan, Guo Rongxing, and a certain Shoulintai. The chapter highlights the social functions of songs and their role as vehicles of formalised expression of human relations in the Sibe community. It describes the songs and musical activities at weddings, funerals, and calendric festivals.

Public health epidemiology aims at scientific descriptions of relationships between life conditions and public health in different groups of people. Such approaches suggest relationships between a given life condition and a specific public health problem. Thus, it can point at life conditions that may be of crucial importance to health. Epidemiology traditionally focuses on risk factors of illness. However, recent approaches also provide opportunities to the identification of life conditions that may protect against ill health by enhancing immune functions and even actively promoting health. Can musical activities and experiences, for example, promote health? This chapter reviews recent trends in public health epidemiology, focusing on the effects of music on health. Health outcome is defined mainly in a medical context. Psychophysiological studies are considered which indicate positive and negative health-related processes.

This chapter considers music in the life of a whole family at two time points in 1999 and 2009. The family in question is not obviously dominated by musical activity and no one in the family thought of themselves as a performer or even played a musical instrument at the time of researchers' last interview with them. Nevertheless, all members of this particular family display strong and interacting musical selves where beliefs, values, and activities have been developed that promote music as a part of everyday life. Their story illustrates that whilst musical engagement can be intermittent and vary from active participation to listening, it can still be highly significant in realizing an individual's identity, in family dynamics, and in everyday life, whatever the degree of engagement.

The brain as a highly dynamically organized structure can change and adapt as a result of activities and demands imposed by the environment. Musical activity has proven to be a powerful stimulus for this kind of brain adaptation, or brain plasticity. This chapter suggests that music-induced brain plasticity may produce benefits for wellbeing in general and may influence neurohormonal status as well as cognitive and emotional processes in healthy and diseased individuals, helping to improve various sensory, motor, coordinative, or emotional disabilities. It first reviews mechanisms of music-induced brain plasticity. It then clarifies the impact of music on emotion and neurohormones. It demonstrates the transfer effects of music exposure and making music to other cognitive and emotional domains, and shows examples of the potential of music to serve as a supportive and facilitative therapy in rehabilitation from motor impairment and aphasia following brain injury.

A general shift in emphasis toward more community-based musicking practices, coupled with an interest in health-promoting rather than curative activities within the field of music and health, gives rise to a new set of questions best addressed by the broadest possible cultural, theoretical, or sociological perspective. Some of these questions concern the ethical and political dimensions of musicking — for instance, should we describe communal musicking activities as ultimately educational, cultural, therapeutic, or health promoting? Other questions concern the traditional boundaries that distinguish music therapists from community musicians or health workers, for example. Should these boundaries be blurred, perhaps via the new role of health musician? What competencies should be required for doing health work using musical activities? Which musical, social, and theoretical skills would best accommodate health-related musical interventions? This chapter attempts to answer these questions by reporting briefly on a community music project presently being conducted among young Palestinians living under adverse conditions in a refugee camp in South Lebanon. It begins by giving some theoretical background on and conceptual clarification to the field of music and health and the concept of musicking.

One of the aims of this chapter is to show how the complexity and sophistication of children's play goes well beyond many adult preconceptions. To children, play is neither trivial nor useless. This chapter defines children's musical play as the activities that children initiate of their own accord and in which they may choose to participate with others voluntarily. Like other modes of play, these activities are enjoyable, intrinsically motivated, and controlled by the players. They are free of externally imposed rules but may involve rules developed by the children who are playing. They are ‘everyday’ forms of musical activity, happening in the places children inhabit when not engaged in organised educational, recreational, or economic activity. The constraints imposed by space, the levels of acceptable noise, and what might be used to produce a sound influence the ways in which children will play musically.

A different approach to music-making in groups is that of community music, a form of musical activity that is designed to transform and mobilize communities. This approach has many similarities to other forms of community art, and has considerable potential to achieve more than purely musical goals in terms of identity, health, and wellbeing. This chapter considers in more detail what is meant by the term community and how it connects with community music. It explores a number of examples from diverse settings, and looks at the short- and long-term impact of community music on the participants and the wider community.

It is very common for observers to invoke the notion of ‘talent’ or ‘gift’ when they hear music. This is usually connected to the notion that such capacities are fixed and immutable. These kinds of lay explanations can then lead to prescriptions for action. For instance it may be concluded that child A will be able to profit from music instruction whereas child B will not. It is really important to grasp that there is absolutely nothing within the performances of these two children which logically invokes explanations in term of ‘talent’. They have exactly equal innate potential or aptitude for musical activity. This chapter also states that musical ability entails the ability to detect and use these structures in the mental manipulation of music. Another term that is sometimes used for the process of making sense of music is ‘audiation’.

Indonesians are recognized today throughout the Muslim world community, or umma, as excellent reciters, and qari's and qari'as often place among the champions in international competitions. This chapter considers how people conceptualize musical activity and organize musical patterns in ways that they can communicate to their students and peers, and in ways which communicate, in a more general sense, with their publics.

Research on the development of musical talent has documented quite substantially the role of the teacher, family, and practice. The two key studies conducted by Sloboda and Howe (Howe & Sloboda, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c; Sloboda & Howe, 1991, 1992) and Davidson, Howe, Moore, and Sloboda (Davidson, Howe, Moore, & Sloboda, 1996; Davidson, Moore, Sloboda, & Howe, 1998; Howe, Davidson, Moore, & Sloboda, 1995; Sloboda, Davidson, Howe, & Moore, 1996) have made significant contributions to the field by looking closely at these three factors. Earlier and later research has also placed similar emphasis on the role of the teacher, family and practice (see, for instance, Moore, Burland, & Davidson, 2003; Sosniak, 1985). While this research has included the talented musician’s involvement in activities outside the instrumental lesson, and key influential events, it has not been conducted and reported in the same level of detail. Nor has it identified and explored young, talented musicians’ own views as to what they have considered to be important in their own musical development, alongside their own musical beliefs and values associated with each route. The pilot study reported in this chapter aims to build on the seminal work by Sloboda et al. by focusing on the musical activities and key influences beyond that of the music lesson, practice, teacher, and family, with the aim of documenting the additional routes undertaken by adolescents, and by exploring further the role that these play in the development of adolescent musical excellence.

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the evolution of human capacities for musical behaviours. It discusses the diverse characteristics of activities considered to be musical in different cultures and the physiological and neurological capacities that support tonal vocalization. It suggests that musical activities were certainly not trivial or incidental aspects of Palaeolithic life and that there can be little doubt that the musical behaviours undertaken in the European Upper Palaeolithic were ones that we would recognize today.

The founding of the Adams Juvenile Band illustrates that local culture should be valued and that dedicated hard work, especially in both education and self-study, produces opportunity. This chapter begins by describing the pervasive importance of musical activities in the artisan environment and argues against a simplistic, essentialized understanding of music and race by claiming that European and Latin music had a more pervasive influence on the music of the Virgin Islands than purely African sources. It recounts Adams's struggle to learn the instrument without benefit of a regular teacher. In particular, he overcomes two traumatic incidents that only fuel his feisty determination and forge his commitment to educating youth. This example offers further clarification of the path that Adams hopes youth in the Virgin Islands will follow today. Furthermore, this chapter touches on the islands' first carnival and the hurricane of 1916.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's main premise, that the theosophical phase of Russolo's late period—what is often considered his regressive change of direction—was linked to his longtime interest in the occult arts. This interest is already evident in Russolo's formative years and, more important, it profoundly influenced what was possibly his most significant futurist achievement: the concept of an art of noises. The focus is on Russolo's first phase of futurist musical activity: from 1913, the year of his Manifesto on the Art of Noises, to 1921. The two principal contributions of the book are a reconsideration of Russolo's musical career in the light of his occultist interests and an alternative reading of the art of noises, which he and his contemporaries understood to be an ambitious, if occult, experiment.

Musical activities played an important role in the education of Felix Mendelssohn and his siblings. Felix, in particular, gained so much practical experience from the regular Sunday concerts that took place around 1820, whereby he directed and participated in performances of his own compositions with accomplished professional musicians. Heinrich Dorn provides a clear picture of Felix's musical and social circle during the family's years in Berlin, as well as a domestic performance of his opera Der Onkel aus Boston oder Die beiden Neffen. Two of Felix's older musical contemporaries, Julius Benedict and Ignaz Moscheles, also describe Mendelssohn's musical activities in Berlin. Mendelssohn concluded his education in Berlin beginning in May 1826, when he enrolled at the university and attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Carl Ritter. He began practicing Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion privately with a small choir in the winter of 1827 and conducted two performances of the oratorio two years later.

Yijing lays a foundation for classic Confucianism and classic Daoism. It presents the central concepts of yin and yang, an organismic worldview, change, unchanging principles, easy concepts, and simple operations. Humans are at the center in observing the universe, trying to understand it, to avoid adversity, and to promote prosperity. The author presents the phenomena of music and music education as explained by concepts found in Yijing. The yin and yang dyad can be applied to musical and music educational settings to explain musical motions, musical roles of individuals, and the natures of the musical activities and musical events. In music education settings, events are constantly changing due to changes in context, the teacher, and the learner, yet they are connected and synchronized.

This chapter looks at the musical activities and compositions of Kay Swift during the 1970s. It explains that during this period Swift focused on composing in classical style and she also wrote children's songs, including Shoana, which was a tribute to her great granddaughter. Some of her most notable works during this decade include Man, Have Pity Man, The Bee Song, and Yes, I Shall.