Finding Balance in Song and Melody

“The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. …Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity.”

--George Steiner

Music is one of the most popular art forms; it can be a powerful promoter of new concepts. Today, more than ever, genres such as rock and hip-hop are powerful means of expressing social concepts. Ever since The Beatles introduced Indian music in the 1960s, ethnic music has been a popular means of promoting ethnic recognition and cultural integration. Indeed, globalization is a welcome addition to music, and today most musicians play several types of music, some of which come from cultures outside their homelands. Thus, music merits a chapter all to itself.

Like all forms of art, music is a special language that expresses the particular artist’s inner world. Each type of music represents a different type of desire to receive, and can therefore express a different type of balance with the desire to give. To keep it simple, let’s divide music into two groups: vocal and instrumental.