Sounds of Resilience
“History changes according to the voice that sings it”
What?
Upeksha created her project Sounds of Resilience to create a platform where people can express themselves through the medium of music, shedding light on them in a world that has put them in the dark. At the same time they might benefit of the psychological merits of music creation to create a better life for themselves. The participants of this project will write and record a song with an accompanying music video which will be published on YouTube, Spotify and our website. Through the lyrics they will be able to tell their story in their own words, through the music they can spread their culture, and through the music video they will be seen by others as creative human beings, resisting the silencing of their words, the ignoring of their culture, and the dehumanization of their people. On YouTube each video will provide a short explanation of the song, the artist and the situation the artist is living in, giving listeners the chance to get in touch with the reality of the individual(s) behind the song. The purpose is to make the unseen visible and to replace ignorance and discrimination with understanding and compassion.
Or go straight to:
The Social Power of Music
Music has always been a force of bringing people together. It produces a neuropeptide called oxytocin, which helps people to increase mutual trust and empathy.
The Psychological Power of Music
Making and listening to music has been used in therapy for many decades to help people deal with trauma and depression. Now research has found prove on the mechanisms behind this.
Procesos - Free Soul
This is the project where it all begun. In January 2019 our founder Casper te Riele was in Bogotá to do fieldwork for his master thesis. Together with Paco Pos he was doing research on a neighbourhood called
El Bronx.
El Bronx was the most notorious neighbourhood in Bogotá, known for its micro-trafficking, drug consumption and prostitution. In 2016, the government decided to intervene and clear out the entire area. But there were also people living in El Bronx. People who called it their home. They where forcefully displaced from their houses and weren't even allowed to bring any possessions. While many of them did suffer from addictions, severe poverty and homelessness, nothing was done for them. They where merely pushed away to live on the street elsewhere. However, some people found a way out. Through a rehabilitation centre for youth called IDIPRON, Chiras and Smith decided to take that rare opportunity to create a better future for themselves. IDIPRON is all about helping men and women like them to find a purpose in life. And for Chiras and Smith they found theirs in music. They created a group called
Free Soul and together with one of their music teachers at IDIPRON they created the song 'Procesos'. To help them, we presented the idea to create a videoclip.
Procesos relates to the process they’re going through as former street dwellers and drug consumers, in their journey towards a better future. The lyrics of the chorus goes as follows:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| El silencio ya no agobia el dolor en sangre propia. | Silence no longer overwhelms the pain in our blood. |
| Los procesos las victorias obtenidas por derrotas. | The processes, the victories, achieved by defeat. |
| Hoy la copa sigue rota, por estigma y la fobia. | Today the cup remains broken, by stigma and phobia. |
| Las cagadas fueron muchas remediadas de esta forma. | There were many mistakes, remedied in this way. |
Why do people mourn the death of their favourite artist as if their best friend died, while most barely change their pace of breath when they read in the morning newspaper about the deaths of children caused by a bomb somewhere in the middle east?
It is June 26 2009. Millions of people take upon the streets, from Manhattan, New York, to Europe, all the way to the middle east. Thousands of kilometers apart these people were connected in their mourning of the death of one man. A man known as the King of Pop: Michael Jackson. Two days before a bombing killed 69 people in Baghdad. In that year, 7.2 million children under the age of five years old died. And in the USA alone 16,799 people died of homicide. Yet it was that one passing caused by a hearth attack as a result of years of drug abuse, that sparked this intense communal emotional response across the world. Yes, most people didn’t know any of those thousands murdered, or even a single one of those millions of kids that never grew up to show the world who they are. But most didn’t really know Michael Jackson either. They merely knew him through his songs. It was his music that created a kind of magical connection between him and millions of people that he never even met. It was his music that caused so many people to mourn him when he passed away. It was his music that made people care about him. Music has this power. Music creates bonds between people that have never met; it entangles the hearts of people of any kind; and it produces compassion for people who they otherwise would have never cared for.
