An art seemingly created to bring joy and be fun, sometimes a goosebump maker. If you’re like me, it’s always around you; whether it’s quietly playing in the back of your mind, in your headphones, or behind a particularly thrilling scene on the big screen.

I’m talking about Music.

I have many fond memories as a child of imaginative play, through video games or world-building in the backyard with my brother. But, my biggest escape and exploration of play growing up was guitar and music.

My amplifier came from a pawnbroker; it was old, dusty and it would occasionally pick up the local radio. ‘Could they hear me?’, I’d think to myself as I’d focus harder to impress my potential listeners on the other side.

Music at first was autotelic, I did it for the joy. I didn’t push creativity, I learned what I loved and loved what I played.

I was eleven when I started. As my love for the guitar grew, so did my influences – drawing on stories from my grandfather about The Beatles first arrival in Australia or the anti-establishment approach of punk that my Dad used to blast.

I fell into a storyteller’s role as a musician, and no longer was music only about joy – I played to engage in creativity, thought-provocation but I began to understand the power behind music beyond only enjoyment.

Whilst music always brings me joy, I also enjoy being confronted and questioned through the medium.

What started out as play and interest in a thing that makes sounds, now causes me to approach most things in life with a playful curiosity and desire to question and research media messages.

Through music, the bands I listened to would lyricise a narrative that we could relate to. Whether it helps you get over a bad breakup, or opens your eyes to see the atrocities of the world.

Dramatic, I know.

The use of the magic circle allows storytellers, artists, and a plethora of other playful creators to engage players (or listeners, viewers, etc…) to relate to the medium of messaging and disrupt.

Musicians do this all the time, stories are referential to their own experiences – but the way to our heart and to provoke is building a link and relating to us, as the digester of media.

System Of A Down, a band made up of Armenian-born Americans’ use their music to bring awareness about the Armenian genocide to a crowd that never would have heard about it if they didn’t have these musical interests.

Songwriting and music fit Sicart’s (2014) definition of playfulness. It’s ambiguous in its perception between each songwriter and listener, it’s creating personal material and explores messaging creatively & most importantly;

 

Music disrupts.

 

References

Nørgård R T, Toft-Nielsen C, and Whitton N 2017, ‘Playful Learning in Higher Education: Developing a Signature Pedagogy’, International Journal of Play, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 272–282.

Sicart, M 2014, ‘Playfulness.’ Play Matters, The MIT Press, pp. 19–34.