Ja-ne Oyasuminasai!

This is the end. Final blog since the class and the semster is coming to an end and I can genuinely say that this was a nice way to go about the class. First of all I probably enjoyed this because of the topic I chose, which I can say that I'm truely intrested in since I'm a music aficionado and also likes to know what's going on in the world today. When there are so many other issues that are tearing at the worlds back and a lot of the focus is going on such things that fall under entertainment like Music, Film and Television you know that priorities need to be set straight. Whether it's being debated or just being trampled by a group of people, you can see how sometimes, time is being wasted for such insignificant causes like trying to blame things like music for problems that might of been caused by deeper roots.

If there are certain things that I have taken from this, its important factual information that reveals a lot of things that someone might not have known previously. The psychological effects of music for once, how it can affect us, we'll listen to sad music because we're sad or try to listen to happy music to cheer up or we'll get angry because we're sad and we don't enjoy the happy music and want to remain in the certain state of mind that we're already which in this case would be anger. There are plenty of scenarios having to do with our moods and have music juggles with them. Music is worldwide, you might not find many things as universal as music it's one of the windows to the soul no matter what genre it is, it will touch you and evoke thoughts, emotions and visions like nothing else it will give you the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. What else is being sung, hummed and whistled by soldiers in battlefields, poor exploited immigrants picking fruit, people with fatal diseases, people starving to death, people risking their lives for their believes what else but Music. No matter your situation or your outlook music is something that will always be there and something that you can always relish.

Something that I hope everybody already knows is that instead of believing everything you hear you should also take upon yourself the task of researching information. There are many people out there with various views on things some good, some bad. When I was researching my topic for example I came upon many articles where they were claiming that Hip-Hop music was not a legitimate form of music and that it was in the fault for so many things that I won't even bother to list. I bring this up because that was what someone thought and not necessarily what everyone thinks, that is why researching things yourself is a must so that you can make up your own point of view on such subjects and not fall for others corrupt thoughts which might be the exact opposite of your own. That is one of the reasons that if someone asked me which post of mine they should check out I would say whichever one want they want, I feel like I researched and put the most effort into all of my posts. Looking at some of the posts though some do look pretty lengthy but everything I posted I feel was something that deserved to be seen and read, that is why its there. One of the things I attempted to do was to present information in an unbiased manner which I think that I succeeded in, well to an extent atleast. There were times when I just wanted to put everything to the side and say something myself without anybodies other opinion being there measuring theirs to mine.

I haven't the slightest clue why but for me writing this blog came off very easy and accessible, sure I probably procrastinated most of the time but when I actually settled down to do it I felt content with what had been produced. A handful of times I would try to search for something having to do with my topic and off the bat I couldn't find much information. I kept looking things up in a variety of ways until I found what I wanted or something atleast adjacent to it, this is one of the things that sometimes imposed a challenge. Depending on what I'm working on I'm very critical of what I write whether its on this blog or anywhere else, so I carefully evaluated my posts before I actually published them and after that I tried not to read them. Another great thing about these blogs was being able to read the blogs of fellows students also attempting their best in presenting their topics to the rest of us. Besides reading and acquiring new knowledge from these other topics you gain a real actuality about them that makes you want to keep reading and learning as much as you can.

Anyway this being the last post shows that for one; I made it and and two; that it was a good experience but like everything in this universe it was bound to end and with that I bid farewell with this:

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sleep Walk

The first thing I realized from the editorial that I chose what they it states the positive effects of music but didn't forget to also add the negative effects that it can cause. It starts off with "Music can move the soul. It can be a very strong influence. Some music can calm us down, some music can make us wild!" which explains what music has become, a way to completely integrate emotions and feelings into someone's brain that weren't already there. Music as much as we like or have animosity towards it, it can help, like the editorial states it has been used for therapy, medical research and even to treat things like ADD all the way to premature infants.

Reading the article it's obvious that it isn't bias since it states both sides but it does a good thing focusing on a lot of the positives that come from music, something that isn't presented occasionally. A topic brought up is how the lyrics, in studies to show the affects of music on the body and mind aren't much a factor as the actual rhythm, melodies and chords of the music that you hear and that both hemispheres of the brain process. On the other hand it also shows that music can also have some counter effects, it was shown in a study that hard music killed plants while classical and soothing music helped speed up it's growing process. What can you take away from this? Well, how about putting all speculation to the side for once and seeing how the actual music (The melodies, rhythms and sounds) affect us and not just what is verbally layed down on the song, it might be the true cause of all these "problems."

