Chris Kelso

Music is the shorthand of emotion. There is something intrinsic to the structure of it – with its overtures, rising crescendos, and authentic cadences – which seem to mirror our temporal patterns so effectively. Ethnomusicologists have divided the empathic processes of listening to (and creating) music into two categories – low-level emotional contagion (the unconscious mimicry of nonverbal cues that leads to synchronised emotional states) and high-level affective empathy (the ability to share in the emotions of other). Often the former ‘low-level’ state is achieved through listening to catchy pop music, or music which feeds the brain’s natural desire to…