Why, on a warm Summer day, do I like to roll down the windows in my car, go for a long drive, and blast the music I loved when I was in high school. Let me hear a few bars of Don MacLean’s “American Pie” or that opening guitar riff of “Layla” by Derek and the Dominoes, and I’m screaming along like I’m the replacement singer they didn’t even know they needed. It’s not the music I regularly listen to or perform these days. Does it bring me back to those days of my youth, when life was “simple”, when my pressures were few, when older family members were alive?
Even though (or perhaps because) I’m a musician, I’ve always had a hard time discussing music. My go-to quote was always “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, a quote often mistakenly attributed to Frank Zappa, Thelonious Monk, Elvis Costello, Martin Mull, and a few others. This often got me out of conversations when I was asked to discuss, define, and even defend the music I perform.
During COVID times, I came across Friedrich Nietzsche’s most famous quote on music, "Without music, life would be a mistake". I liked it so much, I’ve used it as my email signature since. A musician friend uses a similar quote from Leonard Bernstein as his signature: "Life without music is unthinkable".
So, why do I return to a certain music, why do I like quotes about music, why do I notice the background music in certain movies that shapes and becomes an integral component of what I’m seeing on the screen? When I hear the theme from Jaws, I know that shark is coming and it’s gonna be bad.
I don’t need a concrete reason beyond that it just feels “good”, it’s like an endorphin-fueled trigger that taps into the pleasure zone of my memory banks. Music – good, no Music – bad.
Additionally, Music connects people. I’ve had the opportunity to perform outside the US, in places that I don’t speak the native language, where a majority of the audience doesn’t speak my language, and even times when I don’t share a language with the musicians I’m performing with, YET we connect through music. It’s the sharing of the music that can give us the opportunity to create a bond. On my first trip to perform in Brazil, I sat in with some musicians I had met during one of my off nights. Once on the bandstand, it became apparent very quickly that no one in the group spoke English, and I didn’t speak Portuguese. Just as quickly, a solution presented itself. The piano player played the first few notes of a well-known tune, I think it was Autumn Leaves. I heard it, nodded my head yes, and we launched into the tune. Then it was my turn, I played a few notes of another tune, maybe My Romance by Rodgers and Hart. The piano player gave me “the look,” and we were off! We played the entire evening like that; the music became the language for that night. Music can do that. It becomes a universal way of communicating, transcending location, race, religion, or political beliefs.
Music helps me to think of myself as a world citizen, someone who is part of the “BIG picture”. Music, for me, is Humanity.
Music taps into the commonality of all of us, but it also, as Leonard Bernstein said, “expresses the ‘un-nameable’ and communicates the ‘unknowable’".
The definition of Humanity is human beings collectively, and that’s how I see music, a collective experience that we don’t just share but also unites us. Imagine trying to express heartbreak without the catharsis of a blues line, or celebration without the irresistible pull of rhythm that gets even the most reluctant dancer swaying. Our emotions would become more private, more isolated—still there, but harder to communicate, harder to process, harder to hold in community.
A final quote from Leonard Bernstein: "Music is an act of love, that's why it's so rewarding".
Joe Carter is an Assistant Professor of Music at the School of Performing Arts, Sacred Heart University