Biography
Colin Michie is a medical academic based in the University of Central Lancashire. Following early scientific endeavors into African ecology, he undertook medical training in the United Kingdom. His junior doctor experiences included posts in renal medicine, nutrition and intensive care. His research degree involved studies of immunological memory; he has a postgraduate qualification in nutrition. He has worked in the UK, southern Africa, the Caribbean and Ghaza as a paediatrician and educator. He delivers teaching, educational innovations and research directed at improving maternal and child health care, paediatric education and one health.
Title:
The powers of music in our cities and citizens.
Abstract
Music is powerful in a multitude of ways. We understand few of these. This month songs, dances and their rhythms are driving samba escolas in carnival parades, steelbands in the Caribbean, air-drumming truckers across the UK tuned in to early morning radio. Each of us has a collection of unique, favourite soundscapes. Whatever our background or culture, humans and our domesticated animals change when those special sounds start. Stamping feet, raising arms, swaying, singing, tingling – these effects are measurable, profound. Neurologists have tried to measure them, observing that culturally favoured music – and breaks of silence - can assist with many daily challenges such as sleep, arousal, pain, or in cattle, milk production. Commerce has powered an evolution from public instrumental and vocal performances to private vinyl, cassettes or streaming. Most of us dedicate time and resources in order to select our own music. Artificial intelligence applied to generate ‘music’, melomics, has tested whether our favoured composers and performers might be drowned in some undiscovered heavenly design. Our musical preferences may change, but its impacts on us are just the same as on our ancestors gathered around a fireside, or listening to mother nature.
This presentation will review some objective measures of the effects of music and how these influence our health, our bodily functions. This cultural barometer has to include estimates of the way music is heard by the fetus during pregnancy, its influence on fetal programming and development in children and adolescents. These influence communications, traditions, habits, empathies within families and wider societies, then beyond into the marketplaces of communities and cities. Such findings relate to how we understand our physical, mental and spiritual functions, how we understand our health, how we respond to illness in ourselves and others. Even our expectations of what treatments are necessary are directed by cultural tattoos deep below our surface. Healthy cityscapes, safe urban communities require a diversity of supports for their citizens. Music’s powers are roots to these trees.