What is music? As I type away on this blog, lis­ten­ing to Desert Rose I real­ize that I have never asked myself this question.

Never.

Have you?

Wikipedia defines music as:

Music is an art form con­sist­ing of sound and silence expressed through time. Ele­ments of sound as used in music are pitch (includ­ing melody and har­mony), rhythm (includ­ing tempo and meter), and sonic qual­i­ties of tim­bre, artic­u­la­tion, dynam­ics, and tex­ture.

Per­haps this may be one of the sim­plest and most artic­u­late def­i­n­i­tions of music ever. Per­haps it may be a bit of junk which just seems good as it uses a lot of big, com­pli­cated words and has 14 links. (Yes, I counted them; per­haps that tells you a bit more about me than I want you to know). For me, the first adjec­tive that comes to mind on see­ing this is bland.

I can­not claim to be an expert; I can­not sing (I can, but the point is no one — in their right minds — would want to lis­ten. This brings us to the all encom­pass­ing philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion: does a man singing make a sound if no one is there to hear him?) nor can I play a musi­cal instru­ment (again, I can pluck strings and thus, tech­ni­cally, ‘play’ an instrument).

Music to me is some­thing that is pleas­ant to lis­ten to; some­thing that affects me in a hun­dred ways, makes my heart pound faster (exer­cise?), makes me drowsy(sleeping pill?), makes me more awake(caffeine?), alle­vi­ates my mood (jokes?), depresses me (the daily News?), occa­sion­ally grabs me by the ears, kicks my brain and refreshes my body.

Is it just the melody that mat­ters? Or is it the words too? For me: both.

I have many favourite songs; they can jump-start me; make me accom­plish what I con­sider impos­si­ble and gen­er­ally ener­gize me. (Should they be clas­si­fied as drugs? They’re very addic­tive too: I keep hear­ing them in my head all the time.)

I lis­ten to all sorts of music; music is as diverse as the peo­ple it is cre­ated by. While I can­not include gui­tar riffs and piano tunes here, I can give lyrics of some of my favourite songs.

I sit and talk to God
and he just laughs at my plans
My head speaks a lan­guage
I don’t understand

(Rob­bie Williams, Feel)

I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn’t even matter

(Linkin Park, In the end)

Imag­ine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imag­ine all the peo­ple
Liv­ing for today…

Imag­ine there’s no coun­tries
It isn’t hard to do
Noth­ing to kill or die for
And no reli­gion too
Imag­ine all the peo­ple
Liv­ing life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some­day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imag­ine no pos­ses­sions
I won­der if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A broth­er­hood of man
Imag­ine all the peo­ple
Shar­ing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some­day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

(John Lennon, Imagine)

There are too many songs for me to put in one post. All of us have our one favourites, whether because of their lyrics their music or some­thing that strikes a chord inside.

I have never yet met a per­son who hates all forms of music. Have you?