Why Supporting the Arts is Important

One of the pillars of our mission, at San Diego's Jazz 88.3, the support of the Arts.  Not just Jazz and Blues.  In fact, not even "just" music.  We see our role as an important vehicle for information about all the arts; as enjoyed through theatre, museums, performance and exhibition.  There is a perception  that the arts are, well, stuffy.  Or high-browed.  Or unimportant in today's world. 

Well, as it turns out, everyone knew that the arts are fun.  The art critic from the Guardian in the UK is merely verbalizing something that we've all known,  at least subconsciously, all our lives.  We listen to music because it's fun.  It makes us feel good.  Sometimes it makes us want to dance.  Or cry.  Or sing along.  Music is part of our soul. Music makes our bodies fluid, our hearts light.

Did you know that there are seven different areas in the brain that physically respond when a person listens to music? 

Did you know that musical sound rarely occurs naturally?  Or that our brains process musical sounds differently from ordinary sounds?

In 1997, Robert Jourdain published a book called Music, the Brain and Ecstasy.  No, not the drug.  The lightness of feeling.  The peace.  The totall happiness.  That ecstasy.  In describing the pure joy of listening to music, Jourdain described the "Sounds that leave you standing outside yourself.  Sounds whose potency lied beyond pleasure and even beyond beauty.  Sounds that reveal to us truths we have always known - yet won't be able to recount them when the last echo has subsided."

If you ever question the efficacy of a music-format Public Radio Station, just re-read the paragraph above.  Not only is what we do fun, it's essential to a feeling of satisfaction with life.  And that's no small potatoes. 

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