What music does for us

In 1993, Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly appeared in a documentary about the song they wrote together, “From Little Things Big Things Grow”. They talk about the Gurindji walk-off at Wave Hill. The film puts their account alongside footage of the strike itself. Years later, Carmody described the song as part of an oral tradition in which stories pass between generations through song, dance and other forms of art. He was modest about what a song can do to a listener. It can make somebody aware, he said. What that person does with the knowledge is up to them. National Film and Sound Archive · Kev Carmody’s account

The title comes back around throughout the song. The verses keep moving. By the time the refrain returns, you know a little more about whose land it was, who had power and what it took to stand up to them. A listener can carry the chorus away on a first hearing. The story can take a lifetime of hearings to get to know. That is one of the things a song can do that a plaque has trouble doing. You can walk away from the plaque and take its words with you, if you have a good memory. With a song, the tune helps you do some of the carrying.

I think about that when music comes up in discussions about wellbeing. We often start with what listening does to the person with the headphones on. That's worth knowing. I'm also interested in what happens when we have songs in common, when someone teaches one to a child, or when a room full of strangers discovers it knows how to come in on the same beat.

A song can change the shape of an afternoon

Think about choosing what to listen to after a bad day. You might want the first song to meet you where you are. There is a particular irritation in hearing an upbeat tune when you are still working out why something upset you. On another day that same tune might get you moving. Even a recording you love can be difficult to hear if you associate it with somebody you miss. The sound has stayed the same. What you bring to it has changed.

This is where I'd be careful with the claim that music makes people happy. A sad song can do good work while leaving you sad. It can give a feeling a beginning and an end. You get to hear somebody stay with it for the length of a verse, hear the harmony change beneath it and decide whether to hear the whole thing again. Silence is also available. Some afternoons that's what you want.

Researchers can ask a narrower question and give us an answer worth taking seriously. A 2022 review in JAMA Network Open pooled 26 studies with 779 participants. The studies included listening, singing and formal music therapy, among other activities. The average change on the mental component of a health-related quality-of-life measure was about three points on the scale used, with a 95 per cent confidence interval from 1.39 to 4.51. In eight studies that compared music alongside usual care with usual care alone, the average difference was 3.72 points, with a wider interval of 0.40 to 7.05. The researchers found substantial variation in outcomes and couldn't establish which activity or dose worked best in particular settings. McCrary and colleagues’ review

That scale measures how people experience aspects of their health and daily lives. A change on it deserves attention in its own right. A separate Cochrane review asked about symptoms of depression. It included nine studies with 421 participants overall and found short-term benefits when music therapy was added to usual care. In that research, music therapy was a structured intervention. Choosing a record at home is a different activity, with room for a different kind of benefit. Cochrane review of music therapy for depression

There is a reason I want both accounts in view. If the question is what a health service should provide, the quality of the clinical evidence matters. If the question is whether the neighbourhood ought to have a place where people can play, there is also the simpler question of what people would do with the room if they had it.

The first night in a room full of strangers

You can spend the first few minutes at a community choir trying to work out where everyone else puts their coat. Then somebody gives a note and asks you to sing it. You may spend more time attending to the breath of the stranger beside you in the next ten seconds than you would have done in an hour of sitting next to them on a train. If they come in slightly early, you hear it. If you are unsure where to breathe, you can follow them. The business of getting through the phrase gives you something to do together before either of you has much to say.

Eiluned Pearce and colleagues followed newly formed adult education classes for seven months. Some sang together. Others met for craft or creative writing. The singing participants reported a bigger increase in closeness to their classmates at the first session. The other groups caught up over time. These were existing types of community class, and the study asked people how close they felt. It couldn't tell us whether that first evening produced a lasting friendship. It does give us a way of thinking about how quickly strangers can feel part of something when they have a sound to make together. Pearce, Launay and Dunbar’s study

There is another part of that story the first night can't tell us. Can you get back there the following week? Is the room accessible? Does somebody make sure a beginner can hear their part? What happens if you cannot afford the fee or if the last bus leaves before rehearsal ends? Feeling included for a few minutes is worth something. The arrangement that lets you show up again is how the feeling gets a chance to become a relationship.

And it isn't always easy to be the new person in a musical room. A group can be so pleased with how well its members know one another that it forgets to explain how the evening works. There may be a good musical reason to begin with a familiar piece. If you're the only person who has never heard it, you might spend the whole song looking for the first note. Somebody making a copy of the part, or taking the time to sing it through with you, can change the evening.

Who gets to take part?

Creative Australia's 2022 National Arts Participation Survey estimated that 91 per cent of Australians aged 15 and over listened to recorded music, 47 per cent attended a live music event or festival, and 17 per cent made music, including to engage with their cultural background, language group or community. People could do any combination of these things. The figures measure participation in that survey year, without telling us why somebody chose one activity or what they would do if they had more time, money or company. Creative Australia’s music factsheet

Listening is a substantial part of musical life. I would also like more people to have the option of being the one who starts the song. There's a difference between having access to more recordings than you can hear in your lifetime and being able to borrow a cello for long enough to learn what it feels like to play one. There is a similar difference between watching someone else's concert and having a venue nearby where the music you and your neighbours make might be heard.

That matters to whose stories we know. I can learn a song and still have plenty to learn about the people whose history it carries. Carmody’s account is worth reading for that reason. He talks about the determination behind the Gurindji struggle and how he understood his own work in relation to the tradition it came from. The song gives a listener somewhere to begin. The people and history it describes deserve the time it takes to go further.

We also learn things about a society by looking at who can gather and make a sound in it. Some of that sound comes from people paid to do it well. Some comes from children who are still learning, from older people with a repertoire nobody has written down, and from people who know one song and will sing it when asked. They each need a place. The practical question for a school, a council or a government is where those places are, who can use them and what it costs to keep them there.

I wrote separately about what Victoria could fund to keep people making music, from school lessons and instrument repairs to the rooms in which people play. The best argument I know for that spending is still the ordinary one. Somebody wants to play and needs a way to start. Somebody has learnt a song and has a room to sing it in. Years later, another person remembers the tune and knows who taught it to them.