“Where words fail, music speaks.”
Hans Christian Andersen
From ancient times, music has been used to heal the sick and this has now been validated as an intervention. Positive changes in stress hormone levels and dopamine levels have been demonstrated on listening to music. Music not only releases negative emotions but has a positive impact on a person’s mindset and hence on physical well-being.
Music can help you relax, including feeling the tension easing away from your muscles, decrease your anxiety and aggression, increase your concentration skills and help you to deal with emotional turmoil. Music can be calming, joyful, rekindle memories, set your mood and also help you to express your feelings to someone! Music is integral in nature. Sounds of birds, breeze whistling through trees, and flowing water have a wonderful effect. That’s why we make playlists of our favourite music.
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
Plato
With our group, Sargam the Musical Medicos (a group of seven singing doctors, founded by Dr Bipin Pandit), we come together to sing and bring joy to our audience and to ourselves too. Practising music takes our mind away from the stress of our medical practice, gives immense joy, especially when we can feel the joy that our music has brought to the listener.
Right now, when we are in a lockdown, an unprecedented situation and facing a dreaded virus, a sense of fear and uncertainty about the future, this gives us all stress and emotional upheaval. Human beings are social animals and physical interaction and touch are very important positive communication necessary for our emotional health. We do have social media to help us interact with near and dear ones but that is not enough.
We all need something to look forward to, something that we expect to give us joy. Thus, we announced our Facebook Live concert recently and were immediately flooded with messages from relatives, friends and fans, messages showing their excitement, that they were eagerly awaiting this event. Our two shows were very well-received and for little time before, for the time of the show and for some time after the show, we brought joy to our listeners.
A mood elevator in this time of stress, music helped them take our minds off the lockdown, and enjoy from the comfort of their homes. We were showered with messages of joy, encouragement, blessings and “ye dil maange more” (the heart yearns for more)! As the bard had rightly said: “If music be the food of love, play on.”