The Meaning of Music

From a young age there have only been a few constant presences in my life: school, sports, and music…Music makes you feel, it evokes emotion, it forms connections, it answers the questions that all of us face in life. It was in this realization that I truly understood, I do not just really like music, it is through the culmination of countless experiences that I have found a substantial connection between music and my own spirituality. To truly understand this, I had to think as far back as I could, to the beginning.One of my earliest memories from childhood revolves around music. I vividly remember a warm summer afternoon, bright but overcast. The kind of overcast that makes the colors of everything around you seem to burst as if you were seeing the world through a set of polarized lenses. My family was heading to my grandparents’ house. I remember looking up out of the backseat window and passing the old moose lodge before the signature sharp turn on Route 9 when my favorite song at the time came on. The song was “Red Dirt Road” by Brooks & Dunn. I remember singing along to every word, and once the song had run its course, I made a bold declaration, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. The first thing I ever wanted to be was country music star. While I still fantasize about the limelight and continue to sing and attempt to learn to play the guitar (rather unsuccessfully albeit), it is easy to see how this one memory began to shape my reverence for music at a very young age. Years later I rediscovered the song, and the memory along with it, but this time I looked deeper into the song. The gist of the song details a set of important moments in the singer’s life and how they all revolved around one, “Red Dirt Road.” It turns out that I connect to this song resoundingly well; coming from a rural area, many of my memories, some significant, all started on some road that I have been on a million times. As I grew up, music continued to play an important role in my life and provided what I believe was my first “spiritual” connection to music…

Find the rest of this chapter in Emerging Perspectives on Religion and Environmental Values in America HERE.