This editorial I believe, takes into thought what many people already know but let's us know some facts that we might not have previously been aware of. Like I've said many times before, it's up to you to decide what you think, that is why you have free will. I'm just providing the information and my own thoughts and with that I leave you with this...."It can be said that music is a very powerful and awesome tool, that can have positive effects, virtually life saving mentally and physically when used in the right context, but has equally destructive and detrimental potential if used negatively. "

Prof Trainor stated: "That the children studying music for a year improved in musical listening skills more than children not studying music is perhaps not very surprising. On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with non-musical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ than did the children not taking lessons. The finding of very rapid maturation of the N250m component to violin sounds in children taking music lessons fits with their large improvement on the memory test. It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention." *

That might not be a graph, statistic or chart but it's one of the most interesting things I've found out so far. Basically the article is about an experiment that had to do with music and the developing brain of kids. There was 6 kids who participated 5 of the boys, one was a girl, both of them were attending the same school of music. Another six kids, two girls and four boys were attending a normal school and not receiving music classes after school. Anyway, with a magnetoencephalography (MEG) machine that tracks and measures magnetic fields outside of the head that are related to electrical field that are produced when neurons in the brain start working, they manage to see the process in which the brain recognizes and processes the information given. This experiment lasted for a year with kids being tested four times throughout, to see how they reacted.

The External World Is Fitted To The Mind.....

I'm a big fan of poetry, off the top of my head some of ones who's poetry I enjoy the most are; Dante Alighieri, Edgar Allen Poe, Octavio Paz, T.S. Eliot, Matsuo Basho, Robert Frost, Federico Garcia Lorca, William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Nazim Hikmet, Charles Bukowski, William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Homer, Li Po.


Thoughts about Violence and Pain plauge the conscious
there isn't any change or thought of precaution
Only the music and instincts function
Feel the warm grip, the thoughtless demented thoughts drip
With a smile in his face he potrays no remorse
He came to the intersection and chose none of the roads
As I'm here, subjected to his actions with no chance to stop this
Tomorrow scapegoats will be brought to the forefront rather than the thoughtless

That's a poem I wrote, I could stay here and write a long post about this poem, discussing it and what not but I'd rather not. It has a concept, if you read it carefuly it's actually pretty easy to grasp. I wrote it from the prespective of something that you could say has a big impact on the outcome of some cases that sometimes are used as examples when discussing the influence of music on the human consciousness. I hope that some of the people that read it (even if it isn't many) get what the poem is about, if you don't then I will gladly expand on it and break it down.

Uh-oh it happened again it was actually a few weeks ago and I don't know who has paid attention to this story but I have for a while. I've been tracking this story because I feel it's the perfect example to bring up and to present concerning this blog. Here in America we might have seen it various times, they're are highly covered by the media but after a while when it gets boring or there's isn't anymore shock value to it they move on. It's about a school shooting that happened it Tuusula, Finland one of the first of it's kind in that country.

The school shooter Pekka-Eric Auvine shot and killed nine people including himself in his High School. The reason I bring this up is that once again like always some people are putting music under fire after this terrible crime. Before commiting the massacre Auvine has posted several videos on Youtube hinting about him going through with the shooting. Many of those videos showed him firing handguns, various videos showing or involving death. Before actually going to school and openening fire Auvine created a new alias called sturmgeit 89 (meaning storm spirit in German) posted a video named Jokela High School Massacre, were it is accompined by Industrial Rock Band KMFDM's song "Stray Bullet." The High School is shown then dissapears, in the background appears a picture of the school shooter in a red screen pointing a gun at the screen. The song by KMFDM had also been used by Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were they quoted some of their lyrics. Now once again KMFDM has come under critisizim for having their music once again connected to a violent crime.

Besides KMFDM another band STURMGEIST from Germany has also been blamed for what occured because they shared the same name that the school shooter decided to use to post his video before the shooting. Frontman of STURMGEIST, Cornelius von Jackhelln has responded to these allegations saying "Understandably, journalists keep calling me, eager to prove a link between my band and the massacre. However, as an artist, I can neither control the actions of my fans nor be held responsible for them." This statement right here might be the voice of every other artist in the world, their job is to write and perform music not to be looking over each of their fans to see if they're about to go out and do something of this caliber. Jackhelln would go on to say "Knowing the boundary between fiction and reality was always a prerequisite for dealing with dark matters in music, literature, film and video games. It seems obvious that the Tuusula murderer was ignorant about this boundary."

