In my opinionated opinion, music as an art is important as being part of what makes us human. I would also say that in this disconnected world we live in, music plays an important role in emotional expression. Not just for those who write music, but especially for those who are listening. When we’re sad we put on a sad song to sing along to or listen too, and it reminds us that there are other people out there who have the same problems and emotions. Or when you’re sad you could put on your favourite happy song, and let it cheer you up. Music, is like a friend that never stabs you in the back. Something quite hard to come by these days I find…

I’ve done a bit of reading around the dub dub dub after googling “Why is music important” and something I was surprised at was the number of articles on why music is important for brain development in children. Thinking back, this is probably what got my parents into forcing me to take piano lessons from an early age. (What they didn’t count on was me getting a dose of rock n roll and throwing out eight years of classical piano lessons to play the electric guitar, not to mention dying my hair pink and dropping out of school…). Anyway, to the point, humans are fantabulous pattern recognising creatures. It’s what helped us to find food back when we were monkey people, it’s what causes us to be superstitious, and it’s what makes us like music. It’s all about repetition, and recognising repetition as part of a pattern. Learning to recognise patterns when you’re young (eg music lessons…) will no doubt help you to recognise patterns in other areas like Maths. Maths is just full of patterns and repetition. As is science – all that cause and effect (not to mention all the maths involved in science). I’m not certain music will help you get a good mark in English though. I still think the English language is daft. I before E, except after C, except for sometimes when it’s just not. Oh the daftness! Thank god for spell-check Wait, I take that back. The language does follow patterns, sentence structures, and then there’s poetry which is basically all about lyrics right? It’s just the spelling which is daft. And having words that are spelt the same and sound different like “wind” and “wind”

Wikianswers says “Music is important to the economy“. So there you go, I read it on the net so it must be true Actually, I’m sure it is true. But, music is not important to ME because it’s important to the economy. And it’s all about me, so I’ll just say nothing about that subject. Wikianswers also says “Music is not important; it is simply inevitable. It is as inevitable as language, mathematics and art. We are wired (and driven) to organize the elements of our experience into things of balance and beauty.” I like that answer a lot. It’s neat and to the point. Unlike my rambling uncertain essay of an answer

I also came across an article written by a guy called Martin Willet who has some very strong opinions on why music is not as important as those evil musicians make out…

“Young people are like sheep. If they constantly get the message that music is the most important thing in their life they begin to internalize it. Hitler would be proud of his protégés, they have proved his point that if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough people will believe it. Not only believe it but be willing to kill for it. The big lie is that music really matters and life without music is unthinkable.”

I personally think, he’s a bit extreme.

I don’t know why music is important to me personally, but it really is. I’d call myself crazy if I started saying “I was born to play music” or anything like that (seriously, I know I suck). But I have chosen the path of the starving musician that will almost definitely lead to me spending the rest of my life working in music instrument retail while moonlighting as a guitar tech. But, I’d still much rather do that than anything else with my life