Is Music Good For Your Health?

An interesting article in the Guardian newspaper by Charlotte Higgins Caught my eye today.  I love to work with new music composers, using my voice to hum, chant, click and mumble to create different sounds and this article says:

Another Opera of the Future project looks at the way the use of the voice – singing, chanting – can increase well being and health, partly by encouraging people to use their voices without inhibition or fear. “We are developing vocal exercises to liberate your voice, sensitising you to listening to your voice, and feeling it through your body.”  Tod Machover says “There’s a man at MIT who is the world expert in tissue and cartilage. If your cartilage works well, then your joints work well and your blood moves easily. But any number of things can go wrong, and it’s not well understood how to keep a healthy system.”  But what does this have to do with music? “It turns out that this tissue and cartilage guy is a violist. He is interested in unusual techniques for regulating circulation and electricity in your body; he is interested in the vibrations that go through your body when you are playing the viola or singing. He thinks singing could be good for your cartilage and circulation.” Machover is also working with the Buddhist chaplain at MIT (who is, naturally, also a neuroscientist) “to look at traditional chant – about how everything from the sound of Sanskrit to chanting techniques affect the body”.