Come so far, seen so much
I cannot settle for good enough
So I’ll sweat and I’ll climb
Until I reach my prime
The forces rise and fall again
Through it all, I’ll reach the end
In my eyes, there’s a fire
And it takes me high
— Troi
The three inscriptions at the Temple of Delphi revealed to the discerning Greeks the kind of gods they worshipped at Mount Olympus.
One of them was: Surety brings ruin. It was meant to humble anyone hoping to get guidance from the Oracle or the gods.
The other one is more famous: Know thyself. It was a warning about honesty and human limits.
The last one was: Nothing in excess.
Other than the first one, the last two are telling. The Greek gods never wanted humans to ascend into god-like status. Anyone who claimed they could was, by default, deluded; someone who didn’t know themselves and their limits. They wanted something in excess — immortality.
The Greeks knew they could never gain immortality in this way.
Christians, however, believed it was achievable, as long as one believed in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, the Son of God, who became man and died for their sins. It was extremely simple. Christians could ask for excess, but it was postponed. Only after death would they gain this immortality.
What was easy for the Christians was nearly impossible for the Greeks. Only those who were a product of man and god, like Hercules, could cross the pearly gates. Pure humans had to find alternative ways. In their chase for immortality, they developed Western philosophy. Through Socrates’ works, Plato laid the foundations.
Plato considered gods to be like the idealized forms in geometry. A pure square existed in abstraction, as an ideal form. Nothing practical came close. Gods existed in these forms, perfect. Ever seeking knowledge, which existed in pure form like the gods, the philosopher was the one closest to achieving form-like status, perfection, purity. Anyone who did not pursue philosophy was inferior. Philosophy, or more accurately, its engine, rigourous thought, was Plato’s way of attaining immortality.
Many scholars have adopted this idea. Scientists chase the Nobel Prize. Mathematicians chase the Fields Medal. Computer scientists want the Turing Prize. Scholars will sacrifice much to develop new ideas, theories, and even fields, chasing an immortal, indelible imprint in their respective domains.
Immortality, from the cerebral school of thought, is best achieved when one mentions your name, only one name, and everyone knows who you’re referring to. Darwin. Einstein. Popper. Taleb. Born. Wittgenstein. Hobbes. Faraday. Gödel. Hilbert.
Nevertheless, as Christians have demonstrated, there are more ways of obtaining immortality. The most documented one is the one that survives to date in most narrative spaces. Plato’s way. The neocerebral way. This side of the story survives to date because it was captured on paper and preserved with reverence.
Outlier intelligence is scarce. Anyone who claimed that immortality could be achieved in other ways would have to build a better case. But that is just playing to the rules of the intelligent. A better way to prove that there are other ways to achieve immortality is to do it.
The clue lies in the other legends who are also identifiable on a single-name basis. Michael. Prince. Beyoncé. Rihanna. Kendrick. Lupe. Nas. Eminem. Mozart. Beethoven. Bach. Nyashinski. Fela. These are members of a unique set, unified by music.
The story of attaining immortality using music began with Orpheus.
Music
Orpheus’s superiority over the brilliantly cerebral was his music. Imbued with abilities more powerful than Snow White’s melodies, Orpheus could charm Hades, the terrifying god of the underworld. Legend has it he did just that.
To rescue his love, Eurydice, he travelled to the underworld and used his music to persuade Hades to get his wife back. Hades was convinced, but set a condition. He was to hold her hand and travel all the way out of the underworld without looking back. A test of faith. Alas, just as he was about to exit, overwhelmed with doubt, he looked back. And that’s how the one that got away got away again.
Notice some parallels? Well, I’ll get to that in a bit.
Using music, Orpheus was able to rescue his love, but for a time. Music was the means of achieving immortality. It worked like a miracle, since music was the solace of individuals at the time of their greatest need. It was for our Greek hero.
Notice how Orpheus used music to travel through hell, a place teeming with evil spirits, to rescue the love of his life. Through the story, we learn that music’s power is most maximal when the situation is most dire, like a miracle. Music is supposed to literally raise Eurydice from the dead.
Now, on the parallels. From the Bible, we’re taught that God’s power is most powerful when we are at our weakest. This is the point when one should strengthen their resolve, hold firm to their faith, and believe that God would come to their rescue. It is best demonstrated by the saints and disciples who were persecuted for their faith. They did not revolt, but believed that at the time of greatest need, God would come to their aid.
