I'm a bit of a factual enthusiast. Throughout the course of university life, many (well-spent) hours were filled with knitting (yeah, I know) and exploring cyberspace for enlightenment through documentaries. I mean it when I say that I'm an encyclopaedia of useless information - useless in the sense that it will only come to benefit me if humanity faces a New World Order, or when (I stress when) aliens take over the world- THEN I can turn around and shout "TO THE BUNKERS", with a smug expression on my face and a complete advantage over the rest of you sceptics.
Anyway, had I known of this documentary before I wrote my dissertation (which happened to be on alternative representations of gender in music), I would have probably written it in celebration of this spectacular film. It's incredibly fascinating, and I recommend it to anyone who feels as passionately as I do about the power of music and the emotional grasp it has on so many of us.
Released in 2010 and directed by Christopher Pomerenke, The Heart is a Drum Machine asks the supposedly straight-forward question "What is music?", evidently establishing how complicated in fact, a direct answer to this really is. Why is it that music has such a profound effect on people? It is easy to break down music as an organized choreography of sounds and vibrations, but there's a fundamental enigma in the extent of the emotional complexity music demonstrates on all groups of individuals - ranging from all cultures and backgrounds, to artists, performers, listeners and those who can't hear anything at all.
