more than just music

Saturday April 15th 2023 by SocraticDev

Most developers believe that listening to music while working helps to reach a flow state. Listening to music while working helps to raise their level of concentration.

Looking back, we can see that the benefits of music on human development were already known at least since Greek antiquity. As much education of young Athenians than that of young Spartans was based on two disciplines: gymnastics and music. Gymnastics as an activity preparing young people for military rigors. But also as an activity excellent in itself. The combative (agonal) character of the ancient Greeks was expressed in particular during the Olympic Games where the triumph assured the winners to be honored by their peers throughout their lives.

Music, on the other hand, was considered the supreme art, "occupying a essential place in the political, social and religious life of Greece Ancient". By its intangible (non-material) nature, music represents the gateway to the realm of the ideas: from mathematics to Philosophy. In addition, the learning and practice of measurement and the science of proportions also have an ethical aspect.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Music_of_ancient_Greece

resistance music

Rembetika is the music most often associated with Greece. The sound of bouzouki, oriental tones and chants similar to a litany.

It's not so much a musical style as a subculture in its own right. The culture of working class and oppressed by the Ottoman occupiers. The rembetika is a artistic way of resisting the invader. A way to remember yourself. Affirm their identity.

It is also said that the rembetika is the 'Greek blues'. We understand the blues like a state of mind, like a visceral feeling. A way of expressing emotions complex as the lost origin and uprooting. A state of mind hope and the despair.

My Rembetika Blues - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlQha1DfUic

occultism and avant-garde

The singer Genesis P-Orridge conveys social criticism through his music radical. A critique of capitalist society and all that can be considered an intellectual opium. As much by their personality, their sexual identity than through their music, Genesis P-Orridge fully assumes their role as an artist. Someone who challenges conventional wisdom and offers a new view of the world.

"Strangely, those who are most despised today are the best cut out for survival" - Genesis P-Orridge

P-Orridge died at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 14th, 2020) in New York City, they (preferred pronoun) will not have the opportunity to be able to say "I was right!" Indeed, P-Orridge had long predicted the end of mankind thru a deadly pandemic...

Listening to the music of Genesis P-Orridge is not a pleasant experience. A bit like it would be to be a contestant participating in a session of 'fight club' is not pleasant. That is to say, we would kind of be forcing ourselves to listen to it to obtain certain benefits which can only be obtained by ceasing to wallow in our comfort zone.

We must listen to the music of Genesis P-Orridge, COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle on purpose. As in all avant-garde art, there is a search artistic pre-production. To appreciate this music, intellectual efforts are required. One is rewarded for having researched the history of the artist, their philosophy and their message. It helps us overcome discomfort and take advantage of the artist's message.

healing through music

The music of the Moroccan village of Jahejouka was popularized in the West in the 1960s by Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and Timothy Leary, the spokesperson for psychedelic culture.

Jajouka's master musicians are inspired by Sufism. Sufism is a mystical stream of Islam. Sufism is organized into brotherhoods and it nurtures a mystical approach to spirituality. Their music has the effect of inducing a state of trance among his listeners.

Their musical practice aims for ecstasy: union with the divine.

We have a ceremony every year for Boujeloud (A half-man, half-goat deity representing fertility). And then we play the music every Friday to honor this saint, Sidi Ahmed Sheikh, and for sick and crazy people who have lost their minds. And after we play, the people become normal in their lives. We've been doing it for thousands of years. It's like a hospital. Many people who come have gone to doctors in Europe and not been cured. Then they stay in the village and we tie them up and we play the music every week, and the feel better.