The Power Of Music

While I was reading a biography about Judy Garland, I came across this interesting passage on the power that music has on the human brain:

"'A dominant aspect of human biology': that is how one eminent doctor, Lewis Thomas, characterized music, and although its influence cannot be measured, as most other aspects of biology can be, music does have strange and uncanny powers. Very often, indeed it is the sole key to otherwise impenetrable areas of the brain, to remote regions that remain detached from the centers of thought and reason. Buried deep inside the brain's tender folds and crevasses, those areas, an inheritance from primitive ancestors, respond to a song or a bar of music long after the reasoning centers have surrendered to internal catastrophes. Stroke victims who have lost the ability to speak can yet sometimes sing; Alzheimer's patients who must wear tags to remind them of their names can yet remember complicated lyrics from once-popular standards.

If music works wonders on the ill, is it any surprise that it also has extraordinary effects on the well? Or that, more than any other stimulus, it awakens sleeping memories? A childhood outing, a first kiss, a wedding, a funeral: all flitting souvenirs, perhaps, as elusive as fireflies until a snatch of music captures and returns them to their owner. The beat of the heart. The act of breathing. The movement of the legs in walking. Each has its own rhythm, and each is part of that larger musical instrument, the human body. When the rhythms are off, illness enters; when they stop, so does life itself." -From, "Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland" By: Gerald Clarke