SaturDais: Dark Music

Dark Music

By Moses Garcia

Music equals seven tones and five semitones.  That’s it.  That is all.  Truly!  All of music in its endless entirety is the infinite combination and variations of tone, pace, rhythm, volume, approach, intensity, attack, and pattern, within the confines of twelve notes.  There is nothing more than that.  It is sometimes hard to believe that this amazing wondrous language called music is derived from merely twelve letters.

So, that being the case, is there such a thing as “devil’s music?”

When Ludwig Von Beethoven débuted his 5^th symphony, many critics called the work “devil’s music.”  As odd and funny as that might seem in our day, the work must have seemed ruckus and thunderous to the very first listeners.  And it would seem that the pattern when people call something “devil’s music” seems to be about loud and pounding sounds.  That’s fine, except that it doesn’t really prove anything.  It especially does not prove anything, if the evidence is that one person acted out violently after listening to a particular music, but everyone else that listened to that same piece of music remained perfectly peaceful and God fearing.

Of course, music is vast and far reaching in textures, tones, and reflection of many cultures.  What one person loves may very well be disagreeable to another.  One could suppose that if the music inspires in a positive way, it might also influence negatively.  Generally speaking though, even violent-themed music does not seek to inspire violence, unless it happens to be very political themes and radical in its desired objectives.

Where and why then, would the term “devil’s music” be used?  Unfortunately it is used usually to place blame on something that on its own has no real power.  Instead of understanding that evil occurs inside a person and all the complex factors that contribute to heinous acts, it seems much simpler to say that a specific object was responsible and not the individual.  The fact that music can inspire doesn’t mean that the individual becomes like a robot controlled by a melody or its words.  Music is just music, and it has no power except what we give it.  One could say that “devil’s music” is the troubled mind itself.  That because of trauma and other factors, the mind is susceptible to influence - not only music, but books, and all the variety of media available.

Both good and bad dwells within us, and generally, it is a struggle to avoid being swayed by things that are alluring, but potentially harmful to others.  But not a difficult one if we walk a good and spiritual path.