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Why is music so effective in its influence on human emotion and experience?
It's because our brains are wired, set up, and ready to receive music as a natural stimulus. It is not a foreign thing to us. It is a component of nature.
Listening to songs, their melodies, and their lyrics arouses responses in at least two of our five senses -- the aural and, if it's Duck Dunn's bass line in Otis Redding's version of "Respect" delivered through stadium grade speakers, the tactile is also stimulated.
Music is a stimulus to our human organisms. Superior music such as that found in the African-American songbook -- Blues, R & B, Stax/Volt -- elevates the entire sensory experience into the realm of emotional projection; associative images and memories from these songs' presence at certain times of personal impact in our lives.
