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Bob Dylan: A (Counter) Cultural Icon
Just some music from a fellow Minnesotan and a man Rolling Stones Magazine considers to be the second greatest music artist of all time:
Bring That Beat Back To Me Again
Here is an article that discusses music and memory. I think we all intuitively feel the link between the two. I found it interesting how others also include concepts like “innocence” and “youth” in describing this feeling. Also, the observation that music paints the background of our lives seems very true. Bold words are some of the highlights:
Good Question: Why Does Music Bring Us Back?
(WCCO) To the crowd of women in their late twenties and early thirties lined up at the Mall of America for a free concert by New Kids On The Block, the question was easy to answer. Does music transport you back in time to a certain memory or certain place?
“Back when I was in 5th grade, in love,” said one woman. “It takes you back to that innocence,” said another. “Harriet Island,” said another fan of the boy band. “Where we sat outside waiting the whole day, it was crazy.”
Outside of a smell, music may be the only thing that can so strongly trigger a memory.
“It’s an extremely emotional trigger. You can put a soundtrack to almost every memory you have I think,” one woman said. “And the feelings that those songs conjure up are extremely strong.”
If their parents listened to Elvis, these women listen to boy bands. It’s a phenomenon Peter Mercer-Taylor has studied as a professor in the University Of Minnesota School Of Music. One band in particular does the trick for him.
“It’s always the Beatles, and I think it comes down to ‘Please, Please Me,” said Mercer-Taylor.
“We associate music with every stage of being a young person,” he added. It’s a phenomenon almost entirely linked to childhood.
“It seems like at every stage of being young, music is there to provide the soundtrack. I’m not that’s true of adulthood; I’m not sure what the soundtrack of adulthood is like. I think we come to associate music itself with just being young and innocent,” he said.
Mercer-Taylor said that it’s not entirely a psychological phenomenon. Researchers have found a link to brain activity.
“There’s certainly accounts of adults with dementia who are able to recite songs perfectly, but have lost the ability to speak,” he said.
“There are very interesting things like this. The brain seems to store these things differently. It seems to develop catalogs of music when it doesn’t necessarily have a workable catalog of speech,” said Mercer-Taylor.
Neurobiologists are still trying to figure out why music triggers such strong memories. They have detected that music stimulates several different areas of the brain. One theory is that our memories work like a file cabinet. It can be difficult to pull out a memory if it’s only stored in one file.
But with music, memories are stored in several files. The melody is in one spot, the harmony in another, the instrumental somewhere else, the lyrics are in another location. Because so many areas are being stimulated, it may create a stronger emotional response.
For most of us, though, hearing a song will take us back to that special girl that got away, a junior high school dance, or the boy band star we always dreamed of marrying.
“I think it’s wonderful. There’s nothing that makes you feel like that anymore,” said one New Kids On The Block fan.
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