Music: Our Most Popular, Most Powerful and Most Empowering Form of Art?

‘’The Creative Leverage’’ for Developing the Human Mind? You say?

by

Clive W Kronenberg, Adv. Cert. ABRSM Dipl. Audio Eng. MMus HDE PhD (UCT). Founder/Arts director: Berg Productions Platform, (argument conception, research, data analysis, draft text construction, multiple revision, TTI & ITV prompt composition, script final cut edit), in association with Gemini 3 (info/data/reference checks & updates, script./grammar/syntax adjustment & correction, TTI generation), Krea/Wan (TTV), and Qwen (TTI & TTV).

April 2026

Words: 2090

INTRODUCTION

music has a unique capacity to enhance intellectual development

Susan Hallam

The relationship between music and the human experience is not merely aesthetic; it is foundational, concrete, and all encompassing, inside, and out, north south east and west, no sh^t.

lmage 1: Music envelops the entire human world. Author: prompt construction, TTI Generation: Gemini 3. April 2026

For decades, the intersection of the musical arts and human psychology, has sought to quantify how “organized sound and silences” i.e. music, in most general of terms, influence and shape “Human Intellect, broadly speaking.

To make better sense of this uncharted relationship, one must view the musical experience, in its truer dimensions:

part physics (frequencies, sound waves), and

part biological/neurological (hearing or reception of the sound, and sound decoding).

In basic terms, music (like sound), is transferred as audible frequencies, through sound waves, to the (listening) subject.

But herein lies a stark reality, the implications of which some observers may find somewhat outrageous, perhaps?

Of some importance thus, this submission by no means aims to instigate some sort of ‘’lamplight arts comparison’’ mission. We deeply respect ALL arts and creative fields, unquestioningly. And no one single arts form should enjoy preference over another.

The topic addressed here, carries scholarly weight, and serves to impart crucial insights that could enhance our human development, no more and no less.

But it is strongly reasoned and believed, that at the end of the day, few may disagree with the premise presented here,

namely:

that out of all of our contemporary mainline arts streams, music strongly emerges as the forerunner, in terms of popularity, impact, and sheer leverage to enhance and raise the human intellect

THE ALL-IMPORTANT ‘’PHYSICAL’’ ELEMENT

Based just on its physical functional structure (notes, frequencies), and the physical instrumentality in its actual transmission (sound waves), we could already and purely on a rational basis come dearly close to reaching our headline projection. Deeper awareness of the physical element may explain music’s ‘’most popular-most impactful status, more convincingly, we trust , a topic we return to.

And there is, incidently a massive difference between ‘’popular’’ (well liked, so preferred, welcomed) and powerful (impactful/influential/life altering).

Admittedly, the ancient field of ‘’story-telling’’ (oratory/prose/poetry) is a strong contender, and perhaps overall victor here.

lmage 2: Music envelops the entire human frame. Author: prompt composition/construction, TTI Generation: Qwen. April 2026

Mmm? The “Most Popular” and “Most Powerful” Art Form?

Unlike literature, which requires literacy, or the visual arts, which often require specific physical spaces (galleries) or focused attention, music permeates the background, middle-ground and the foreground of human life.

It is the only art form that is consistently “alive and kicking”, in our homes, in our cars and on planes, in our family celebrations, churches, public spaces, social gatherings, retail environments, digital interfaces. It is everywhere. All of the time. Perpetually. For good.

Quantitatively, in terms of hours of engagement per capita, music most likely holds the crown.

However, regarding the question of power, **this **is where the hypothesis becomes most compelling.

The Physics of Resonance

As a mechanical longitudinal wave, music or sound, can travel through space and matter — including the human body. The sound can pass through thick concrete walls, and thus arose the need for the sound proofed recording studio. (And because music so effortlessly can pass through kitchen and bedroom walls, this factor also initiated that familiar domestic refrain: ‘’for heavens sake not everyone is into rock turn down that noise now child!’’.

