Category: Musings of a Community Musician

My expansion into corporate music-making services was inspired by a study from Cornell University that noted marketers and corporate head offices routinely use music to “mindlessly” influence customers in places of business (e.g., supermarkets, gyms, hair salons) but paid little attention to the potential influence of music on workplace behaviour.

Why should companies care about music and workplace behaviour?

Research has shown that:

• Employees often listen to music on the weekends as a way to de-stress from the workweek. Bringing music into the workplace is an easy way of providing de-stressing opportunities during a workday.
• Undergraduate students were able to focus longer on an experimental task when listening to music than students working without music.

But it isn’t just about listening to music.

Studies have shown how music-making can impact the workplace:

• Rhythmic music leads to a phenomenon called “interpersonal motor coupling” where team members synchronize their behaviours and attitudes resulting in increased cooperation.
• After five rounds of experimental decision making, singing together can increase cooperation within groups.
• Music-making can be beneficial in business meetings to arouse emotions and moods that stimulate cooperation, cue memories of past (good) experiences, increase retention of information, and reduce boundaries between participants.

The idea of employees making music together is not a novelty. An employee “songbook” created by International Business Machines was designed to engage employees from 1920s through 1970s.

One often can’t help being drawn into music in some way – swaying to the beat, tapping a foot, clapping along, singing to a familiar song. Music is an inherent part of human culture with a strong influence in the evolution of our species; yet nowadays many people often have very little opportunity to make music. Companies could greatly increase productivity and lift employees’ moods through incorporating music and music-making into their corporate culture.

Why not give it a try?

When I introduce myself as a community musician, I often receive the looks that read, “What exactly is community music?” Even though I recently graduated from the Masters of Arts in Community Music program at Wilfrid Laurier University, I couldn’t answer that question. There really isn’t a universally accepted definition. But I can tell you about the values that drive me as a community musician.

Three years ago, I started my organization, KW Junk Music with two goals in mind:

1. We want to make music accessible to everyone.
   By creating instruments out of found objects, music becomes available to all regardless of age, ability, or skill. The idea behind this movement is to breakdown the norms of what instruments should look like and encourage people to explore the creative musical potential of everything in their lives.
   
   
2. We want to challenge people to think about their sustainable practices.
   Why do we have so much junk that we can make instruments out of it? It really boils down to this question. We encourage participants to think about ways to upcycle material typically labelled ‘junk’ and how we can reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place.