Music: A Way of Life

Music brings people together. In this Year of the City, a year of trying to come together with Baltimore, it is important to recognize outlets through which we can connect with the city. Music is one of those outlets. Fr. T. Frank Kennedy came from Boston College to speak about the Jesuit connection to music. Through opera and movie clips of different musical productions he has directed, Fr. Kennedy clearly showed us that music is an important outlet for integrating the Jesuits into the city.
Fr. Kennedy began his speech with the movie, “The Mission”. Being from a Jesuit high school and seeing the movie before, I knew that the Jesuits were living and working in what were called Paraguay Reductions, among the indigenous people. Music was one clear connection that they had, breaking the language barrier. The scene showed a Jesuit priest playing a flute in the rainforest. Kennedy made the point that while the Jesuits connect to the indigenous people through music, the Jesuits can learn the ways of the indigenous people as well. One part of the Jesuit mission being to learn by experience with others.
Although I am unfamiliar with opera, Kennedy used opera to discuss the universality of music, and with this, I totally agree. I love playing and listening to music, and it is definitely a universal language. A perfect example of Kennedy’s theory ringing true was when I was in Ecuador. When we attended the Sunday Mass in the village, and our Spanish was not up to par, we could still simply sit with the Ecuadorans and play with the instruments they had. Whether it was an old classical guitar, or a dusty, obsolete keyboard, playing along with them links us together.
Kennedy also discusses links between music and vocation. He spoke of a professor at the University of Maryland that talked about how music is the outlet through which we find out how to be happy. I understand this statement because I feel like I could live without music. It is very cliché to say that, but it is so often a part of my life. Fr. Kennedy, a former member of the Loyola Jesuit community, also talked about Loyola College. It is education that is the outlet of passion of the Society of Jesus, but music is another outlet that the Jesuits love.