Response to "Why Does Music Make People so Cross?"

By Melanie Lazar, Music Therapy student at Lesley University, Cambridge Massachusetts. Email: melanielaz@gmail.com

What a powerful statement it is to say that music makes people angry. As a first year graduate student in training to be a music therapist, many of my personal discussions and thoughts go into discovering which music makes people happy and empowered as tools for overall positive well being. However, Simon Frith's article, "Why does music make people so cross?" speaks to the opposite.

Music has a way of breaching cultural, racial, sexual and generational boundaries. It is valued for its ability to speak to us on a personal level. However, as Frith points out, directed and passionate lyrics must oppress one group or person in order to empower another. Is this what provoked the East Coast- West Coat hip-hop rivalry in the early 1990s that took the lives of musicians 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G.? Musicians seem to thrive in the world of pop music, many times, out of pure controversy. Controversy is the essence of saying that which is taboo. We all have felt and researched endlessly that music can impact us in a positive way. But is there any space for music therapy, which explores music that leaves us in a state of unrest? Is there any benefit to stirring up anger in our clients as music therapists? In her book, Essays on Analytical Music Therapy, Mary Priestly (1994) brings to our attention the fact that many times these angry parts of our clients are underdeveloped or unrecognized.

Frith explores the technical aspects of music that will leave a listener angry. His examples only work for listeners that have a certain level of expertise or familiarity with the specific piece or genre performed or recorded. For example, coming from a classical background as an opera singer, I would feel offended to hear a male perform an aria intended for a female or a fifteen year old girl try to sing "Vissi D'Arte" from Tosca by Puccini. Both of these attempts to create these classical masterpieces would be dishonorable to the composer's intentions and the integrity of the work. However, if I heard a re-make of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" by a group of female singers or re-formatted for an orchestra I would feel indifferent. My point is, although Frith skirts around the issue of an individual's relationship to the music, he fails to explore the essential need for there to be a pre-determined bond between person and genre or song for anger to be provoked. This bond enables the listener to become angry due to the "ethical shortcomings" of the song as opposed to the technical, as the provoked anger would not exist without musical knowledge.

Frith also discusses how attending a live performance might lend itself to making an audience member angry due to the person feeling that the musician is "selling out," cheating by using recorded music, lip syncing, or worse, is just not prepared. I agree, that sometimes as a listener and attending concerts of favorite musicians, I have felt angered by the fact that the musicians sounds different live. Many times, when I have fallen in love with a song and know all if its idiosyncrasies, hearing a descending phrase instead of an ascending one or a harmony I was not accustomed to may ruin my experience or expectation of what the piece is "supposed" to sound like. To tie this back into Frith's point, this is because the music has spoken to me on an emotional level and has empowered me in a certain way. Changing the song may change the listener's sense of control.

Next is the issue of angry music. Music that makes us angry because in a technical or theoretical sense, it is composed to be harsh, brash and filled with rage. Such techniques used by musicians can be loudness, minor keys, high pitches, unresolved chords or structures, and tempos that edge us forward. Other techniques that Frith does not mention could also be suspensions, half cadences, deceptive cadences, or reverse picardy thirds. Open fifths can create a sense of emptiness and alberti bass or broken chords can create feelings of unrest such as in Schubert's "Gretchen am Spinnrade." The constant forward motion of the bass line can illustrate racing thoughts or sentiments.

One of the most important points of Frith's paper is that listening to angry music does not correlate to experiencing real anger. Perhaps this is because listening to angry music puts us in the role of the performer. We are more prone to identify with the emotion of anger than to feel subject of someone else's anger through music. As Frith points out, this makes us feel excited and energized as listeners. What actually makes us angry as listeners is hearing music that is tailored towards making the listener feel cheated. Surprisingly, this is generally mellow in sound, sarcastic in lyric content and contains an undertone fueling protest against political forces.

I would like to see further exploration on the issues that Frith brings to our attention. How can we use anger to benefit our clients? What kind of music would be the most effective? Music that provokes empowerment or energy because it is overtly aggressive or music that is subtle in its messages of oppressed relatable individuals? With this information being brought to our attention as future or current clinicians, I believe it is important to discover how it can be used as a tool to further coping skills in an array of client populations. After all, as Bruscia in Defining Music Therapy (1998) explains, health is a "holistic condition" (p. 78). Threat to overall health includes discrepancies in physical well-being as well as emotional and mental state. If we fail to address all avenues for emotional experience and expression through music in therapy, we risk missing the possible musical facet that could unleash a plethora of emotion waiting to be navigated.

References

Bruscia, K.E. (1998). Defining music therapy (2nd ed.). Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.

Priestly, M. (1994). Essays on analytical music therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.