During the past years we’ve become increasingly aware of the way that music, theater and art can set free our dopamin and oxytocin so that we de-stress and recover faster. “Our what?”, you might ask. Yes, well, in the same way that viagra has taken its comfortable place in our vocabulary, these marvelous calming biological substances that we can produce all ourselves, given the right conditions, are moving in to stay. In Sweden and elsewhere in the world significant research is underway to decipher what actually happens to us when we, for instance, listen to Sibelius or view a Carl Larsson painting. Since 2005, the Swedish government has promoted various initiatives, including research, concerning the linkage between culture and health.
As you know, I am a devotee of Nordic Wellbeing which in itself is a cultural approach to health. This weekend, however, I was reminded of the dopamin/oxytocin deluge that happens when two cultures meet in peace and in a mutual celebration of their music, dance and local dress. Sitting on the grass at Ekebyhov Palace in between my son’s final trombone concert and my daughter’s final violin performance for the year (we have a lot of good hormones in our home but perhaps less quiet), I was delighted to find that Stockholm’s Culture School had been invited to do some special ‘foreign’ performances.
When first I came to this municipality near Stockholm 13 years ago, there were two shelves reserved at the local ICA for ‘odd’ ingredients such as curry. When my children started at their little ‘Bullerby‘ day care out on Munsö, I noted that there was one human being in the vicinity with a slightly darker shade of skin. When my Columbian cleaning lady’s car was set on fire by a bunch of bored skinheads, I was reminded of the extent to which the segregation of cultures is a bad thing for everyone.
Up on the stage at Ekebyhov on Sunday we listened to young and old playing music from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and watched two Indian girls dancing to a Bollywood theme song. At the very end of these breath-taking performances, a stout West African in local dress beckoned all of us sedentary Caucasians to rise and lift our arms into the air. “Come on Sweden!”, he shouted with that irresistable African rhythm in his voice, “let’s do this together!” There was nothing that could touch this crowd as he moved us along with his great sense of beat. The dopamin and oxytocin flowed forth.
To speak in plain English about what actually happens when cultural traditions meet in this way, we come back to the theme of this blog. Everyone gains mental space from the feeling that there is a new freedom to move in previously untried cultural spaces. And time – doesn’t it just evaporate among friends?
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