While we “hear” through the cells of the cochlea, we also, and at the same time, experience, subsume, or literally feel, the sound of music, which penetrates and envelops the entire human frame. The human body, and not purely the human ear, is a receptor or receiver of the musical sound. When we engage with music, we instantly feel the pressure changes of frequency vibrations and the pulses of the musical rhythms.

This is why music can trigger the autonomic nervous system typically more rapidly than a painting can. A visual stimulus requires cognitive processing of light and shadow to create an emotional “connection,” whereas a sudden jarring clashing chord, an abrupt rise or drop in volume or tempo, or just the gentle entry of a solo violin-cello could instantly induce a range of human responses before the conscious mind even identifies the source.

Music’s power ultimately lies in this biophysical-emotive immediacy. It bypasses many of the intellectual filters required by other arts, creating a direct “hot-link” to the limbic system.

While storytelling (the narrative arts) indeed is a powerful rival, music often provides the emotional “engine” for those stories to rise and shine in most novel and compelling ways, and we often end up asking:

wherein lies the main attraction: is it the story? or the music?

So, even when story is king, music so often emerges as ‘’the kingmaker’’, as so remarkably and convincingly illustrated in and across the cinematic arts.

The art of dancing is virtually entirely dependent on music’s very deep and personal, almost entirely prerequisite presence, to the point where, likewise one almost cannot be distinguished from the other. And there certainly is no need perhaps to do so, in the first instance.

But as it turns out, the sheer weight, reach, and power of music, in particular, also bring many humanly-enriching benefits, which may further explain its prime, towering status in human life overall.

Music & Human Empowerment

The work of Susan Hallam has been instrumental in verifying music’s highly persuasive “transfer effects” — benefits that extend into non-musical domains. For school-aged children, the dedicated study of an instrument or voice opens the door to the acquisition of a wide variety of crucial skills and capacities:

1. Literacy and Linguistic Mastery: Music and speech share processing pathways. Children trained in music show enhanced phonological awareness and better speech perception, which are critical for overcoming reading gaps.

2. Executive Function: In intellectual terms , the balancing of rhythm, pitch accuracy, playing posture, and overall physical coordination — strengthens the brain’s ability to plan, focus, execute, assess, readjust, and multitask.

3. Social-Emotional Regulation: Group music-making (choirs, ensembles, orchestras) requires a form of “social organisation” that customarily fosters attention to detail, responsibility, commitment, accountability, pride, confidence, poise, fidelity, empathy and a collaborative intelligence that purely individualistic subjects typically do not replicate

Beyond the Score

For the dedicated scholar of music, the benefits are even more profound. Music is, by its nature, a transdisciplinary synthesis. The scholar does not purely study the arrangement and structures of pitches, harmonies, forms, styles and pulses, but also history, materialist reality, cultural evolution, and increasingly now, the dialectical relationship between technology and art.

• Critical Synthesis: The musicologist learns to interpret “hidden” structures within complex systems.
• Cultural Literacy: They gain an advanced understanding of how colonial facades or national identities are constructed through sonic branding and folk traditions and preferances.
• Analytical Precision: The ability to deconstruct a polyphonic work may translate into an ability to deconstruct complex social, academic and organic arguments.

Image 3: Music Making as Social Organisation. The author: TTV Prompt Composition. Image frame: Krea/Wan 2.3 TTV Generation April 2026.

MBE Susan Hallam: A Legacy of Evidence

Emeritus Professor Susan Hallam (MBE), formerly of the UCL Institute of Education, remains a longstanding leading global figure in the field. Now in advanced age, she continues today to influence policy through her Emeritus status.

Her lengthy, in-depth research — specifically the seminal “The Power of Music” — is widely accepted as the theoretical gold standard:

that music has a unique capacity to enhance intellectual development.

Emeritus Professor Hallam (MBE) has frequently collaborated with and cited researchers from the Indian subcontinent and the diaspora, acknowledging the profound psychological depths of Indian classical traditions.

One notable connection is the research of Professor Sumit K. Majumdar regarding the cognitive benefits of rhythmic training (such as the Tabla or Karnatic systems), often cited for their superior complexity in developing mathematical and temporal reasoning.

