A while ago, I was giving a piano lesson to this student. She was taking a Master Degree Program in one of the top University in Japan, not music, but had strong will to go into the music scene, wanted to be a Jazz Pianist.
Her father back then went so against it. He, being a Police Chief, said to her, “All the Jazz musicians are criminals!”
That is a rather extreme remark, but if we recall the history of Jazz, we might not be able to blame non-musicians, especially somebody in the law enforcement like her father making this sort of comment.
The founding father of Jazz, Louis Armstrong smoked joint for his whole life I heard. People used to tell me that the down stairs of “used-to-be” 7th Avenue South Jazz club was once awful with all kinds of drugs. I personally didn’t take drugs while in the U.S., simply because my body didn’t seem to like those substances. Think about Rock or Jazz music, though, at least in one stage, the drug seemed to be bonded with those music.
I have no intention of making any justification of whether or not drugs or alcohol is good socially, physically, but one thing I feel is that drugs or alcohol must have something to do with the relaxation of the human brain.
The relaxation would be achieved by let the brain refrain from over-working, or ideally not thinking.
I feel that consciously or not, human being has been searching for the way to put our brain to the rest, in some way.
A loud Rock music, in spite of the huge sound coming out from Mega Watt speakers, might serve as a way to let our brain stop thinking and have a little rest.
Legendary classical pianist, Sviatoslav Richter performed without the stage lights on. This might have the same effect to our brain as the loud music. Goldberg Variations by Johan Sebastian Bach is an incredibly long composition. Though we need to imagine the listening environment of 18th century, which was so different from the present time with music streaming and YouTube, listening to the incredibly long series of music might have had the similar effect to our brain.
We can find so many things that might have been related to the human’s desire to let our brain to rest: “Shishiodoshi”, a bamboo hitting on the rock in constant rhythm used in Zen practice, or Gamelan music from Indonesia.
I don’t have any particular religion that I pursue or I don’t belong to any “Self-Awareness Group”.
I am simply interested in “Human” and the brain is a center of Human.
I am no neuroscientist or anything but how about start observing simply though your consciousness what your brain is doing from time to time?
It might be interesting as we might find something we have never imagined what our brain is doing!
