Margaret Gibbs on why we need music

"Music is vital to human life and human flourishing." But it is seen within our society as dispensible, as an optional extra, says ethnomusicologist and former BMS Asia Seretary Margaret Gibbs, addressing Catalyst Live audiences in Manchester and Reading.

Every culture and society has its own musical forms - it seems that, across the world, we all need music. While words are specific and limited (and that is their virtue) a melody cannot force a specific message. Instead, it conveys something that is beyond words.

In her twenty minute presentation, Rev Gibbs did not ask audiences to take her word for it, but demonstrated her points with an interesting array of instruments. First, playing the keyboard to show how slight variations on a melodic theme can convey different characters, and then playing the mbira, a small wooden instrument of Zimbabwe's Shona tribe, that can only be played properly with two people: an object lesson in how music is something to be shared. Later, performing on the Gamelan Gender, playing a javanese melody and singing and playing a haunting Eastern melody, Rev Gibbs had audiences spellbound.

Every tune different; all stirring something in the listeners.

Evoking laughter and applause from the Catalyst Live audience throughout, Margaret left people with a question: "God created all human beings in his image - an incredible diversity, yet all formed from the same likeness. Why should music not be the same?"

Music is a gift from God hardwired into the human heart - perhaps all the world's musicians are playing from the same melody, eternity in their hearts.

28/11/2013