How Music Helps With Collective Grief

This study recently out analyses a fascinating episode in China at the start of the pandemic.

 A group of international musicians in Shenzhen produced a viral hit in China. This was a cover version of Michael Jackson’s “you are not alone” this was particularly suitable because it focused on multiple aspects of distress that the population was going through such as encouragement, empathy, but also positivity, and hope.

This was posted on the Chinese social media service WeChat, which has 1.2 billion users, and became a viral hit but also a source of encouragement and collective mourning for millions and millions of Chinese.
Lydia Giménez-Llort, professor of the Department of Psychiatry and Forensic Medicine and researcher at the INC-UAB researched and analyzed how this impacted the population. What she found was that this particular music, and indicating suitable music in general, was very helpful in helping the population process their collective grief and shock at the start of the pandemic when millions of people were in a collective strict lockdown in China.

She also found that’s the music helped to guide people through grief stages such as that proposed by Kübler Ross when people go through different phases of grief or that by Taylor of “tend and befriend”. What is also noticeable in this particular example is that the musicians were international musicians and the song itself was an international song suggesting that it is the music itself and the message that is in the music that is most effective.

This goes some way to explain why us human beings are naturally drawn to music in times of grief, but it also highlights how this is an important part of the healing process and something that combined collectives and society can benefit from and so it is not to be underestimated.

Some people do claim that music is a basic need and though this doesn’t prove it, it does show that music is very important in our lives and can do many things much more important than just “entertainment”.