Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

The Maroon IP’AGE '(> May noon/ Music is My Sanctuary w hv vtasha 1. womack by ytasha 1. womack contributing writer M usic is powerful. The melo dies and rhythms are in tune with life. The heartbeat is the rhythm of the drum, and our slow stride or vocal intonations are the melody. I once heard a professor say that when the drum was taken away from our ances tors we internalized it. In essence, we are going to feel music whether we are conscious of it or not, and once our heartbeats and emotions are lined up with that of the music, the artist has us under his or her control. Not so long ago, my emotions were getting the best of me. Feeling sor row cloud my thoughts, I forced my self to be rational. "Okay Ytasha, are you going to stay in this breadbox room and aimlessly stare at the wall all day and not do your homework or are you going to go out and enjoy the sunshine and not do your home work?" The latter seemed to be a more justifiable excuse for letting the day slip by without doing anything constructive, so I went out. Fighting to maintain a positive at titude, I decided to buy a CD to Tift me up' and 'keep my mind off things,' so I purchased the Love Jones Soundtrack. As soon as I got home, I skipped to the Lauryn Hill jam my friend said I would love and listened. Slowly, my mind started to wander to the "sweetest thing" I'd ever known. . .a sweet guy I was interested in who didn't have the time and maybe not the interest to show me how he felt. His honesty made me like him more and our dates were some of the best I'd had in a while. So by the time the melody changed and Hill sang 'I tried to ex plain,' I was thinking about how I might never get to know this guy the way I want to and how my efforts to develop a relationship were fruitless. As the chorus continued, my mind drifted to another guy I'd supposedly loved who dumped me over a year ago. I hadn't thought about him in months, but anger began to consume me at my feeble attempts to explain that I hadn't cheated on him and how stupid I looked in the process. It was as if I was reliv ing the experience. So now I'm wallowing in the past. Fighting the tears. By the time Maxwell's sensuous "Sumthin', Sumthin'" came on, I had decided that I might never have an intimate relation ship again. "I will not be depressed, " I thought. I shook off my gaze at the ceil ing, abruptly stopped the CD and threw in a tape. I waited by the speaker, poised to snatch the tape out at the hint Columbia Records of a sappy love song. But it wasn't. It had an Atlanta bounce beat to it, so I relaxed. I wasn't really paying atten tion to the words, but my attitude was already changing. Forget them. They don't know what they're missing. By the time MJG said "you can't fade a pimp in his own [expletive] rhyme," I was hyped. "*@#$ those @*?#!$. I don't have to wait on their @!# for * A %@. " But although my attitude had totally flipped, I wasn't happy. I stopped the tape and popped in another. "Car Wash," the 70's groove, came on. My mind drifted to the innocence of yesteryear. Thoughts of my family cleaning up the house with "Car Wash" in the background and me wishing I could dance on Soul Train. But then I thought about how different my family is now, followed by that nerve racking thought that I had no car in the first place and that I couldn't truly relate to the joy of washing one so there's no point in listening to someone sing about washing theirs. Eventually, I turned the music off and did my homework. ave you ever had a euphoric rush while listening to the ra dio as you drove or found yourself walking to the beat of a song? That's the internal power of music. And the words — depending on your state of mind — can subconsciously sway you, whether you want it to or not.Being at a low point in my life, I was especially vulnerable to music's subconscious influence. But it was a perfectly safe vulnerability; music is my sanctuary. I felt the rhythm and melody so strongly that I absorbed the words in the songs as my own — when they were the expressions of others. Those two guys I was pour ing over were far from the sweetest things I'd known in life. The lyrics conjured up painful memories of a guy I hadn't thought about in months. But I had to physically re move myself from the song to gather my own thoughts to conclude that. Music also gives power to emo tions you already have. I wanted to release my feelings of insecurity but the "Pimp In My Own Rhyme" took it to the extreme. Even something as inno cent as "Car Wash" had me dazed. e listen to music incessantly. The wave of messages with dubious lyrics by talented artists have many claiming that they "just like the beat or the rapper's flow but not the words," as if the two are in separable. With the combination of chanted phrases and barely audible or gasms hidden under drum beats, a va riety of thoughts are subtly inserted without us being aware. Music is never the source of blame in any situation, but it does sway emotions. The more aware we are of its potential power, the easier we can assess the effect of music on our generation and those to come.