Moving Music - Why Music Is the Main Source of Happiness
Photo by Mikko-Pekka The Village Studios - Los Angeles

Moving Music - Why Music Is the Main Source of Happiness

Written 7th of March in Costa Rica, Peace Lodge, Costa Rican music playing in the background, and 16th of April in a Train from Chelm to Kyiv waiting in the border.

Thank You for the Music!

The world is increasingly complex and unpredictable; we can easily become overwhelmed with the amount of data, knowledge, and the speed of modern life. All this creates confusion, stress and loss of meaning.

Music is the most effective way to speak to our hearts. Music is a language that moves us from confusion to clarity, and translates implicit emotions into stories of how we can connect. Music describes to us what we are as species.

Imagine a four-year-old boy, Mikko-Pekka, on a Sunday morning by the cassette player. He has just received a Finnhits 78 compilation, and he listens to the first song. Haltin Häät by Taiska. The song is about how the fjells and lakes of Lapland came about. It has a dramatic story involving giants, witches and mythical legends. Especially the C part modulation takes the song to the new heights. Taiska’s voice matches the drama of the story perfectly.

You must track back the first song or musical experience that gave you goosebumps, somehow opened new realms and felt good. Haltin häät (The wedding of Halti) was that to me.

Joyce Koh is a professor of music in Singapore — a fantastic lady, captain of the dark matter, composer, musician and a human being, who has created her own instrument. She told me a story of cave paintings in France. This is presumably is first (visual) definition of God. How could humans imagine God? The cave with the drawing has a peculiar form: if you speak there, it gives you an echo. The invisible voice, coming from outside of the human, feels like how God would speak. Music is the language of how gods speak to us.

By now it may not be a surprise that I identify music to be the ultimate weapon for fighting for a better world.

Music Moves Individuals and Societies

One current frontier is in Ukraine. “Moving music” is a project collective initiated by the Ministry of Good Spirit -think tank activist program.

The simple idea is to find songs and music that somehow define how it feels to be Ukrainian, and then translate, arrange and perform some of the songs so that we in Finland understand the Ukrainian story.

The songs are collected with semi-scientific way: I have asked the Ukrainian people I know what songs, to them, define their country’s identity. I collected the ideas into a playlist. Then I had the honor to work with Matti Mikkola and Yona who selected first four songs to be experimented. We went to the studio in December 2023, and recorded the songs with an experimental method. All of the four songs are played and arranged by the Saimaa collective together with Yona.

Saimaa - Collective

As we speak, Moving Music is discussing with new artists from various genres to make their own versions. I would encourage other countries and languages to continue making their versions too.

The direct impact of the project is that all streaming and other profits are directed to UNITED24 Educational rebuilding project and other related activities.

The higher-level impact is that we want us Finns to understand even more deeply who our Ukrainian friends are. Soon Ukraine will be part of the EU, but before that we can integrate by listening to each other’s music. On the other hand, with the Moving music project, we want to express to Ukrainians that they can and should be proud of their music. I know they are.

The dream is that some of the songs become those that help transform war to peace and become a symbol of victory. This of course is in the hands of Ukrainians themselves. Yet, like U2’s One, or We are the World, and Winds of Change, some songs will naturally emerge as defining songs. There are multiple inspirations for this song, but the key is the Estonian singing revolution. You definitely can change the world with music — and perhaps it’s worth giving a try. This is my personal mission for the Moving music project.

Estonian Singing Revolution

Music is one method of healing from collective trauma. We feel the pain and sacrifice but how do we heal? Music has the potential to ignite us with freedom from fear, ability to reflect, and emotional resilience. Music uses the powers of fame (people would need to know the artist), influence and money (somebody has to set up the case). The Moving music initiative fosters post-traumatic growth, breaking free from the evil and disrupting the cycle of revenge.

The imperialistic objective is not only to conquer the lands, but invade and capture the culture. In the course of history Russia, and Soviet Union in particular, has aimed to make all great cultures part of Moscovian rule, and the outer counties role is to be peasants. This is not the truth. Ukraine has a distinctive and long history of high culture and various local cultures from which the great musical and creative culture stem from. We are capturing the pearls of Ukrainian culture, and this way undermining the imperialistic hegemony.

Moving On from Trauma

Traumas are inter-generational. They pass on to next generations in the form of taboos, mantras, systems, narratives and cultures.

Trauma shatters the belief system in individuals and collectively affects the way we see the world and the relationships we are creating. Listening and immersing into music helps feel uplifting emotions thus mitigating and restructuring the positive outlook to the world.

Why is the Ministry of Good Spirit think tank activist arm doing this? To show example and create a model of how we can redefine diplomacy for the new era. We can fight back gently but strongly, empower our Ukrainian friends, make an impact on our frontiers, and our culture as well.

There are over thousands and thousands of songs published every day. The tools to make music have exploded. AI is generating melodies of the future, and more and more music is published in several channels. Taylor Switft is breaking records. The volume of music is phenomenal and we are listening and consuming more music every day. The competition is fierce. So, what is the role of new music? Is there any point of making it?

You Know My Answer

If you have an idea about the song — just make it real. But perhaps you want to find a meaning for it, a purpose that is bigger than the music. As with any other new creation and innovation, we want to have regenerative meaning; a mandate to exist, an impact to the world. I claim that music has a bright future, not only as a background or entertainment, but as a way to transform the world into a better state, heal us humans, help us behave better.

As professor Esa Saarinen states: the context creates behaviour. Let’s create a context where our behavior is better for us and the rest of the world. Quoting Jukka Immonen, Saarinen also notes that “every song needs a reason.” With impactful target the reason needs to be impactful.

Ministry of Good Spirit has done it and keeps doing it. In recent years we have produced and helped create several songs that have a specific impact.

Transformational music is both appropriate and effective. It broadens our horizons, inceases social cohesion, sparks joy and wonder, creates cultural empathy and challenge fixed and negative steretypes.

Here is the playlist with some impact ideas.

Äiti by Antti Kleemola. We have seen many mothers deeply moved by the song. Which is exactly the purpose: to express love and respect to our mothers.

Antti Kleemola - äiti

Kuva by Katri Ylander (Composed by Antti Kleemola, Lyrics by Annika Tello). This is a song to express gratitude to those people who work with the glamour effect, but are utmost important for our system to work.

Katri Ylander - Kuva

Hellempi maailma (The gentler world) by Saimaa (Composed by Jarkko Meretniemi and Lyrics by Lilli Loiri). A song that defines the key principles of good spirit in the world, and why it matters, all in less than 4 minutes.

Saimaa and Ministry of Good Spirit

Puu-laulu Published later 2024 (The tree song) created by Liisa Anastadias and Matti Mikkola (composed by Jarkko Meretniemi lyrics by Lilli Loiri — The song aims to capture what trees might feel and think about life on earth.

Style of the music video for the tree song

What are your impact songs? I invite you to share them!

Listen the playlist of The Ministry of Good Spirit

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