Music and the emotions

Our education system sadly lacks emphasis on music education and the lack of exposure would hamper our creative industry as the music composition of animes like The Garden of Words or Kitaro's composition for movies and Zhang Yi Mou onsite musical theatre in Hangzhou.
        Teachers are so lacking in training that they kill any interest to explore the field of arts.The talented youths in music in Malaysia is because of the extra mile of parents who go all out to groom their own children.But that wonderful opportunity for music education is denied to children from poorer households. Jun's harmonica private tutor was so passionate about his craft that when he was young,he visited the Suzuki factory in Japan whilst on holiday just to learn more about the potential of the instrument.Both Jun's Suzuki and Horner's harmonica would be underrated if not for the passion of his music tutors to expose him to all genres like blues and bluegrass.
       So there is a dearth of good music educators in the system-the lack of infrastructure facilities to practise like studios to jam in or increase the talentpool through music competitions at school,state and national level.Private institutes have Battle of the Bands but not public institutes.
      Even the gamelan is a dying artform.
   
In Nature Neuroscience a Canadian team uses fMRI scan and PET scan to see the effects of "the potent,pleasurable stimulus "that is music. The result was music triggers the production of dopamine a chemical with a key role in setting people's moods by the neurons in both the dorsal and ventral regions of the brain.
       The dopamine neurons in the caudate a region of the brain involved in learning stimulus response associations and in anticipating food and other reward stimuli were at their most active around 15 seconds before the participants' favourite moments in the music.
  Although music says little it stil manages to touch us deeply.Our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal.Our pupils dilate,our pulse and blood pressure rise,electrical conductance of our skin is lowered and the cerebellum a brain region associated with bodily movement becomes strangely active.Blood is rediredted to the leg muscles.Sounds stir at our biological roots.
That's why chanting has a meditative effect at slowing down our hyperactive brains.