Have you ever heard that one’s emotions can be greatly influenced by music alone? Music can be used to manipulate the philosophy of a person from a young age. It can calm down or bring discomfort to an adult. Music is encoded into human traditions and cultures.
Patriotism in Culture
It is known that since our ancestors’ time, education has been a fundamental part of the culture to nurture children into responsible and dependable adults. Borea’s area in the left hemisphere of the brain links to language and speech production. This is where music resides, hence music can evoke powerful emotions (Pianka, 2012). Professor Pianka (2012), an evolutionary ecologist, also criticized that music was exploited by leaders to arouse their people into wars, using national anthems to evoke patriotism and inflame tribal instincts. In fact, this does not only apply to soldiers, but also young children and working adults.
In the book “Patriotism and Nationalism in Music Education”, many music education philosophers agree that music education is a medium of instilling patriotism in children (Hebert & Kertz-Welzel, 2016, p. 11). Take Taiwan for example, national identity is a sensitive issue that is strongly reflected in school curricula. The music curriculum is designed to promote students’ personal and national identities in the new Taiwan (Hebert & Kertz-Welzel, 2016, p. 67). In the past, corrupted politicians wanted to strengthen the relationship between citizens and their own country, which in turn would support their position in power. Fortunately, Hebert and Kertz-Welzel (2016, p. 40) noted that with the lesson from Germany, the time for music education as a means for nationalistic or patriotic education is over.
In modern days, this situation occurs more in culture than politics. For example, Pianka (2012) suggests sports fans in opposing groups using their team’s theme song to elicit passion is a form of conflict influenced by music.
Nature in Music
Aside from childhood education, religion is part of many people’s lives, which feels incomplete without listening to the music and singing. Patrick Whelan, a Harvard Medical School lecturer, suggested that church music “puts everyone in the same emotional space” (Eck, 2024).
Whelan suspects this is due to evolutionary biology. Earliest nocturnal mammals had to rely on being hyperfocused and hyperattentive for survival, which likely adapted into live music today (Eck, 2024). The human brain can tag acoustic cues as familiar or unfamiliar. Church attendants have been listening to choir since their childhood, so indeed the music is familiar to them. Eck (2024) stated that “the valence of the music, which signals whether the music feels positive, negative, or somewhere in between, influences the autonomic nervous system (ANS)”, which can also be influenced by the familiarity of the music. This is the reason why a person can feel discomfort from listening to infamous or heavy metal music if they are growing up not familiar with the genre.
Additionally, a study (Song et al., 2023) revealed that music familiar to nature sounds bring comfort, relaxation, and lower negative mood. The study suggests that despite most people now residing in urban areas, participants are more at rest with nature sounds than urban sounds. Song and others (2023) believe that the reason is due to how the ancestors have long been living with nature, while the accelerated industrialization and urbanization only occur in recent centuries. There’s a suggestion of inheritance involving music familiarity, though family environment can be a larger factor as Whelan suggests.
Healing of the Brain
Sometimes, music can be a cure. According to Eck (2024), there is growing evidence that “listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major can reduce the frequency of seizures in some people with epilepsy”. Eck suggested that “by identifying the exact type of music able to provoke a particular cognitive, motor, or emotional response, there could be progress toward healing, improving, or compensating for disrupted brain function in various diseases.” However, further knowledge about this topic requires more research and may not provide concrete evidence in a few upcoming years.
Meanwhile, adults deal with a lot of stress nowadays. However, there is a lack of free mental healing resources. Relaxing music would be the best choice for most people. Interestingly, ASMR-triggering music is found to reduce stress equally as relaxing sounds like nature (Paszkiel et al., 2020). Visiting a natural environment is also a good option to relieve stress (Song et al., 2023). Since traveling is not a choice for busy people within cities, nature sounds (in addition to relaxing music) can easily be accessed through various platforms on the Internet.
References
Eck, A. (2024, March). How music resonates in the brain. Harvard Medicine Magazine. https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/how-music-resonates-brain
Hebert, D. G., & Kertz-Welzel, A. (2016). Patriotism and nationalism in music education. Routledge.
Paszkiel, S., Dobrakowski, P., & Łysiak, A. (2020). The impact of different sounds on stress level in the context of EEG, cardiac measures and subjective stress level: A pilot study. Brain Sciences, 10(10), 728. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10100728
Pianka, E. R. (2012). Can Human Instincts Be Controlled?. Human instincts. http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/thoc/HumanInstincts.html
picryl. (2017). Music melody musical note, music. picryl. Retrieved November 28, 2025, from https://picryl.com/media/music-melody-musical-note-music-93af15. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license
Song, I., Baek, K., Kim, C., & Song, C. (2023). Effects of nature sounds on the attention and physiological and psychological relaxation. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 86, 127987. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2023.127987
