College students tend to become very comfortable with particular kinds of music; again and again, we put the same tracks on our favorite Spotify playlist or go-to Pandora stations.

At school, where the priority is parties, papers or programming assignments, it’s easy to fall into the habit of listening to familiar music we’ve heard for years. A lot of us don’t even go that far, choosing instead to stick to the Top-40 songs easily available on the radio.

But music is more than just background noise; it’s a bridge between communities and histories. The messages hidden behind strum patterns and lyrics can unlock many of the traditions and identities held by a culture. Take our own popular music, for example. This week, the top three songs on Ryan Seacrest’s American Top 40 are “Same Old Love” by Selena Gomez, “Sorry” by Justin Bieber and “Here” by Alessia Cara. http://www.at40.com/top-40

After listening to the messages in each of these songs, the patterns might piece together a mid-2010s popular youth culture of being tired of roller-coaster relationships, complicated love stories and an unchanging party scene. It’s nothing particularly profound, but this music clearly speaks to the common stories that unite the masses of our generation.

Looking at our modern music teaches us a good deal about our popular social attitudes. So, applying this same concept to all other music forms, we find we can learn so much about a culture or people just by listening to their music.

Each of us should absolutely take advantage of this — we can unlock countless doors into the minds of billions of people and their identities, from something as simple as a four-minute tune on YouTube. We have access to people from 50 years ago and 80 years ago, as well as people from across Spain and Africa and Argentina, all through their music.

Not long ago, a friend introduced me to the new world of reggae. Of course, I’d heard the token rhythms of Bob Marley and The Wailers every now and then while growing up, but I never truly understood what the music meant.

He took me through his own rendition of Jason Mraz’s fan favorite “I’m Yours,” but with a twist. Using his electric bass guitar, he applied the strategic offbeat rhythms of reggae and slow, throaty vocals that are so characteristic of the Jamaican-influenced music to this modern pop hit. He transformed the happy, fun song into something that elicited a more powerful feeling of lackadaisical love; calm and effortless.

Through my friend, I learned more about the background of reggae. It seeks to be expressive and inclusive, slow and measured. It’s less about rules of symmetry and balance, more about a free flow stemming from how you feel in that moment, feeling the words and the beats instead of making them.

Being a derivative of music from young Jamaicans in the 1950’s, it’s rooted in desires of freedom and youthfulness. Since then, it has exploded into a diverse genre carrying with it still the influences of the Caribbean islands and messages of love and peace. And I could feel that, in the music and the way it vibrates. From something as simple as a song, I was exposed to a different culture and a small piece of its history.

And that is a beautiful thing. Of course, listening to this Reggae music isn’t going to make someone understand what it was like to be a young Jamaican struggling for independence in the mid-twentieth century, but people can get a small glimpse into those emotions by listening to their music.

Many of us college students learning different languages or taking cultural or linguistic courses could seriously benefit from taking a look at the music of the specific people we’re studying. It provides an additional dimension to their background that we can’t quite learn from a textbook. And those of us with the wanderlust bug can tame our desires to hop on a plane by living vicariously through song and music for the time being.

So, I urge you to try something new. Explore something outside of what you’re used to, and learn about a new culture through song. It could be anything; classical German piano, British 60’s rock, garage metal, Spanish guitar, gangster rap – you never know what might strike a chord with you.

Saba is a sophomore in Engineering.

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