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Jake Harwood, a professor in the University of Arizona’s department of communication, says, “I have played music for the majority of my life and realized that there were these connections between how we respond to music, why we play music, and even why music exists in our culture.”
“If music did not have such profound effects on us, our civilizations would not have evolved.”
According to Harwood, “if music did not do very important things to us, it would not have developed in our civilizations.” Through music, we may express our shared humanity to one another. It serves as a unique example of the value of diversity that is hard to find in other spheres of our existence.
In one study, Harwood recorded a fake news report with an American actor and an Arab musician performing together. Harwood collaborated with graduate scholars Farah Qadar and Chien-Yu Chen on the project. The video clip was shown to non-Arab US volunteers by the researchers. The researchers discovered that participants in the study were more likely to report having a more positive and less biased opinion of Arabs when they saw the two cultures working together on music.
Qadar, who earned a master’s degree in communication in 2016, adds, “The act of merging music is a metaphor for what we are trying to do: merging two perspectives in music, you can see an emotional connection, and its effect is universal.”
The researchers published these findings in the Journal of Communication.
“Music performances together bind individuals together across time in a variety of ways. According to Harwood, Qadar, and Chen’s research, “They are sharing time in a very specific, synchronized, and coordinated manner; they are not just’spending time’ together.” “They share an identity of purpose that is coordinated at the millisecond level, and their physical movements are highly correlated.”
An other significant discovery: The advantages persisted even in cases when the participants lacked musical instrument proficiency. According to Harwood, the act of merely listening to music created by outgroup members has the potential to mitigate negative sentiments towards them.
Not all of it is limited to playing Arab music. However, you start to build bridges between the two groups when you witness an Arab performing music that blurs the lines between mainstream US and Arab culture, according to Harwood.
This week, Harwood and Stefania Paolini of the University of Newcastle will present their findings at the International Communication Association conference in San Diego. As part of their ongoing research, they measured people’s appreciation for diversity and gauged their feelings about members of other groups. Following this, the group asked participants to listen to music representing different cultures and then share their impressions of the individuals the music portrayed as well as how much they appreciated the music.
The researchers discovered that listening to music from different cultures is enjoyable for those who respect diversity and reinforces pro-diversity views.
It produces a spiral-like effect. You will listen to more music from other cultures if you respect variety, according to Harwood, who notes that study on this topic is still in progress. “There is homogeneity that is not really helping people to increase their value for diversity if all you are doing is listening to the same type of music all the time.”
Given the decades-long development of global music and more recent examples of musicians worldwide who routinely sample and cross-reference outgroup musical traditions and elements, Harwood and his partners found affirmation in these findings.
Paul Simon’s Graceland album was cited by Harwood as an early and noteworthy example. The 1986 album’s sound and rhythms were influenced by South African music.
According to Harwood, “it was the beginning of the global music phenomenon.” Everyone wanted to listen to African music all of a sudden. Algerian music followed, then Indonesian. Next, you witness the modeling of contemporary music featuring several musical traditions and individuals working together.
According to Harwood, musicians who are experimenting with music that transcends cultural borders include Eminem and Rihanna. “A whole new kind of music is coming out that wouldn’t exist without that kind of cross-pollination.”
According to Harwood, the results of his team’s investigation also expand on previous studies and emerging intergroup dialogue models that promote face-to-face interaction and communication as a means of fostering cohesiveness and cross-cultural understanding.
“Rather than considering music as a beautiful, aesthetic pastime, we should consider it a human social activity and recognize its fundamental importance to all of us,” he argues. “At that point, we can start to reclassify each other as members of the same group and start to perceive members of other groups as more human.”