An Unpredictable Influence of Jazz on Emotions - Assignment Example

Unpredictable Influence of Jazz on Emotions by Part Select an experience from your life where music has a strong impact on you. Describe this experience briefly I can definitely say that I can`t imagine my life without music now: in any problematic situation music is the only thing that can cheer me up or soothe me. Music is my only company in many trips and walks, and from the moment I felt deep emotional connection to music I realized that I will be never alone if I have my headphones with me. Music is my real friend because it comforts me, supports me and gives me inspiration, and I can definitely say that this friendship is mutual and eternal. But I did not become an expert in music at once- it took a long way and many efforts to find those styles and those instruments that have positive impact on me. The thing is that in order to fall in love with music a person must find those sounds that resonate with him personally (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010). For me jazz was a real revelation in the sphere of music. It is much easier to give a person to listen to jazz than to describe it with the words because it is an incredible synthesis of melodies, sounds, and instruments in music shaped into one powerful flow. My parents never listened to this kind of music so I did not know what it is until my friend recommended me to listen to jazz.The things that I admire in this kind of music are the degree of improvisation that is allowed and the possibility of expression of very different emotions in one and the same piece. Jazz was shaped as mix of African music created by former slaves (originated as blues, work songs, gospel) and European music so it is absolutely polyrhythmic and unpredictable (Lawn, 2013). I guess listening to jazz one can easily feel difficult conditions of black workers who invented this genre the only possible way to cope with burdens and struggles of life. Part 2: Explain how this experience might be better understood with reference to the research presented in one of the seminars. Conduct a literature review of that topic and use this material to compare your own experience with the empirical evidence. As jazz has no lyrics originally, and the quantity of the instruments is limited compared to the one used in classic music or rock jazz sounds deeply. It is a well-known fact that music causes an emotional response in people. But how does it happen and why? Another question that I would like to study more seriously is why jazz influences me personally and what emotions it provokes in me. Are these emotions similar to the emotions of other listeners and to which extent they are consistent with the emotions embedded by the player himself? First of all it is necessary to find out the nature of such phenomenon as emotions. According to Kleinginna & Kleinginna “Emotion is a complex set of interactions among subjective and objective factors, mediated by neural hormonal systems which can (a) give rise to affective experiences such as feelings of arousal, pleasure or displeasure; (b) generate cognitive processes such as perceptually relevant effects, appraisals, labeling processes; (c) activate widespread physiological adjustments to the arousing conditions which may lead to behavior that is often, but not always, expressive, goal-directed, and adaptive (1981)”. So analyzing my emotional response I realized that jazz literally soothes me giving me the feelings of calm, tranquility, and relaxation. It does not arose me and what is important does not generate cognitive processes. So according to Russel model jazz gives me low activation and pleasure, it does not affect my motivation (1980). Most jazz I listen to does not have a stable drum rhythm that is why the melody does not activate me on a high level. It turns out that drums naturally create the rhythm which imitates human heart beating on subconscious level, and this rhythm allows tuning in all the other instruments and creating a common melody (Tighe & Dowling, 1993). In other words the rhythm created by music resonates with the internal body rhythm of listener (Juslin et al., 2010). Though it is necessary and required for other genres (rock, electronic music, hip-hop, pop) jazz does not need the rhythm as it is because of its free flowing nature. And the drum rhythm has an important impact to person`s emotional response: it sets certain brain waves and activates person`s mind bringing excitement, happiness, and astonishment. While jazz acts soothingly and mildly in most cases, and in such a way it influences me as well. However, soon I realized that the absence of traditional rhythm and chaotic nature of improvisation seems soothing, tranquilizing, and pleasant for me but for some of my friends it turns out irritating and unbearable. That made me think of jazz as of some indicator of emotions. So basically there is no denial that jazz evokes certain emotions but these reactions are very different for different people as well as for the player himself. The problem is that though jazz activates me on a low level and brings positive emotions, for other listeners it is not necessarily so. For instance, Gridley describes an interesting experiment conducted to reveal the influence of jazz music on emotional state of listeners. For some reason several journalists who listened to the first jazz sessions of famous jazz player John Coltrane described his play as angry and even aggressive though such emotions were never intended by the musician himself. A research was conducted to reveal how the music of Coltrane was perceived by other listeners and if anger was a dominant emotion in this perception. Only one out of four journalists who wrote about Coltrane and a couple of musicians from twenty three musicians felt some notes of anger in this music so it was proved that sometimes people could attribute opposite emotions to those which were embedded by the author. The researchers then conducted Multidimensional Anger Inventory (Siegel, 1981) to find out the overall level of anger and friendliness in participants. It turned out that those respondents who felt that Coltrane`s music was angry had high indicators of anger for their personality. Thus the correlation between the emotion perceived through music and the embedded emotion was detected (Gridley, 2009).In other words, people attributed to jazz, which is free of some structure ad which is created on spot by a musician, their own dominant emotions. Another important aspect of traditional jazz is the absence of lyrics. Despite the fact that music without lyrics evokes as many emotions as music with lyrics but the problem is that emotions are very ambiguous and in most cases very different for different listeners. As for the music with lyrics it is almost often clear what basic emotions are presupposed but with such genre as jazz it turns out that interpretation can vary from friendliness and pleasure to anger. Another point is that the emotions that are meant by the musician are never equal to the emotions perceived by a listener because of the absence of verbal material. Coltrane himself in one of the interview explained that his only goal was to “share his perception of beauty of the universe” and that anger was never intended to be present in his music (Fraim, 1996). But probably the most important and remarkable thing about jazz which constitutes its essence is improvisation. That phenomenon places jazz on a separate place among all the genres of music. Jazz is almost completely based on it and though there exist certain “licks” which allows a musician to use some patterns and combine them, it is still not known from the beginning what will be played in case of jazz. However, overall jazz is chaotic and unpredictable. Some people listening to this music do not necessarily feel positive emotions for some the sense of craziness, formless improvisation feels negative (Levitin, 2006). Improvisation can be pleasant in case if a listener knows what to anticipate from this music. Though jazz has some basic pattern, only few people, familiar with jazz are able to differentiate it. The reason is that playing on spot a musician takes and uses his subconscious material first of all and cannot predict what he will be playing eventually. That is why it is possible to suggest that responding emotionally to jazz the person interprets his own emotions first of all and his own mood (Levitin, 2006). Then it is a question of the possibility of acceptance of a chaos and physiological response. Moreover, the issue of jazz understanding can relate strongly to the acceptance of personal unconsciousness. Physiologically jazz creates an interesting response in listeners as well: jazz has been shown to increase autonomic functions. The research shows that when people listened to jazz music, their respiration-rate and heart-rate increased (Kravitz, 2004). This isn’t only helpful during exercise, but the faster heartbeats and faster breathing might also be signs of different emotions that are felt while listening to jazz. These physiological changes are signs of anger, fear, sadness, shame, and joy (Davis & Paladino, 2007). So if take into consideration James –Lang physiological theory of emotions it becomes clear why jazz is perceived in so many different ways by people (1997). For many listeners internal agitation is interpreted as anxiety and relaxation is hardly possible. Jazz is exceptional, brilliant, and inspiring kind of music. Due to its natural improvisation, lack of rhythm and spontaneity it is not perceived equally by listeners. For many people such music is too saturated or too empty and it can seem meaningless sometimes but it is possible to suggest that jazz being created on spot gives listeners a possibility to explore their own emotions and perceptions. Lack of rhythm leaves a listener free from internal resonance making jazz flow naturally as work songs or gospels born somewhere in the depths of human subconscious. I suppose that the possibility to interpret and to study closely my personal response to music is the most precious gift jazz gives me. Part 3: Suggest future research that might be useful to extend our understanding on such experiences. There are a number of topics of research that could shade light on the above described issue. It is possible to study closely physiological response to different kinds of music comparing them with jazz that would give understanding why jazz provokes such emotions. References Davis, S. F. & Palladino, J. (2007). Psychology (5th Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Fraim, J. (1996) Spirit Catcher: The life and art of John C. Coltrane. West Liberty, Ohio: Great House. Gridley, M. (2009) Trait Anger and Music Perception, Creativity Research Journal, 21(1), 134-137. Juslin, K. & Sloboda, J. (2010). Handbook on music and emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Juslin, P., Liljeström, S., Västfjäll, S. &Lars-Olov, L. (2010). How does music evoke emotions? Exploring the underlying mechanisms. Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kleinginna, P. & Kleinginna, R. (1981) A Categorized List of Motivation Definitions, Motivation and Emotion, 5 (3). Kravitz, L. (2004) The effects of music on exercise. Retrieved from: http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/musicexercise.html Lang, P.J. (1994). The Varieties of Emotional Experience: A Meditation on James–Lange Theory, Psychological Review, 101 (2). Lawn, R. (2004) Experiencing jazz. New York: Routledge. Levitin, J. (2006) This is your brain on music. Chicago: Dutton. Tighe, T. & Dowling, W. (1993). Psychology and music: The understanding of melody and rhythm, New York: Psychology Press. Russell, J.(1980). A circumplex model of affect, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Siegel, J. M. (1981).The measurement of anger as a multidimensional construct. In M. A. Chesney. Rosenman, H. (1998).Anger and hostility in cardiovascular and behavioral disorders. Washington, DC: Hemisphere. Read More