In #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek & #CreativityandWellbeing Week, it’s great to see media sharing people's experiences of music helping them live well. But why are these knowledgeable accounts so often followed by an expert explaining how it’s all about dopamine or brain activity?

It’s not explanatory, it undervalues people’s lived experience, and it misrepresents music. Music is not a stimulus. It's a whole range of ways of being & doing together, of experiencing ourselves & others, of social action - oiling the wheels of daily life or inspiring change.

It’s about identity, personhood, taking sides, undermining agendas, risk and familiarity. It’s about beauty, soul and drama. It’s about breathing and moving. It’s something we make use of, something we interact with, but something that reciprocally moves us and shapes us too.

Our musical interactions & experiences are complex & worthy of proper consideration. The least we can do is think about them in nuanced ways, observing their social rootedness in people’s real lives and above all learning from lived experience. It's NOT all chemicals & neurons!