Let The Music Do The Talking
Understanding the spiritual nature of music as a universal language
Music is a universal language, and provides an opportunity to establish relationships with people you may not understand, or even like very much. It’s a window into another world, and a tool to discover the commonalities intrinsic to everyone.
“People leave their conflicts between each other outside the concert hall,” Ravid Kahalani, a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and leader of the Middle Eastern fusion ensemble, Yemen Blues, says. “At Yemen Blues shows, you can feel that they are uniting under the circumstances of the music—feeling, being natural, being neutral, forgetting, and feeling that it is something good to create love—they feel the importance of music.”
But that universal feeling, at least on the surface, doesn’t make any sense.
Different musics from different parts of the world—or even from different communities or cultures that aren’t that distant—in some ways, couldn’t be more distinct. Things like time and feel, the division of an octave, tunings and timbre, structural complexity and form, harmony, improvisation, and on and on, vary in myriad ways. Those variations often have to do with cultural realities— like religion, climate, geography, available resources, war, wealth, and the quirks of influential people—which may have very little, if anything, to do with music. Those differences, compounded by unique factors like instrumentation, vocal styles, timbre, and technology, only amplify those distinctions.
And yet, that doesn’t seem to matter.
Your first exposure to new music could be jarring or off-putting—although for some people, that is the thrill—but if you make the effort to listen, it’s not difficult to hear what’s going on.
And that effort isn’t a herculean feat, it just means being attentive. You still, most likely, won’t be able to sing back what you’ve heard, but you will be able to understand what the musician is saying. You will know if the music is joyous or mournful, excited or angry, intense or relaxed, and you will understand what the musician is trying to tell you.
“I remember when I in high school, and getting interested in Bob Marley,” guitarist, composer, and Chant Records co-founder, Jon Madof, told me. “I had the Best of Bob Marley tape, and I was singing along with the words one day. I asked my friend, ‘What does this mean, ‘Mighty god is a living man?’’ I had no idea what it was. I didn’t know that he was talking about Haile Selassie, an actual person. But I thought that was cool, that he could make me want to sing that line because the music was so good. It was so clearly emanating something universal, even though I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
Madof’s teenage encounter with the music of Bob Marley speaks to the heart of music’s universality. You understand the message or feeling the musician is trying to convey, but there’s something more to it than that as well.
You also understand the musician.
The musician, speaking the language of music, tells you something about himself. It’s a window into his soul, and a taste of what he’s about.
Musicians experience that all the time. When you play in a band, or jam with people you don’t know, even if you can’t actually talk to each other—because you don’t speak the same language—through the language of music you still understand each other. You hear subtly and nuance, and understand something deeper as well. That understanding means something, it’s real, and brings you together. You become friends, even though you won’t be able to talk about it later.
And that experience of music as a type of universal communication is spiritual. The source is from the story about the Tower of Babel, which is in the Book of Genesis. According to the story, mankind united—which was easy to do because everyone spoke the same language—and rebelled against God. God stopped the rebellion by changing everyone’s language and making coherent communication impossible.
At least, that’s what it says in Genesis, chapter 11. The problem—because there’s always a problem—is that in the preceding chapter (in verses 10:5, 20, and 31), the Torah lists Noah’s descendants (the founding fathers of the different nations of the world), and says that each nation already had its own language.
So what is it? If the people already spoke different languages, their punishment can’t be that they will speak different languages. They already spoke different languages. It can’t be both.
Or maybe it is.
A language is something intrinsic to a particular group of people. That language develops based on a shared history, some level of isolation, interaction with neighboring peoples, the various leaders and personalities and influencers within that community, cultural considerations, and many other factors. It’s a language that may have some level of overlap with others nearby, but ultimately, it’s a unique method of communication specific to that nation or group.
Maybe the Torah is saying that pre-Babel, despite speaking different languages—with different words and grammatical rules—that people still had a deep enough connection, an intuitive insight into the human experience, that they were able to understand what each other was saying, to communicate. That’s how they were able to build the tower, and that’s what God took away.*
That may sound like a stretch, except that’s exactly what music does.
Music is a remnant of that forgotten world, a time when people, despite their differences, were able to understand each other. It’s also a taste of a possible future, where if you listen, you can discover the commonalities that unite, and with that understanding, transcend distinctions and strife.
But it’s better than that, because music is a language you already speak. You can establish relationships with people you may not understand, or even relate to, and the only thing you have to do, is listen.