What is happening in the world today?? While I don’t pay much attention to the news or watch TV, I feel a growing sense of fear and anxiety sweeping the world. My family in Europe tells me that this feeling is even more tangible there.
Current attitudes and events make world brotherhood seem more and more like an unreachable dream. Hearing of so many acts of violence causes many people to fall into despair, fear, and hopelessness. Many are asking “Is there anything that I can do to make difference? If so, what?” People are looking for tools to find inner peace for themselves and to share it with others. We may think that our individual efforts have little impact on the world’s madness, but the power of good is much stronger than evil.
As singers, we are powerful instruments for change. Certainly, we’ve all experienced the power of music to deeply affect our moods, our energy level, our behavior, and our consciousness. Just a few seconds of listening to an uplifting song can dramatically change our state of mind, from worry, anger, sadness, grief, to confidence, calmness, and joy. Just a few minutes of listening to positive music can alter our whole perspective, changing how we feel about virtually everything that’s going on in our lives. We have to choose the right kind of music, because just as there is music that uplifts, there is also music that can, and does, bring us down. (Interesting fact: in the early 1940’s, BBC radio banned a popular song called “Gloomy Sunday” because of the many suicides associated with it.)
If listening to music has this much power over us, how much more power is there in singing it? Singing positive, uplifting music, while striving to express high ideals and positive qualities, like love, joy, understanding and forgiveness is a sure way to help people, to give them hope and inspire in them all the beautiful qualities that bring happiness to us and those around us. Furthermore, it brings an intense feeling of joy to the singer, because, as a wise teacher once said, “The instrument is blessed by that which flows through it.”
Perhaps, our singing won’t change the world, but it can uplift and change people for the better. And that’s no small thing!
