Music

Whether through dance, song, instruments, or voice, music provides us with a universal language. Experts from the Harvard community explore how music aids in learning, improves well-being, and fosters social change.

Lifting our voices

From the sounds of John Legend and Beyonce to gospel and traditional African folk music, everything the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College sing is meant to promote and uplift Black spirituality and creativity on Harvard’s campus and beyond.

Almost Home with Harvard’s Kuumba Singers

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The benefits of music

The benefits of practicing, listening, and making music are well-documented.

Using music in early childhood classrooms

Good morning songs aren’t just fun—they can teach about others.

A close up of a person playing an acoustic guitar

An up-close photo of a cello being played

Finding rhythm in reverence

Divinity School alum Aric Flemming discusses how music is an extension of—rather than a diversion from—his ministerial outreach.

Overture of an opera life

Benjamin Perry Wenzelberg’s senior thesis will be a commissioned opera for Lowell House Opera, based on an epic work of literature: James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

Read about Benjamin’s final project

Changing course

Julia Riew was on the pre-med track, while also exploring her long-held love of musical theater. Two years after starting at Harvard College, she realized she was more drawn to the stage.

Read about Julia’s journey from pre-med to writing musicals

Passing the torch of representation

Young Black artist-animator Uzo Ngwu helps breathe life into a film that highlights trailblazing Harvard music historian Eileen Southern.

Learn more about the short film

A different kind of thesis

In 2019, Luke Martinez created the Department of Music’s first pop music creative thesis.

The rhythmatist

Rajna Swaminathan has been described as “a groundbreaking 21st-century composer-performer and thinker.”

The power of performance

Theater, Dance, & Media, a Harvard College concentration, recently celebrated six years of learning and performance.

Celebrating Theater, Dance & Media

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The sounds of a movement

What role has music played in the pursuit of justice, equity, and our understanding of social justice?

A black and white photo of a man wearing a sweatshirt with writing on it

Protesting police violence, a playlist

According to Marcyliena Morgan, the founding executive director of the Harvard Archive, we should think of hiphop as a historical record of the nation’s racial violence and injustice.

Explore hiphop’s history of exposing police brutality

Learn about Southern's career

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Eileen Southern and the music of Black Americans

Dive into the life and work of Eileen Southern, the first Black woman tenured at Harvard.

View her contributions to the history of Black music

Men stand on a stage, one holding a cello

It’s never art for art’s sake

Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma discusses the ways in which “citizen musicians” can help build a more just and free society as an extension of their work as artists.

Read about music as a force for social justice

Hiphop pedagogy in action

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The role of hiphop in education

Students at the Graduate School of Education explore hiphop’s long history of being a tool of civic expression, and how it should be embraced in education.

A universal language

Music’s ability to create connections across communities, cultures, and even cosmos is well-documented.

Playing our song

Harvard’s online Music Lab is a citizen-science project aimed at exploring how the human mind understands music, and why music is a virtually ubiquitous feature of human societies.

Music everywhere

A comprehensive study explains that music is universal and that some songs sound "right" in different social contexts, all over the world.

Read about the study's findings

Music of the cosmos

In a project aimed at making images of space more accessible, scientists and sound engineers turned images of the cosmos into music.

Enjoy the video

Songs in the key of humanity

Poet and Harvard Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously said, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” A new Harvard study suggests he may have been right.

Earth’s most excellent mixtape

Alexander Rehding, a professor of music, discusses NASA’s Golden Record, which is “effectively a mixtape for extraterrestrial civilizations.”

Read about this out-of-this-world project

The nature of sounds

Composer David Rothenberg takes the familiar sounds of birds singing, insects chirping, ponds bubbling, and combines them with music, creating a melodious and distinctly unique medley.

Listen to the sounds of nature

Pause for Art

When the pandemic began, Harvard students, faculty, and alumni looked to music and art to create connections and find comfort.

Enjoy the playlist

Dancing on the ceiling—of the world

Harvard student Nosher Ali Khan, a team of mountaineers, and artists set the Guinness world record for Highest Altitude Dance Party on Land at Minglik Sar, Pakistan.

The Loeb Music Library

Open to the general public, Harvard’s Loeb Music Library gives visitors the opportunity to embrace musical performance and research from around the world.

Explore the library’s many resources and collections