I grew up in a household that was surrounded by music. It was a gift that both my mom and dad left me and my siblings. We woke up to the sounds of the radio, and we fell asleep to the rhythms of music, via boom box, or radio station (WBLS, if you know you know), or a cassette tape.
I learned early on in my life that music is healing. Music unites. Music brings people together from all over the world. Music can silence a room. Music can create a raucous energy that brings you to your feet. Music can bring sacredness down to the earth. Music can teach.
Music must be heard.
This lesson I learned in one of my classes in College. The professor was passionate about teaching us the importance of listening. Listening to and identifying the instruments, noting when they entered the pieces, their roles in the composition, and how they changed the structure, as well as why they were introduced at that moment. There was a sacredness to listening intently. There was a sacredness to understanding, and there was a sacredness to the feeling.
Someone once told me that when they heard me sing, they believed me. That was the greatest compliment I had ever received. They felt something, and that is what music is supposed to do. Infuse an emotion. Either get you to sit still, bop your head, raise your hands, or get up on your feet and move your body.
This weekend, both were true for me. While the world was watching Bad Bunny get folks to get up and shake their body and at other times sing along to the unofficial anthem for the island of Puerto Rico, which for many, including myself, brought them to tears; I was across the country in a live concert in Santa Barbara listening to another artiste create a sacred moment that took my breath away. No, it was not a “Christian” artist. It wasn’t under the guise of a church service; it was an open-air concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl under a humid, cloudy night sky, where a few thousand folks got up and danced, and in one swell, the energy shifted and the artist did a medley of popular songs in complex arrangements, and the crowd sang along. In one instance, the artist was taken aback by the sacredness of the moment. He looked out at the crowd and smiled.
In that moment and in the Bad Bunny moment, there was no them vs us. There were no politics, no color, no divisions, no hysteria.
There was only music.
I am so thankful that thousands of folks across the country decided to take time to listen. Decided to take time to pause. Decided to take time to put their phones down and listen to the music.
In these troubling times, put on music. It will heal you.
I know it did for me.