“Music has charms to soothe a savage breast...” wrote William Congreve in his poem “The Mourning Bride.”  That was in 1697.  Lately, however,  I’ve discovered that music also has the power to agitate people who are otherwise quite agreeable!
   
    Perhaps you’ve had the experience I’ve had.  You admit that you’re not familiar with the favorite musician your conversation partner is raving about.  “You don’t know his/her music?” they respond in a voice as shocked as if you had just confessed that you can’t read!  They’ve assumed, of course, that your tastes in music are exactly like theirs and they wonder about your sanity if they’re not!
   
    Country western music vs. rock and roll have bogged down many a discussion.  Classical music is sometimes snubbed as only for the rich and highly educated.   Jazz may be ignored as music for swingers.  Blues – which speaks to us all – is dismissed as a sound that should be sung by an African-American artist only in a smoke-filled bar-room. 
   
    I’ve known folks who have left a church because the pastor didn’t schedule their favorite hymn to be sung every Sunday.  The stirring sound of a march has led many a soldier from hometown safety to fields of slaughter.
   
    Nearly every couple has a favorite love song.  “Our song” they call it.  But there are at least as many songs about the failure of love and the breakdown of a relationship.  Nobody ever has those sung at weddings as a warning!

    Music has been a powerful force in child-raising, too.  How many of us learned our alphabet as our mother sang the  “A-B-C-D-E-F-G” song to us?  In some families there were favorite night-time lullabies.  Behind their lovely sounds and calming words was the unspoken command from a tired parent, “Settle down, be quiet and go to sleep, NOW!”

    My husband’s grandmother raised a family of thirteen without ever raising her voice to them in anger.  The children reported that “Mother never shouted at us.  She just sang hymns.  But we knew that the louder she sang, the angrier she was, and we’d better do what she said.”  Hearing this story in later years, one of her grand-daughters, busy raising her own active family, observed, “My trouble is: I don’t know enough hymns!”

    In pre-radio/television/muzak days, we sang our own music.  Bombarded now by the strains of music’s electronically canned imitation, we’ve learned to keep quiet, tune it out, and be critical.  Music is powerful, you see.  Even the artificial stuff has changed our cultural personality for the worse!  Perhaps, instead of fighting with each other over our tuneful territory, we should just add “Music” to “Politics” and “Religion” as a socially unacceptable topic of conversation.