The Social Power of Music
Compassionate Understanding
“Functional neuroimaging and lesion studies show that music-evoked emotions can modulate activity in virtually all limbic and paralimbic brain structures. These structures are crucially involved in the initiation, generation, detection, maintenance, regulation and termination of emotions that have survival value for the individual and the species. Therefore, at least some music-evoked emotions involve the very core of evolutionarily adaptive neuroaffective mechanisms” (2010: 131).
Oxytocin
For starters, music listening and playing has proven to produce a neuropeptide called oxytocin, which has been shown to be involved in the regulation of fear. It enhances trust, prosocial behavior and empathy in human beings, while decreasing social phobia, betrayal and exploitation (Beck et al. 2018: 3; Le Roux & Sauer, 2016: 164; Kosfeld et al. 2005: 675; Domes et al. 2007: 732). Through the production of oxytocin, music thus has the ability to bring the artist and the listener together.
In our views section we explain how stigmatization, discrimination and hate are related to a lack of connection or visibility. Music can be a strong tool in creating connections between people without them ever having to meet. It can counter stigmatized perceptions of un-warmth and incompetence. The image we have of someone might cause wariness, fear or even hate, while the image of that same person performing music with skill and emotion portrays them in a completely different light.
We also know that people that have experienced severe trauma’s or suffered extreme poverty or other kinds of abuse, can have a damaged sense of trust in other people. But to move forward in life, the ability to trust others is essential. The production of oxytocin through the performance of music can help with this process.
Furthermore, an important aspect of music is of course rhythm. Rhythm is what makes people dance. Or to use more scientific words: rhythm makes people synchronize their movements. This rather simple phenomenon has often been cited as an important mechanism by which social bonding is realized through music. Evidence has showed that synchronization has a positive influence on the feelings people have towards each other (Tarr, Launay & Dunbar, 2014: 2).
History changes according to the voice that sings it
Eduardo Galeano once said that “history changes according to the voice that sings it” (1992: 310). He refers to the common saying that history is written by the winners. But music may even be more powerful than the written word. First of all, neurologist Oliver Sacks points out that the human brain is limited when it comes the memorizing long lists of words (2011: 260). But when words are embedded in a melody, we are suddenly able the memorize large amounts of information. That’s why we teach children lists such as the alphabet through song. But music surpasses the communication of mere words:
“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. (…) It has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation” (Sacks, 2011: 329).
Indian Philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti has argued that understanding is not merely an intellectual process:
“Only when we realize, not intellectually but actually, as actually as we would recognize that we are hungry or in pain, that you and I are responsible for all this existing chaos, for all the misery throughout the entire world because we have contributed to it in our daily lives and are part of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its ugliness, brutality and greed – only then we will act” (1969: 14).
Only if we can understand inequality, injustice and suffering of others, just like we understand that we have legs to walk on, hands to eat with and eyes to see with, we will be able to act accordingly. In other words, in order to understand something, we need to feel it rather than think it.
“Verbally we can go only so far: what lies beyond cannot be put into words because the word in not the thing. Up to now we can describe, explain, but no words or explanations can open the door” (Ibid: 33).
This is where music come in with its ability to communicate feelings as well as words, creating an emotional understanding, necessary, according to Krishnamurti, for people to act. In other words, music is an incredibly powerful way to bond people and to create social coherence because it pierces the heart.
Consequently, those who don’t have to opportunity to express themselves through music, don’t have an equal opportunity to unite and stand strong together. Music thus becomes a form of social capital (Cierniak, 2019a: 27). Access to music provides people with the ability to speak up in a deep and profound way, to increase social cohesion and hope within their own community, and to show others their humanity, resisting stigmatization, dehumanization and discrimination. Additionally, if only a few people in the community succeed through music they can become what is called a case of positive deviance. They show others in the community there are alternatives to crime and drugs, becoming the ‘social prove’ of the possibility of a better future. To provide the tool of music therefore can be a great creator of empowerment and a catalysator of social change. Bowman concludes:
“Music is more than just a medium of entertainment. It is a powerful tool that can capture attention, elicit long forgotten memories, communicate feelings, create and intensify moods, and bring people together” (1987: 284).
