The Effect of Music Intervention on The Stress and Anger Levels of College Going Subjects

With an increasing number of various ways that create convenience, pleasure and privilege for the human civilization, stress and anger are also on rise. The cases with impulsivity as the core cause of the problem are increasing day by day. There is no in -depth research till date that will throw some light on the art- based interventions, especially music and its subsequent effects on the regions of the brain that are responsible for anger, stress and impulsivity. Fundamentally, any music is a bundle of varying frequencies. These frequencies affect our amygdala, hypothalamus, the limbic cortex and so on and contribute in alleviating, pacifying, igniting or energising our emotional-motivational systems. Unfortunately, no research has been conducted that will uncover the fact that how these frequencies exactly affect the responsible brain regions. Also, there is a lack of experimentations on this topic which, if conducted in a zealous, scientific attitude might lead to ground-breaking discoveries. This research aims at exploring the effect of Hindustani classical music based on different ragas and their subsequent effect on the anger and stress levels in the subjects. Hindustani classical sangeet is the oldest style in music wherein certain musical structures called ragas are being sung in various permutations and combinations. These ragas are assigned according to the time of the day depending on their frequencies. When someone dives deeper into such kind of music, that person transcends the boundaries of space and time, which can be clearly experienced if one has certain level of willingness. Some ragas can give you emotional strength, some can imbibe a sense of calmness in you, some ragas can make a person introspect, some ragas can produce passion and love and so on. This study focuses on the use of two particular ragas which can, after listening, alleviate the mood and can soothe the listener. Looking at this through a scientific perspective it can be stated that, these ragas are certain frequencies that affect particular brain regions that in turn determine the release of different chemicals in the body like serotonin, which in turn affects the emotional-motivational systems of the listener. This research has taken college going subjects as sample because of the problems faced by them such as anger, stress and impulsivity. The findings of this study show clearly the effects of music interventions on the anger and stress levels of the subjects. Of course, these findings are on a surface level and could be subjected by extraneous and compounding variables. Nonetheless, this study establishes the fact that through auditory channels one can counter or mitigate or even to some extent eradicate, stress and anger levels.