What is the use of music? That is a significant question, even though one might suspect that it is raised only because the speaker was ignorant to music and its benefits. It is almost unimaginable that people could live without the many benefits of music. Yet, it is surprising how little thought is ever given to it as a vital force in human life. It is clear that music fills a need deep in the psyche. This manifests itself soon after birth. A fretful infant will settle down contentedly to the murmurs of a lullaby. Long before a baby can understand a single spoken word, she is profoundly influenced by melody, rhythm, and tone. The ability to make music would seem to be a fundamental feature of the human species. Humans appeared on this earth as a self-contained musical instrument, equipped to sing, hum, whistle, dance, and clap their hands. Making music with instruments ranks with making fire and using weapons and tools as one of the activities that initially separate human beings from the other animals. Most of all, it set them apart as special and creative beings.

Quick Poll: Is music education essential to a well-rounded lifestyle? Yes, definitely. No, music is not important.

To build fires and to hunt with more than the hands and teeth were essential to the survival of the thin-skinned, relatively weak creature. To make music was to strike out beyond the bare necessities of existence into a dimension unknown to the other inhabitants of the earth: that of the spirit or soul. The human spirit finds its main outlet in art, which is why music most likely was the world's first science. Behind all knowledge are curiosity, ingenuity, and the urge to do or know things better. These attributes were present in full force as people learned how to make music by artificial means. It is generally believed that the first musical instrument was a hollow reed through which someone had the curiosity to blow. Having done so, early man was not content with this pleasant effect. He had to see what would happen if holes were punched in the reed. Consequently, out came an articulate vocabulary of notes.

Before history was ever recorded by humans, the forerunners of the flute, horn, drum, maraca, harp and guitar had been invented (legend has it that the first sound box of a guitar was a turtle shell). The concept of writing music dawned almost as soon as the concept of written language. Crude musical symbols were chiseled on the tablets in the Middle East as early as the second millennium B.C.

Why this concentration of effort on something that was not essential to survival? Probably because primitive human beings realized that music was not as inessential as it appeared. Although they could not touch it, they knew that it has useful applications. It did something of great value to them: It let their souls play in a world of notes, colors, and shapes.

It had the power to change people's moods, usually for the better. As soldiers have known ever since, music lifts morale. Under the trying conditions of prehistoric times, it must have seemed marvelous to have available a way to pick up your spirits when they were weighed down by hardship. Music was the first “drug” in history that made people forget their troubles and generally feel good.

Miraculously enough, a song or a rhythmic chant seemed to get work done faster. It took the mind off the pain as the person dug a hole or harvested a field. Someone realized that a certain kind of music could inspire humans to face death in battle with a heady mixture of confidence, courage, and ferocity. Whoever composed the first patriotic song forged a mighty political weapon. "Give me the makings of the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes the laws," the Scottish patriot Andrew Fletcher wrote.

Music helped to perpetuate the folklore of people by making the words of poems and ballads easier to remember. It also blended easily with drama and comedy. Culture, as we now know it, was on the march to a music beat.

Music had a role in the mating process, which it plays to this day. It was a civilized person indeed who composed the first love song. It was used, too, to worship the gods, as it still is. No wonder; primitive people believed that the gods had bestowed it on them as a gift.

The ancient Greek philosophers of the believed that it was of divine provenance. They thought of it as one of disciplines controlled by the goddesses they called the muses, hence its name. This did not prevent them from closely examining its nature. They were acutely conscious of the sway it held over behavior through its influence of people's feelings.

In line with the Chinese sage Confucius, Plato regarded music as a critical element in the universal scheme of things. He believed that rhythm and melody ideally should work in concert with the movements of the celestial bodies, which lent order to human affairs. This rendered him something of a philistine in his tastes, preferring plain and simple modes of music.

Like many the social critics since, Plato would have banned types of music that he considered corrupting. He viewed unconventional music as a threat to the body politic. "Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when the modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them," he warned. In this, the antique philosopher might have been a modern conservative opposing the decadence of rock or disco music.