As does music.
Watch this scene when the Avengers got reinforcements, at a time when Thanos’ battalion was sweeping the battlefield. What’s more, I want you to pay close attention to the pause in the music before Captain America gives the orders, because I’ll come back to it later in the essay:
Another parallel. Notice the similarity with the death of Jesus. Just as Orpheus visited the underworld, Jesus descended into hell. The goal was to thwart the devil and release souls into heaven. This is no mean feat. It is indeed a miracle. Music is that powerful.
In the recent movie, Sinners, Sam plays music so powerful that it breaks the barrier between life and death. As the camera circled the juke joint, you could see the connection across timelines, further breaking the time barrier. Music is that powerful.
Now, having these discussions with the supposedly intelligent invites mockery.
However, the most instrumental documents about the power of music are not as well preserved as the written, philosophical teachings. The origins of musical instruments, for instance, are shrouded in mystery. But like scientific theories, they are powerful interventions, whose use has persisted throughout the ages. The history of Qin Shi Huang may offer some insights into the dearth of data on these powerful musical tools.
To develop his empire, Qin Shi Huang killed and buried anyone who opposed him and burned all their books. Anyone groping into the past would only get the ones written about the emperor. History could have been written by other people who were not victors, but an iron hand can wipe them all away.
By sheer luck, in 1962, one such document was identified in Greece. The Derveni Papyrus held the first potential insights into the role of music in the lives of the common folk. It contained power akin to that wielded by a mighty intellect of unmatched authority, like Plato. Plato was no common man. Thus, it was disturbing that a commoner could achieve the same immortal status as the highly revered intellectual.
To date, the same rivalry exists. Anyone who thinks they can make it in the world will face the cold facts of a rationalist, if they have one as a friend. And when the musician chases immortality, it seems unfair that by some stroke of luck, they become more famous and are recorded in history books, while the scientific, the philosophical, and the rational get forgotten in history’s footnotes if they get lucky to feature in it. This was perhaps why every record of a musical instrument or musicians is difficult to unearth. Perhaps.
I will forever be a fan of Thanos, besides his villainous affiliation. His argument was crisp and rational. He sought balance. His vision quest was executing what the universe had been doing for millennia. He represented the rationalists. He represented Plato.
On the flip side, we have another rationalist, Tony Stark, who believed in breaking the rules. Music tends to have the feature of breaking barriers. Hip-hop, for instance, is now slightly over 50 years old. It is a culture that has developed a language and tools outside the institutions where discussions about culture abound. Hip-hop is counterculture. As were the Avengers when they faced Thanos, enshrined in the final conversation between Thanos and Iron Man:
Thanos: I am inevitable.
Tony Stark: I am Iron Man.
The rest is history. Beautiful. And yes, music played in the background, before and after a critical pause.
The hero’s journey
Proceed to the next level
— Lupe Fiasco
As Orpheus had travelled to the underworld, so too do we use music to rescue ourselves. All hero movies have music to capture the most powerful moments when the star overcomes what seemed nearly impossible to defeat. Movies are broken or made by astute selection of music.
When a rationalist is consulted, several arguments can be laid out to showcase that the hero will not have a chance against a superior foe. Not surprisingly, when the scales tip, music is, yet again, always in the background. We remember these scenes with music playing, a reminder of how music and memory are inextricably linked. Can you imagine Rocky Balboa without the music? Or Adonis Creed as he practices for his big fights? Eminem says it best:
Look! If you had one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?
Again, music plays in the background when he challenges the listener to picture such a moment. The music video then shows the trials he faced before he blew up to become a legendary MC.
Music is most powerful when all hope seems lost. Anyone who overcomes this feeling of helplessness returns ever more powerful. Renewed, they can conquer what they thought was impossible. Music is supposed to be the guide. Hip-hop, contrary to what many know, offers more insights by using that term that has been bastardized and lost its original meaning: MC.
In hip-hop, you can be a rapper, but not an MC. An MC is respected for their witty delivery. They pack a mean punch with every line, educate the listener, and introduce conscious awareness through the most powerful rhetoric known — hip-hop.
An MC is synonymous with the conductor of an orchestra. They are meant to guide and control. They regulate the energy of the masses. They are, in the literal sense, the Master of the Ceremony. After getting popular acclaim, they become a Master of Ceremonies. Anyone who claims to be an MC without regulating the tempo of the people they are tasked with guiding is a phony.
