Omoluabi News

Throughout history, music has always been an important adjunct to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion. Popular culture has consistently exploited these possibilities, most conspicuously today by means of radio, film, television, musical theatre, and the Internet.

Every community, tribe, and tongue has always found a way to create music. It is as important as learning how to farm or defend themselves. This brings us the question: why music is so important to us as human beings?

In every culture of the world, music is a social activity in which almost everyone  participates. Music highlights communal values and brings people together in diverse ways. Many events of importance are celebrated with music, whether it is a marriage, a birth, or a ceremonial rite of passage.

Historically, religions have often been catalysts for music. The Yoruba people of West Africa are known for their advanced drumming tradition, especially using the dundun hourglass tension drums. Yoruba folk music became perhaps the most prominent kind of West African music in AfroLatin and Caribbean musical styles; left an especially important influence on the music used in Santería practice and the music of Cuba.

The Vedas of Hinduism immensely influenced Indian classical music, while the Five Classics of Confucianism laid the basis for subsequent Chinese music. Following the rapid spread of Islam in the 6th century, Islamic music dominated Persia and the Arab World, and the Islamic Golden Age saw the presence of numerous important music  theorists.

Music was written for and by the early Christian Church properly inaugurating the Western classical music tradition, which continues into medieval music where polyphony, staff notation and nascent forms of many modern instruments developed.

In addition to religion or the lack thereof, a society’s music is influenced by all other aspects of its culture, including social and economic organization and experience, climate, and access to technology. Many cultures have coupled music with other art forms, such as the Chinese four arts and the medieval quadrivium. The emotions and ideas that music expresses, the situations in which music is played and listened to, and the attitudes toward musicians and composers all vary between regions and periods. Many cultures have or continue to distinguish between art music  (or ‘classical music’), folk music, and more recently, popular music.

10 Benefits of music in today’s world

Music can improve mood, decrease pain and anxiety, and facilitate opportunities for  emotional expression. Research suggests that music can benefit our physical and  mental health in numerous ways. Music therapy is used by our hospice and palliative care board-certified music therapist to enhance conventional treatment for a variety of illnesses and disease  processes – from anxiety, depression, and stress to the management of pain and enhancement of functioning after degenerative neurologic  disorders.

1. Music is good for the heart: Research has shown that blood flows more easily when music is played. It can also reduce heart rate, lower blood pressure, decrease cortisol (stress hormone) levels and increase serotonin and endorphin levels in the blood.
2. Music elevates mood: Music can boost the brain’s production of the hormone dopamine. This increased dopamine production helps relieve feelings of anxiety and depression. Music is processed directly by the amygdala, which is the part of the brain involved in mood and emotions.
3. Music reduces stress: Research has found that listening to music can relieve stress by triggering biochemical stress reducers.
4. Music relieves symptoms of depression: When you’re feeling down in the dumps, music can help pick you up – much like exercise.
5. Music stimulates memories: There is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, but music therapy has been shown to relieve some of its symptoms. Music therapy can relax an agitated patient, and improve the mood and open communication in patients.
6. Music manages pain: By reducing stress levels and providing a strong competing stimulus to the pain signals that enter the brain, music therapy can assist in pain management.
7. Music eases pain. Music can meaningfully reduce the perceived intensity of pain, especially in geriatric care, intensive care, or palliative medicine.
8. Music helps with weight loss: Playing soft music in the background (and dimming the lights) during a meal can help people slow down while eating and ultimately consume less food in one sitting.
9. Music increases workout endurance: Listening to those top workout tracks can boost physical performance and increased endurance during a tough exercise session.
10. Music connects us to the spiritual: Most times, music is used as a connection to the spiritual world. Every single religion in the world used music as a way to reach the world. People have also used music individually to reach their deity or creator in situations of emotional stress or helplessness.

Written By Babarinde Williams

Unlike wars that were read of in recorded history that may be found fascinating, modern wars cannot be viewed as such, certainly not as mere push and pull of crazy peoples that could be waved off but as serious events with costs to individuals that are serious and very personal. The world is watching with horror, how lives and livelihoods are being wasted in the war between Russia and Ukraine but not as mere onlookers but also as joint losers, although of much smaller things yet there is a cost to almost everyone at a personal level.

Losses of lives are horrendous and the pains in the hearts of soldiers, their families, and individual combatants are grave but other kinds of losses exist and quite often, individuals will measure the impact of any conflict according to the extent of disruptions to them personally. There will be those that will bear the consequences of this war for a long time, despite not being at the war front. From the aged people abandoned in homes while other able-bodied people fled to a planned wedding that simply did not hold; not that it was called off, everyone is just on the run because survival is the pressing matter of the moment.

The reverberation of the war is felt worldwide in disrupted lives and distorted supply-chain because truly, the world is. Oil and gas prices went up with everyone paying more as the reserves were running low in many nations, but the impact on individual pockets is beyond that since energy is a major direct input into many manufacturing plants, costs of goods and services go up accordingly in many countries, despite not being anywhere near the theater of war,

No country is an island to itself anymore because a finished product in one country could be a raw material in another. Farm produce like wheat, where Ukraine excelled, but is currently not able to be processed and bagged will lead to a higher cost of bread in Africa; just as many needed goods will be stopped from entering Russia and many good things will never be sent to Ukraine because it is a war zone.

