Why Music Is More Than Background Noise

A writer I have great respect for once wrote Music “has two uses..to drown out people eating and drinking noisily”, and “a decent numbing effect on the mood…After all, it is not easy to think properly when you have someone chanting and wailing in your ear.”

Most people I would say, disagree with this outlook on the whole. A lot of people have a favourite band or song that ‘means something’ to them. Sentimentality, you could say, is music’s saving grace. Sentiment, or fanaticism, is what sells T-Shirts, Arena Tours, and ill devised come-back albums. It is this same emotional tie that causes people to have lyrics tattooed on their skin, and posters of people they have never met on their wall. So some people feel music significant to them. It gives them identity, a voice for feelings they could not themselves express. However, this isn’t the sole reason why music is a valuable Art form.

When it comes to emotions and music, the connections are well established and well manipulated. Want to feel upbeat? Four to the floor. Want to wind down? Something featuring an acoustic Guitar. Want to ‘forget about tomorrow’? There are a thousand factory made dance tracks to make you feel that way.

So if a cynical song-writing team can make you feel empowered, or heart-broken, like a cheap novel or a throw-away Rom Com, does music really have any lasting Artistic value? Is it really just ‘background noise’?

I recently attended a casting call, the brief being that they were hoping to find the next Mega-Stars of Pop-Rock. And it got me thinking. If a Record Label put together a band of people who have never met, and give them songs written by a team of people guessing what the general public want them to sing about, and they dress how the label think they should dress, then this defeats the whole point. Allow me to explain what I mean; Art, in my opinion, whether that be literature or sculptures or cave paintings, is a two pronged thing. The one side is the message or emotional content. The other key ingredient is the historical authenticity.

Jane Austen didn’t write about 19^th Century Society because a publisher thought it would be a good idea. She did it because that is the world in which she lived. The same can be said for any truly great Artist. Zora Neale Hurston, a hugely influential writer of the Harlem Renaissance, once said- “I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.”

The rattling wagon of wishful illusions is a nice way of describing the music industry. If everything currently being played on the radio is what labels think we want to hear, what they have had written and found people with pretty faces to sing, then we are not getting art of true value. I would argue that music is valuable so long as it is created in the spirit of authenticity. That way, it gives us a historical, contextual gem, a glimpse into what someone, somewhere, truly thought and said. Nirvana were not a great band because they were made up of perfect instrumentalists, or because they wore fashionable clothes. They were a great band because at the time, they encapsulated exactly what it meant to be a teenager, to be an outcast, living in a bleak town in America. We can listen to their music today and know in a little bit more detail what life was like for people at that time. The same is true for most musicians, Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday, all the way up to bands like Radiohead.

Understandably, the ‘Meghan Trainor’ style of music can perceived to have little value other than as a meaningless background noise. However, it is worth remembering that it is the lowest form of it’s art, it is what Fifty Shades is to Literature. But authentic music, music that sums up a way of life, has the power to change the world. Just look at the birth of the teenager with Rock n Roll. The Punk Movement. Protest songs during the Vietnam war. Perhaps, then, I agree with the notion that a lot of music is ‘background noise’, but rather than covering our ears to the whole art form, we should be searching for a sound that has meaning. For those sounds give us a rich cultural history akin to that of the fields of Literature, Fine Art, or Drama, and it would be wrong to under-estimate the importance of that.

Why You Should Sell Everything You Own

Possessions have a funny way of accumulating over time. I encourage you to try this right now. Stand up, take a look around your room. Open up the drawers and rifle through. Peek under the bed, and on the highest shelves. Now ask yourself- how much of that stuff do I use regularly?

I’ll let you in on a secret- I’m a bit of a hoarder. This is a label that I would never have associated with myself before this week, but the second hand glove fits. Looking through my cupboards this week I realised that I was storing winter coats from 7 years ago, that no longer fit and I never wore, countless ill fitting hand-me-downs from my 3 sisters, old walking boots so caked in mud they probably count as an ecosystem and reams of filled up notebooks with jottings such as “Remember to go to the gym!” filling the crumpled pages.