An MC is like an elder. Like a saint preaching the gospel, MCs can command with revered confidence. They find artistic ways of layering their message, as did Jesus using his parables, or Confusious with his clever teachings, or Buddha with his practices. Music serves this role for the commoner. It is the equalizer that puts the highly gifted intellectually on the same scale as the commoner. Immortality becomes possible. However, music has been shunned generation after generation.
Countless times, hip-hop has been considered a genre of sex, crime, drug abuse, and all manner of violent behaviour. And yet, ardent fans know how transformative the songs can be. I remember when I lost my phone. I didn’t know what I could latch onto. I had started reading Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile on my mini laptop, but I still needed my music, all of which was stored inside my phone, now stolen.
A friend of mine, now also a doctor, handed me his Wiko phone, which had albums of various artists. From my favourite artist alive, Alicia Keys’s album Here, Florence + The Machine’s Lungs, and J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only. It was my formal introduction to J. Cole. Perhaps why I favour listening to him was because his music helped me during that difficult time in my campus life.
I would make the same argument for rock music, which, in my perspective, is the most emotional music genre. One can be fully expressive. Voices are pushed to the limit. Muscles are contracted. Clothes are torn. Hair gets pulled. Rock crowds offer a means to release one’s tension without fear of ridicule. Music tends to give its most loyal followers that gift.
I may have used references to modern art forms, such as movies, but the idea of music with musicians acting as guides has spanned numerous cultures all over the world. One fantastic example comes from the Mandan tribe in North America.
The Mandans would perform the Buffalo Dance to begin their year. Men would purify themselves, then don buffalo heads as masks, and dance non-stop until exhaustion set in, signalled by bending forward, and one of the tribe’s men would knock them down with one of their weapons to illustrate the death of a buffalo. The person would then be dragged to the side and faux-skinned, to mimic what the tribe would do after hunting and killing a buffalo.
This dance was done when the tribe needed to hunt the most, coinciding with the beginning of the year. So music and dance were used when the tribe was at its most dire need. It was also a commemoration in keeping with their origin stories, reminding them of where they came from and how much they owe their tribal ornamentation, food, sacramentals and armoury to buffaloes.
Music and dance could continue until they got the signal that the buffaloes were within sight, near enough for the tribe to hunt. The persistence of using music and dance was to increase their chances of success — that is, success at bringing the buffalo herd close to the tribe.
Typically, relying on music is never bound to be successful. The Mandans, nevertheless, would push themselves to the limit until their goals were achieved. Nothing, I believe, would have carried them as far as they would go without music.
These tests of endurance are also seen in sports. Consider how athletes practice. Music plays in the background. It’s a guide, a boost, and when they feel like giving up, it acts as a miracle, pulling them through.
When I was about to start my internship, I was worried there would come a time when I would be in an operating room, playing my favourite music, on the verge of losing a patient. I thought I may never want to listen to that song ever again. At the time, I didn’t know the power of music.
Now that I do, it is because of music that I continue fighting for the patient at the hospital bed. The music may be the miracle I need to pull the patient back from the vice grip of the Grim Reaper. Poetically, I often tell my friends that I flirt with death.
Ever since, I have noticed that several of the best surgeons play their favourite music inside the operating rooms. They may not know that their success is largely based on what’s going on in the background, rather than the solitary effort of their training.
At some point in medical school, I felt that music was affecting my concentration. I would play Coldplay, Linkin Park, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Green Day, Paramore and the like in the background while reading, and there would be days when, for an hour or two, I would have only read a single page. I felt I needed to free myself of the distraction. One night, in a moment of clarity, I deleted all the songs from my laptop.
The following day, something was off. The breakfast didn’t taste right. My focus was worse than I thought it would be. Something was missing. It was my music. Luckily, my download history was not deleted. I redownloaded all of them. The world was now in harmony.
Notice that word. Harmony. It is musical. It soothes when life gets tough. And the most powerful music is supposed to have the greatest effect when you’re at your utmost low. Nothing describes being low more than when you lose one of your senses, so let’s dive into that for a moment.
The blind, the deaf, and the diseased
T.R.O.N
— Lupe Fiasco
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. She developed an interest in the brain because of his brother’s diagnosis of schizophrenia. She never once anticipated that on the 10th of December, 1996, she too might suffer a brain disease — a haemorrhagic stroke. She was unable to walk, talk, read, write, or recall much of what had happened in her life. In her words, she became an infant in a woman’s body.
