Interview:

Music helps us feel our emotions. So much of the time, we’re all whirling around in our earth bodies and our earth emotions, and hearing a particular phrase of music will just open your heart. With music, the Divine speaks directly to what we need to hear, right at that very moment. All types of music heal, but we find it’s very useful to think of music in the same way we work with energy, trance, and mantra. Adding repetitive elements to music provides “hooks” that our brains can cling to so, so we can forget the “monkey brain” of our thoughts for a moment. Repetition takes people into trance—and that’s a state where they can heal.

We frequently teach workshops that combine trance, writing, and music, and what happens every time, is that people won’t “open” until the music comes on. They’ll be all bottled up, struggling to keep their feelings in check. But when the music starts to play, they’ll get up and dance, and before you know it, one person’s reaching for the Kleenex, another’s sobbing in a heap on the floor, someone else is in the corner having an epiphany—and it’s the music that makes it happen. The same thing happens at our concerts—on one side of room people are ecstatic; on the other, releasing tears. It’s about creating a space for healing, and letting people come to it.

“With music, the Divine speaks directly to what we need to hear, right at that very moment.”
– Steve Koc & Sara Wiseman, musicians in Martyrs Of Sound