Music As God

So, I'm listening/watching a youtube video of Paul Simon singing "You Can Call Me Al" in Zimbabwe, and I'm suddenly struck with a couple of thoughts.

1. Why are there thousands of people congregating in a single place, together, to listen and dance to this music? A recording does just as good a job at playing the music, but for some reason all these people have come here to listen and share in the music at the same time. So, assuming that the reason they are all here is because the music is live...what does live music have that draws people together like this?

2. They are all here because the bandleader is leading them in dance and song. It is all but a religious experience for them; what are the differences between this event and a religious celebration?

3. People are social animals. We congregate in groups with people we consider "us" rather than "them." So we have an intense innate desire to join with people, and we also are hard wired to pray to a higher power. We as humans give our power up to a single leader, a President, dictator, etc, so that we can be a part of a community.

4. Pop music is a medium for spirituality, as shown by these trends. People join together in extremely large groups, of people they certainly don't know and thus can be considered strangers, and they are led by a single person or very few people, to achieve a certain kind of ectasy, the concert experience.

5. People are hardwired to look to a single person or small group for leadership, knowledge, religion, you name it. Bob Dylan said, "We all serve somebody", and what I think that means is that we have a need to look to somebody for answers. No matter if you are supreme dictator of the world, persay, you will always feel like there is/should be somebody above you, looking down at you.

6. And that is why people congregate for musical concerts. We allow a small group of individuals to lead us in song and dance in a way that is very reminiscent of religious ceremonies. It gives us something for our unconscious, subconscious, and conscious levels of our minds. Something that was once probably a survival mechanism.

All of the above needs more pondering