Her stroke happened on the left hemisphere of her brain, the side usually associated with dominance, calculation, rationality, and language. She experienced this side shutting down, and the right side taking over. Nirvana is how she called it. Peace. A state she wanted everyone to experience. Well, how can a disease state be pleasant?
She mentions how she literally shifted from her left hemisphere to her right. These are the words of a lifelong scholar of the brain.
The other way we can turn to our right hemisphere is by tuning to music. Music can heal. Music can literally take you to what would have been your first deathbed, the hospital bed, before being shifted to a coffin, and bring you back to the world of the living. Today, it is known as neurologic music therapy.
Jamie Foxx, the Oscar-award-winning actor and respected musician, suffered a stroke. He, too, had the haemorrhagic type.
While receiving his Ultimate Icon award at the 2025 BET Awards Ceremony, he confessed how songs by his daughter brought him back to life. It may have helped that he was a musician in the first place. Music was partly responsible for how he cheated death.
Here’s another body of evidence showing the role of music in the recovery of a world-celebrated music composer who suffered several stroke episodes:
Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998), a celebrated Russian composer of the twentieth century, suffered from several strokes which affected his left cerebral hemisphere. The disease, however, did not diminish his musical talent. Moreover, he stated that his illness in a way facilitated his work. The composer showed amazingly high productivity after his first and second injuries of the central nervous system.
When what you have been used to, such as taste, smell, and touch, gets taken away from you, the feeling can be unsettling. When the lights go out at night, everyone begins to grope in awkwardness, an insecure feeling, trying to grasp for anything that will restore certainty. For Beethoven, when he became completely deaf, what he turned to was music.
Experts argue that Beethoven’s work improved as he became deaf. I would equate this moment in his life to when the lights were switched off. His pillar was music. And he surrendered to it. It guided him. He thus laid the groundwork for the Romantic era of music.
Speaking of romance, Emperor penguins rely on music to find their partners and their fledglings in a rookery. Imagine a crowd as large as the Rio Carnival. You have to find your partner in the thicket. Sometimes, you also have to find your child. You will definitely feel lost, as will they. They literally grope their way around.
Emperor penguins have resorted to — you guessed it — music. Picture the moment. When you think you may not find the love of your life. Panic hits like a determined kidney stone. A heavy, invisible weight settles on your chest. You are extremely desperate. The father or mother penguin then begins to sing their heart song. The chick picks it up, as do the bonded partners. The song is unique to the family. Music yet again comes to the rescue of a parent and their offspring, acting as a guide.
We should therefore not be surprised how Stevie Wonder does what he does. Another singer who composed beautiful music was Blind Willie Johnson. These artists have clung to music, and music rewarded them. In the musical world, they are legends.
As with blindness, you can imagine what happens to crowds when a powerful singer gets on stage. When the music hits that spot, one can’t help but close their eyes and let their body follow where the music takes them. This also shows up inside worship spaces. The feeling is transcendent in churches. The use of several musical instruments during sermons feels like they are ascending the staircase into heaven. They converge the next Sabbath to do it all again.
What is true for the fan or congregation also applies to the musician. I recall when Marcus Miller came to Kenya, and how he would close his eyes when the music hit certain highs, essentially feeling his way through the performance.
For a bipedal creature such as man, nothing can be more relevant as a guide than giving assurance about your footing. Patients with Parkinson’s disease have a shuffling gait, with cog-wheel rigidity and tremors. Music, not surprisingly, can reverse these effects momentarily, as shown in the video below:
You can now see why the intelligent would quickly dismiss this option as a means to obtain what they believe should otherwise be difficult. But it should also not be surprising that all efforts to subdue music have been moot. Music continues to thrive. Like Lupe’s song, music continues to resurrect over new efforts to put it down.
What I’m trying to say is…
There’s a popular song that goes, “Nobody can stop reggae.”
These words have never been truer. It’s not just reggae, but music in general.
Not everyone is bright. But everyone can sing. Everyone can enjoy music. Even the intellectuals have particular musical preferences. Usually classical music. Einstein loved playing the violin. He called it his greatest source of joy. Feynman played the bongo drums. It gets to all. It also means that by letting ourselves get moved by music, we are having a taste of the immortal.
Through music, everyone can chase immortality. And by trusting it, we can taste it and proceed to the next level.
T.R.O.N
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube