The POWER of Music as Therapy

Music is a POWERful expressive SOUND language serving many purposes, and involving specific combinations of timbre, rhythm, melody, harmony, form, and texture resulting in the diversity of styles that are able to produce a wide range of effects on any or all of the systems in our body. It is the uniqueness of the gestalt of SOUND organized rhythmically, melodically, harmonically, formally and stylistically that makes music so very POWERful, and causes it to have such unique effects on our brain, and in turn, all our body systems. Marshall McLuhan, a pioneer in communication theory, in his book The Medium Is The Message (Message) (1) presents a compelling argument for carefully choosing the medium used to communicate a message. The purpose and message of this chapter on the Music-Brain-Body Connection is to convey the Power of MUSIC, most specifically for its therapeutic effects.