A new study from the Department of Psychiatry, Legal Medicine and the Institute of Neurosciences of the University of Barcelona showed the impact of specific song at a certain time of humanity.
The case study looked at a specific song: “You Are Not Alone” by Michael Jackson.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of musicians from Shenzhen recorded a specific version of the song in support of Wuhan and had over 1.2 billion views throughout all channels.
“When I saw the video I felt deeply touched. I empathized with the suffering of the Chinese people and the singers, for their expressions and for the shocking images of hospitals, ambulances and empty streets,” says Lydia Giménez-Llort, professor at the Department of Legal Psychiatry and researcher at the Institute of Neurosciences of the UAB, to whom the impact caused by that recording made her wonder how music, the lyrics and images combine to show empathy and convey a message that moves the viewer.
“A ballad was covered, a kind of romantic song that asks questions in one verse and gives answers in the next. And of all, ‘You are not alone’ was chosen, which describes the incomprehension of a person who has lost his beloved and, as the days go by, he feels the unbearable weight of loneliness, despite being in the middle of the crowd. Therefore, there is a great parallel with the situation of Wuhan, which faced alone the onslaught of the outbreak of the epidemic, while the rest of the world closed borders and did not do much from a distance, “says Lydia Giménez-Llort.
The objective of the study, published in the journal ‘Behavioral Sciences’, was to identify the characteristics of the composition that allowed to empathize so well with the experiences of personal and collective grief, to feel the understanding of others and to value tools of individual and social resilience. In addition, the researcher has been able to identify “elements of some of the typical processes of grief, such as the five stages described by Kübler-Ross (denial, anger, negotiation, sadness, acceptance); the dual process of Stroebe and Schut (moving between thoughts focused on loss and recovery), Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development (by resizing individual experience to social experience) or the tend-and-befriend model (which describes how female figures in the social structure face problems or moments of stress by establishing alliances and giving each other mutual support in the short and long term)”.
The study, which concludes that music, lyrics and artistic representations “are seen as a social balm that will continue to play an important psychological and social role”, also refers to songs that citizens made their own during the pandemic, whether they were the ‘ Resistiré’ by the Dynamic Duo, ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor or ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ by Carole King. To conclude that, despite the wide variety of cultural and traditional rituals related to music centered on death, current artistic expressions demonstrate that music is a common international cultural crossroads.
SOURCE: Universitat de Barcelona
