Do you believe in music?
- Kayla Shafer, MA, MT-BC
- Jul 14
- 2 min read
Every Monday evening during the fall semester, you will find me teaching Psychology of Music at the University of Minnesota to music therapy and music education students. We talk about how music engages the brain differently than any other stimulus, how the properties of music impact us physiologically, and the many fields of research that contribute to the subject. As music therapists and teachers, we need to understand the why behind our disciplines. We need to know the science.
But even though I know the why and the how, and I can explain and teach all day about the research, it doesn’t mean anything if I don’t believe in it–trust it. The music knows what to do.
What am I talking about?
In some of my most intimate sessions as a music therapist, I would argue that while I was the vessel, the music was doing the work. The music itself was the catalyst for the change, not me, the music therapist. For example:
When a mother in the NICU sees a response in her tiny baby to the song “Here Comes the Sun” that I do not notice and says, “She loves this song. She’s so happy.”
When an actively dying man squeezes the hand of his daughter during “In the Garden” and she knows he is saying goodbye.
When a hospitalized child unmotivated by our culture’s expectations of talking to communicate sings his feelings spontaneously to his nurse.
I will humbly tell you that I did nothing special or different in those sessions than in any other. So what was the difference?
The mother believed in the power of music to make her baby happy.
The daughter believed the song was a connection between her and her father.
The child believed they could get their message across more effectively through music than speaking.
And they were all right.
We all trusted the music together. It changed the room, the energy, the climate. The outcomes.
I could easily cite research literature to support why all of those things happened. But the truth is, they wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t also mutually believe in music.
Do you believe in music?
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