Music as youth empowerment: creating connection to self and others

Can music solve global challenges, lead to improved connection and empowerment, foster an inclusive society? I introduce music engagement as a ubiquitous daily resource to advance a critical capacity in a modern world: youth ability to connect with self and others. The challenge of assessing music as a human resource is that it functions at emotional, bodily, and situated levels of experience that are difficult to objectively measure. However, such aspects are integral to state-of-the-art conceptions of human cognition and, further, advancements in empirical research now enable their quantitative assessment. In MUSICONNECT, I will conduct groundbreaking research to address the emotional-bodily-situated nature of music, to conceptualize and objectively measure how, when, and for whom music engagement functions as empowerment. Three dialogical work packages will address music as 1) emotional self-regulation 2) embodied interaction and 3) situated engagement. Young people (N = 5000, aged 15-25) with diverse backgrounds will participate in studies ranging from surveys to experiments. I will implement and develop cutting-edge methods to quantify the “unmeasurable” of music: ecologically valid experience sampling of real-time listening experiences, physiological measures, computational music feature analyses, optical motion capture, deep learning techniques (deep pose estimation), digital ethnography, and psychometric assessment. Results will revolutionize the scientific capacity to address music engagement as testable, falsifiable, and evidence-based practice. Breakthrough knowledge will be created on the mechanisms of action through which music functions as empowerment and how the effectiveness of this is determined by the interplay of musical, individual, situational, and cultural factors. Findings can advise educational, preventive, or social programs that aim to support youth in building their self-regulatory competence and social connections in today’s world.