The Psychological Power of Music
A vehicle of relieve, reflection and reinforcement
Additionally, music helps with the production of endorphins, which serve as natural stress, pain and depression relievers, as well as boosters of self-esteem (Tarr, Launay & Dunbar, 2014: 4). This helps people deal better with strong emotions caused by trauma (anger, depression, anxiety). Furthermore, when trauma is caused by a past event, “music and art are able to gain access to traumatic memories that may otherwise be indescribable or inaccessible by words” (Gimpel, 2018: 148). Even in very extreme cases where brain damage has wiped out the ability of feeling emotion, or in cases of neurological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, Oliver Sacks writes that “music allows access to emotions which, for most of the time, are blocked or cut off from consciousness or expression” (2011: 337). Furthermore, because the musical product is external of the artist, it will be easier to observe and reflect on those emotions, allowing the individual to process the traumatic event.
Traumatic events can cause individuals a moral injury that results in a diminished self-worth, which in turn may keep a person from moving forward, for they may not feel like they are worth the effort of improvement. Such moral injuries may be the result of guilt for leaving family behind after fleeing home due to war. It may be caused by an action of the individual that may be deemed immoral (act of crime or violence). Or it may be caused by external stigmatization, by years of being called worthless, criminal, or trash. Gimpel writes how music
“functions as a non-intimidating, concrete, malleable vehicle where it is possible to explore internal states/conflicts while simultaneously remaining connected to the here-and-now. (…) There are consequential possibilities to work towards redefining the narrative. Music therapy is able to utilize its unique access to the traumatic experience in helping individuals integrate and redefine their narrative” (2018: 150).
The Physiological Power of Music
Of Survival Value for Human Kind
“Some of them could not initiate a single step but could be drawn into dancing and could dance fluidly. Some could scarcely utter a syllable; their voices, when they could speak, lacked tone, lacked force, were almost spectral. But these patients were able to sing on occasion, loudly and clearly, with full vocal force and a normal range of expressiveness and tone” (2015: 271).
In the end Sacks found that a new drug called L-Dopa could help these patients tremendously, although the side-effects were severe. However, he says, music could have similar results without the side effects, but the effects would only last as long as the music played. While the cases Sacks described are extreme and don’t directly apply to the purpose of this NGO, it does show the benefits music can have for the body. At the time of writing, the world is in the midst of another pandemic caused by Covid19. While all the world’s recourses are pointed towards treatment, vaccinations and social distancing, music and other forms of culture are left behind as being unimportant at the moment. However, music has been shown to increase positive emotions in human beings which in turn has proven to decrease an anti-inflammatory protein called interleuking-6. Research has shown that the lower the Interleuking-6 the better people respond to both the flu virus and the cold virus (Seligman, 2011: 207). Furthermore, a recent (yet to be peer-reviewed) study by researchers in Wuhan has shown that an increased IL-6 is an important factor in whether a person has a strong reaction to Covid19. The authors suggest that a treatment that lowers the IL-6 may be promising therapeutic targets in the treatment of Covid19 (Gong, et al. 2020). The power of music thus enters the realm of physical health, possibly explaining why, as neurologist Stefan Koelsh said earlier, music has been an important factor in the survival of the human species.
We have seen how music has the ability to positively affect human beings at the social, psychological and physiological level. The limited access to music of marginalized groups therefore, creates an even greater gap between those who have and those who have not. But this also means that when they do get access to the powerful abilities of music, it can be a vehicle of positive social change. This is why Upeksha – Voices of Resilience offers the means of music to people who live in tough circumstances. We don’t just want to treat the symptoms of their situation (lack of housing, food and security). Through music we want to give them the opportunity to empower, to grow and to develop their own means to become the creators of their own futures.
“Seen from below, everyone looks like a giant. Seen from above, everyone looks like a dwarf. On equal footing. That is the way to discover”