If that doesn't open some eyes and some minds that maybe what these artists are doing aren't what's causing all of these terrible events, then we might as well keep our eyes blind and our minds locked.

Came to The Fork In The Middle Of The Road And Went.....?

Throughout this blog I have firmly stood by my thoughs of my subject and while there have been somethings revealed and sought out by me there are still many other people out there claiming different thoughts and with the knowledge to back it up. Whether it's how music is postitive or negative on our minds, emotions, actions and sense of right and wrong there are debatable arguments out there that have legitimate points for both sides. I have wanted to read these opinions because no matter how hard your standing up for your thoughts there are still things out there that might shed a new prespective on things you thought you already knew.

Don Robertson a songwriter and composer posted in his website dovesong.com his thoughts about the positive effects of music on people. "A happy song might appear to make an angry person angrier, yet it is not the music itself that is creating the anger; rather it is the positive effect of the music. The angry person does not want to accept the song’s happy feeling: it points out his already existing anger, and makes that anger come to the surface." Now if we analyze that comment and put it in context into how it might affect a person and stimulate their thoughts than that is indeed true. If the Actual song is not affecting him rather than he is affecting himself than how would that imply to negative music. If the song is negative would the person accept it and became even angrier to the point of actually carrying out these angry thoughts on a whim, like so many people claim. If a song that has a good positive message is helping someone tame that anger and helps them become calm and happy but the person is wants to maintain his angry attitude than that's on them, not the music.

Now the negative effects apparently should be much more easier to decipher a person listens to a negative song and takes the song to heart and decideds to do something negative caused by the music, right? Alfred Ubiora on nigeriaworld.com says: "Those musicians that churn out vile lyrics as well as their recording companies should begin to understand that to whom much is given, much is expected. While no one is calling for regulation of free speech or legislation of morality, they must understand that as role models, albeit reluctant ones, they have a social responsibility to watch what they say, wear and do." Granted that is also a great point that affects this topic. If many of the people being affected by this so called "negative" music are looking up to these artists as role models and taking every word they say to heart or even to the point that what these artists affects them in a severe way than why shouldn't the artists be responsible. First of all it's not an artists fault if a kid decides to shoot up a person or break into a house because they listened to their music, if someone actually does something like that than they have other things going on other than music affecting their actions.

In the end there's always to sides to every story even if you think you've heard them all than be on the lookout for the third. It's not easy to come to the fork in the middle of the road and choose one road or the other the same goes for this topic but it's up to everybody to research and find out the most they can before coming to conclusions, no matter where one stands with this topic it's easy to say it's thought provoking nonetheless.

So, What Do You Think?

I printed 10 of my surveys and I gave some to a few of the kids that I talk to but I got the urge to print a few more and hand them to people outside of the school atmosphere. Safe to say there was mix results in my short three question survey, if you can even call it that. Whether they were affected because I handed them the surveys in school or because they didn't really know what I was blabbering about it was different from the rest. My survey focused mostly on the impact of the music in general rather than what genre it was primarily from. It was three questions and they were pretty simple and to the point of what information I was attempting to obtain from the people that took the survey.

The main question I was focused on was one were I asked "Do you believe that Music really is a major problem?" and surprsingly a large percentage of the people asked answered no. Why was it a big surprise well because it seems that even if the people asked were few in quantity, it seems that what I have been thinking and saying in this blog since I started is viewed genuinely also by other people. Putting everything else aside it isn't hard to make up your own mind on a big topic like this when you actually look into it. There was different opinions in other questions for example one where the question asked was "Are people really so weak minded that we let things like music persuade our minds and inner conscious" I would say about 70% said that Yeah we are so easily influenced by music and also things like the mianstream media like movies and television while the other 30% claimed that we are influenced but when the media is applied to the context in which the person affected is currently in. That information you can take what you want from it while I have my opinion that it does affect us to some short extent but that's about as far as it goes the rest it just us. Seeing and reading outside opinions really adds a new dimension to the topic which I hadn't seen and read until someone else implied and shed light on their opinions and thoughts about this topic.