The epiphany that changed the way I looked at these possessions was simply saying “Is this essential? If I didn’t have this would I even notice?” I shifted around 20 kilos of clothes and sold £70 worth of ‘old tat’ on Ebay (don’t worry, I worded it more enticingly in the listing). I realised, as I threw ancient T Shirts and broken pens in the bin, that after a while, possessions take more energy than they give. I often the phrase, ‘cluttered room, cluttered mind’, and having completed my Possession Purge, I can testify that it is true. There’s something about simplicity, minimalism, and space, that is calming, and having a house full of nick nacks that you don’t use conflicts with that.

Religions have always had something to say about possessions. For Jesus it was “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” In Buddhism, Vireka and Viraaga are concepts meaning ‘detachment’- it is well established that a Monk cannot reach true Enlightenment if distracted by Possessions. Looking over several religions, it becomes clear that a whole lot of people thought getting too bogged down by possessions is a bad idea. This lead me to my next question-

Is This A Capitalist Phenomenon?

Consumerism is the heady oil in the Capitalist machine. The average American household is in $7,000 of credit card debt. Chuck Palanhuick wrote in ‘Lullaby’, a satirical novel- “Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?” Since the Henry Ford assembly lines upped production efficiency to supply and demand skewing levels, advertisers have been working hard to increase demand any way possible. The ‘I Need It’ mentality that we have towards the new iPhone, or a new dress for this weekend, a bigger car, it’s all benefiting companies- but not necessarily you. Sitting Bull, a Native American Chief, said of the American settlers-”They have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them.”

If you view all your incoming money as un-invested capital, and your outgoings as your investments, what would you be investing in? World travel, education, savings or a business idea? Or, realistically, coffees at Starbucks, mobile phone bills, new laptops, and a stream of new clothes and accessories? That is one easy way to stay ’tilling the soil’, working the 9-5 to pay your bills, and never being satisfied that what you have is enough. In Consumerism, More is More. Cutting that association saves a lot of space, and a lot of money.

Where Do I Start?

There is something savagely satisfying, once you realise how little possessions really matter, in getting rid of them. Something of that small thrill of acquisition repeats itself when an item is wholeheartedly disposed of. I encourage you to start by picturing a simple, minimal existence, filled with only the items you use and need. If it helps, remember the guy (Ian Usher) who sold his life (a.k.a all his possessions) on Ebay and went to live on a Carribbean Island. He seems pretty happy these days. Now clear out anything that you don’t use really frequently, using the mantra- “Can I live without it?” Be ruthless, it’ll pay off.

You Can Be Sentimental When You’re Old

I know someone who keeps every letter she gets, every cinema ticket, every festival wristband, as if someday somebody will knock on her door and say, “What have you been doing all these years? Can you prove it?” Let me tell you something. The past is the past. The only time that it is permissible to be stuck in it is on your deathbed, in which case, pull out the old photo albums and have a good cry. Certainly, keep a few key items or photos, but cinema tickets? Really? You were there, you won’t forget being there, and your friends won’t forget you were there. Now chuck it out and make some new memories.

What’s The Benefit?

By cutting the emotional attachment to ‘things’ and relishing a minimal lifestyle you will see straight through advertising, save money, and keep your house de-cluttered. I remember reading ‘Heidi’ as a child, and am still awed by the idea of sleeping on a bale of hay under moonlight, and living off the milk of your pet goat. Perhaps that sounds strange, but it’s also conveniently frugal in comparison to the fantasy of ‘having it all’. Old clothes can be sold to companies that resell them in African or Eastern European markets, things can be sold online and those last few items can always go to the charity shop. Plenty of people can benefit from your clutter- just not you!

In researching this article, and planning my own purge, I read a lot of stories online of people selling everything they own and travelling the world. They speak as if their possessions were the only thing holding them back from achieving their dreams. If this is the case, just think what you can achieve when unburdened by a need for constant ‘things’. Perhaps you can invest the money into becoming what you really want to be.

*The only things worth possessing are good memories and an intention to make many more.*