The Street Symphony: Social Justice and Music Making

What does it mean that accomplished musicians perform for and even work with the most disenfranchised parts of society in Los Angeles? What do the musicians, music directors and educators expect to achieve when working with the homeless people on Skid Row and inmates in county jails?

It helps to consider how music is fundamental to the human condition. We see it in primitive versions of flutes dating back tens of thousands of yea

rs, invariably made from animal bones with holes cut into them, found in archaeological digs from China to Europe to the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and Australia. The didgeridoos of Australian aboriginals look much like alpenhorns of Switzerland and the vuvuzelas of South Africa. And every culture of the world uses the human voice as a musical instrument.

The reason music is so universal is probed by social scientists that observe such things as how music fosters community cooperation and cohesion. One study conducted out of the University of Cambridge (Tai-Chen Rabinowitch, et al. 2012) identified that interaction between individuals in a group (the study was on children) who experience music over the course of an academic year show higher emotional empathy. Other research (U. Nilsson, Orebro University, Sweden 2009) shows heart bypass surgery patients exposed to music have higher levels of serum oxytocin, a beneficial hormone, than those without music