Why Music?

One of the GMT staff workers grooving out to some gospel music.

Why music? To be honest I asked myself this question fairly frequently at the beginning of my trip. It seemed like every other day, Grace Mission Tohoku hosted some kind of concert, whether it was classical music or gospel, in a temporary housing structure or under the summer sun. The team from Juilliard played at multiple temporary housing facilities and held a beautiful classical concert at a nearby church, and let's not forget the Ishinomaki Gospel Festival (because I know my tan hasn't). I wondered why we chose a lot of music-based events instead of teaching crafts or doing some other kind of activity.

I can't remember who said this or when, but regardless of the details it had a profound impact on my perception of music. Come to think of it I don't even remember the exact words they said, but the basic idea has stuck with me: that the beauty of music is in the creation of an atmosphere. Stories are reconstructions of what someone else has experienced, while music creates the experience itself. Don't misunderstand me though. It's a great story of change when people give testimonies of how God has worked in their life and speak about the joy and the hope that they now have, and I do think that testimony is a necessary part of telling people why God is so good. But I can't say there haven't been times when I've heard a testimony and haven't been in the right mindset to listen well, discounting certain valuable truths by thinking things like "Well, that's good for them."

The beauty of music is that it has the ability to strike people in a way that words often cannot, and usher them into a place where they can experience joy themselves rather than just hearing about it from someone who has. It's the difference between telling someone how to make a tasty cake and letting them sample a little piece of one you made. If you want to encourage them to make the cake themselves, they'll need to know the steps to make it and they'll also need to know what the end product tastes like.

View from the second floor at the gospel festival.

It's been wonderful to help people partake in the same kind of joy that I've grown to have in the past couple of years, and in a reverse sense, I've really loved the joy that I get from listening to all of the music that has been floating around all over the place.

-Spencer