I wrote this arti­cle in 1995, way before blogs were pop­u­lar, even before Google, and when every site seemed to have a Netscape icon on it.

I recently found it buried in my hard drive and thought I’d share. You can tell it is dated but I think the mes­sage of this arti­cle still applies today and for years to come.

Music has influ­enced the life of man since the very begin­ning. It has made its home in palaces and cab­ins. It has given courage to sol­diers and endurance to slaves, hope to the oppressed and sor­row to the greedy.

Apollo

Many peo­ple believe that music is God’s gift to human­ity. Some even believe that music has powers.

Greek mythol­ogy ascribed to music a divine ori­gin and named its ear­li­est prac­ti­tion­ers gods, such as Apollo and Orpheus. The Old Tes­ta­ment has sto­ries of David cur­ing Saul’s mad­ness by play­ing a harp.

Today, man can still call upon music to lend wings to his inner feel­ings when­ever he has delighted greatly, grieved sorely, loved deeply, laughed freely, or prayed sincerely.

How man makes music is still a mys­tery but, as long as he is capa­ble of reach­ing this spir­i­tual heights and depths, man will always make music.

The power of music rests upon the truth under­ly­ing all human life, the basic kin­ship of peo­ple. If a song by John Lennon writ­ten over 25 years ago moves the youth of today, it is because they dis­cover a kin­ship between the long-dead singer and them­selves. Beethoven’s Ninth Sym­phony, after 200 years, with Schiller’s set­tings of “Ode to Joy” and its refrain “All Men are Broth­ers,” still moves thou­sands of peo­ple to be more involved in the shap­ing of our soci­ety. It is again because of this kin­ship. Lennon and Beethoven, like all the other great com­posers and song­writ­ers – Bach and Mozart, Eric Clap­ton and Bob Mar­ley, Kurt Cobain and Bob Dylan, just to name a few – have great influ­ence on our soci­ety. Their music reflects youth’s eter­nal con­cern with sex­ual aware­ness, drugs, and polit­i­cal mat­u­ra­tion. Their music reflects love and hate. Their music reflects the good and evil in our soci­ety. Their music reflects humanity.

It is this self-reflection of human­ity that shapes our own future, the very future that every song­writer and com­poser has the power to shape. One can only won­der about the state of the world had Lennon and McCart­ney not writ­ten hun­dreds of songs that affected the lives of bil­lions. “Imag­ine all the peo­ple, liv­ing life in peace.” Are just some of Lennon’s words that have given mil­lions of peo­ple hope that per­haps world peace is pos­si­ble. Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Over­ture” has cer­tainly made mil­lions of peo­ple aware of the heart-rending beauty of love. Song­writ­ers like Bob Dylan and Neil Young have made mil­lions of peo­ple aware of their human and civil rights.

Today, song­writ­ers like Melissa Etheridge are mak­ing us aware and maybe more accept­ing of homo­sex­u­al­ity. Kurt Cobain and Eddy Ved­der have helped cre­ate Generation-X. From the ear­li­est gen­er­a­tions, com­posers and song­writ­ers have been touch­ing each and every one of us. With mes­sages like world peace, love, human rights, and human sex­u­al­ity, they have been shap­ing our soci­ety with music.