Great Russian citizens abroad, athletes, and businesspeople will become Pariahs on many streets of the world. The proud flags of Russia and its beautiful people will hide their nationality for a while because this is a time when to be a Russian is to be considered a villain. In this season that Russia is considered the aggressor, their nationals living elsewhere can expect to lose businesses, be ejected from their homes, be beaten, or even experience worse.

In the war zone, the costs to international students, businesspeople, and locals caught in the unwholesome situations will stagger as they will suddenly find themselves as refugees, exposed to dangers and exploitations. The cases of missing family members will be rampant as people flee in all directions, seeking shelter from raids and bombs. The breakdown of law and order will break fragile spirits, transforming otherwise good people into monsters

Weakness, sudden death from lack of sanitation, medications, and inability to access medical help will lead to death in addition to people with terminal cases and other ailments that are heavily medicated and monitored, wars make these simple things impossible, imposing another kind of costs to such persons. While for many people, the war between Ukraine and Russia is one of bombs and bullets, for others it is the losses of loved ones to heart failures, exposure, and truncated dreams. What had caused many sorrows also included a truncated future and a safe people converted to begging refugees suddenly, wars impose personal costs, and it is not a distant story but the problem for all here and now.

A multi-cultural society is quite interesting because a clash of different languages, norms symbols, values, etc. will be brought together in proximity raising the possibility of a backlash. It is known that the various cultures took centuries to form, and strong values are held, so that a change may be violently defended. It will be an interesting thought experiment for individuals to search in their minds, as to what they had given up, to identify with or fully integrate into the new society.

Any good list of what constitutes culture will at least include Language, values, Belief Systems, Norms, Government/Institutions, and foods. It can also be said that a link exists between the environment and the stable prevailing culture. When a society is formed over years and holds certain beliefs and value systems, it often will never easily yield to changes except a conquest takes place by a completely different group that imposed a new culture or some catastrophic social upheaval that overthrew everything held dear, and now made worthless.

Culture is a term used to describe the received way of life of a people. It can be further simplified to mean the best solution provided to a widespread problem or an accepted way of doing things. When a group of people is a descendant from common ancestors, they are often found to speak the same language or some form of a dialect of a language; so generally speaking, language could be the closest indicator of a people of common ancestry, when the language is not one that came about by reason of conquest or imposition.

Sociologists have mused among themselves about the validity of all cultures, some thought that when different societal ideas are allowed to exist side by side, one will ultimately dissolve into the other. Some opined that cultures should be propped up, so as not to die a natural death. This may be why certain hegemonic vanguards are allowed to exist because a section of the people view them as strong believers in what their ancestors had handed over to them, although the overall interests of societies will always seek to impose peaceful coexistence.

Yet it will be a good idea to understand that ways of life, marriages, religions, languages, clothing, customs, norms, foods, etc., and the many styles of engaging these issues by different kinds of people are worth examining.  In fact, everyone should be fascinated by the practices of others and by seeking to know what the original question was that cultural practice was attempting to answer. This will enrich humanity, promote peace and understanding. Is there a new cultural practice you had imbibed in Canada and what old practice have you dropped?

Start2Finish Canada’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty by providing ongoing educational support to Canada’s at-risk children throughout their school years. On February 26, 2022 the children’s organization hosted the virtual event ‘Voices: A Black Canadian Reading Circle’, as part of its ongoing platform ‘The Thinkers and Doers Series’.  The Black History month event helped kick off Start2Finish’s 2022 theme entitled ‘Otherwise Futures’.

The feature guests were Curtis Carmichael, an award-winning social entrepreneur, who has written ‘Butterflies in the Trenches’, the candid story of his life in the public housing projects in Scarborough, Ontario, where he grew up surrounded by trap houses, attending underfunded schools, and avoiding drive-by shootings. The second guest was Yolanda T. Marshall, a Guyanese-born Canadian author, who has written many children’s books including one of CBC’s best picture books of 2020 “My Soca Birthday Party: with Jollof Rice and Steel Pans.” She is also from Scarborough.

As a children’s author who has kids of her own, Yolanda had a lot to say about the role of education and the implications of false narratives. “The system is set out to make you fail,” she opined. “There are so many people who are so colonialized that they don’t know themselves or their history.” She insisted that education had to an extent fostered this sad reality. “That’s what it’s supposed to do – make you feel like you’re nobody.”

Yolanda counts the birth of her son as a pivotal point in her anxiety regarding elements of the education system. She said it suddenly dawned on her that she was raising a child in a society that she knew was racist and set up to make him fail as a boy. “I said to myself, I’m giving birth to a black boy in Canada, who will go to school, will not see himself in books, will not feel that his identity is culturally relevant.”

Curtis Carmichael learned about the publishing industry in three years. His debut memoir ‘Butterflies in the Trenches’ was the world’s first augmented reality memoir. There are 100 photos in the book, and when you scan photos with an app it displays interactive augmented reality experiences in video, audio and 3D.

When it comes to educating children, Curtis felt that there is more needed than just ensuring representation in books. He stressed that education heavily relied on the enthusiasm of the teachers as well. “Children need to have things that bring them to life,” he remarked. “Having a diverse decolonized library is important,” Curtis agreed, “but also your approach to engaging with that task of teaching is of utmost importance as well.”

He said that teachers need to actually believe in those high values. “You can’t just have them because you are reading them,” he said, “yet not really showing that you understand the value.” He cautioned that children pick up on cues that you are not intimate with the book and the values it stands for. They’re gonna know that you actually inherently care about those communities.”

Written By Mbonisi Zikhali