Conclusion

The physical reality of the sound wave confirms: music is a total-body experience. We do not only hear it, but also feel it. When we hear or listen to music, its sound waves reach and touch our bodies, from head to toe. The musical experience comes not purely from ‘’listening with our ears’’. It is a full body impact event set in time and motion. (It may be a good idea to dress down for the next jazz concert?. Perhaps leave the thick-skinned full length leather jacket at home?)

It is the most popular because it is the most enjoyable, quite arguably, but also the most unavoidable.

And it is the most powerful because it is the most impactful (physical-emotional).

And to crown it all, music, especially, can empower the human mind in most compelling, truly meaningful ways.

Through the lens of (MBE) Susan Hallam’s pioneering research, we see that

music effectively is a cognitive necessity for a more fully developed human intellect.

And yet dear reader, after all is said and done,

and no matter the sanctity of the written scientific script, how are our musician friends generally doing out there?

What do corporates say when the bassist walks into the board interview room proudly armed with a ‘’music qualification’’?

Thanks ever so very much for coming.

Ah let’s see, Sally will be in touch then?

(What the f was he thinking. Our business deals with market fluctuations).

Besides, that was three years ago. Sally never bothered.

Club owners can’t pay proper rates, because they themselves are struggling like crazy. Oil!

Schools are battling with mathematics, so music tuition must go. Which means the choir trainer must go. Hard times? Try playing at the corner restaurant? You’re a singer too, not so?

Ah! opportunities in Dubai? but errr…..doof! caboom! doof doof! caboom! May be best to keep theg gig underground? especially nowadays?

wotyasay?

But there’s lots to be hopeful of. AI has arrived,

and has shown the often ineffectiveness of the ‘’non artist’’, in the creative process. This clearly is reflected in the rapid mass production and spread of blob/slob art, where literally anything, now becomes possible.

YouTube has been compelled to delete millions of channels in recent months. Here the headline complaint is about “AI slop” or ‘’super low-effort’’, as Shivam Aggarwal, content and marketing strategist, has summed it up.

As Aggarwal sees it,

YouTube did not choose to ban AI altogether.

It has chosen to ban ‘’laziness disguised as content’’. And ‘’understanding the difference is how you protect your channel’’,

and your precious name.

When anything becomes possible, that’s precisely also the moment when everything can loose its meaning and value. This is a crucial stage of reckoning a world overwhelmed and cooked by absolute wonder and perpetual magic is coming to terms with, slowly but surely.T

The bob/slob phenomenon of course wont last long or forever, and its support base has shrunk, more than dramatically, just in recent months.

It now more and more appears that real, proven artistic expertise has become a necessary precondition, as we step into a new future, now defined and regulated by Artificial Intelligence.

The harsh realities of YouTube’s policy revision, show up the core importance not purely of the human eye and hand, but also of the trained, well equipped, well-empowered human mind.

The top-qualified, respected musician, compelled to take up work on the small subsistence plant (the Latino’s have left) may yet speedily return to his true passions. He could compose the marketing theme that, who knows, may just propel the small business owner to global stardom?

Yep.

Who knows.

References: Listed and Consulted

1. Aggarwal, S. (2026). **YouTube AI Demonetization 2026: How to Protect Your Channel — Fliki , **20 March.
2. Hallam, S. (2010). The power of music: Its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International Journal of Music Education.
3. Hallam, S., & Himonides, E. (2022). The Power of Music: An Exploration of the Evidence. Open Book Publishers. Available Online via UCL Discovery.
4. Patel, A. D. (2014). Can musical training improve brain pathways for processing speech? Brain & Language Journal. (Note: Focuses on the “Indian-American” perspective on cognitive transfer).
5. Bunt, L., & Stige, B. (2014). Music Therapy: An Art Beyond Words. Routledge. Google Books Preview.
6. UCL Institute of Education. Staff Profile: Professor Susan Hallam. UCL Institutional Profile.