This is Your Brain on Protest Songs

Protest songs aren’t merely sources of solace or quaint diversions echoing the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Coming together in song engenders a sense of collective power with ancient, biological roots. New research shows making music—especially in unison with others—creates substantial, physiological benefits by synchronizing our brains and bodies to facilitate collaboration and establish a sense of belonging.

As Americans weather the stress of political and economic uncertainty, many have poured into the streets to protest increasing displays of military might, governmental abuses of power, and sweeping cuts to social safety nets. The widespread presence of chants and songs in those crowds demonstrates something fundamental about the role of music in human evolution and survival: Music has been a vital driver of cohesive social movements for millennia. It has mobilized legions in service of both peaceful and brutal aims.

Creating Connection

The beats that move our bodies also shape our brains and anchor communities. The brain’s electrical rhythms—known as neural oscillations—physically align with musical rhythms and patterns, according to a 2025 analysis in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. This process, called entrainment, means that when we sing together, our brainwaves pulse together, fostering a sense of unity.

“Music has the power to create a profound sense of connection with others across cultures, borders, and belief systems,” wrote the authors. It can create an impulse to move in rhythm and a “seemingly effortless” combination of perception and action known colloquially as “groove.”

Our shared response to music arises because we are biologically wired to resonate with music—and with each other.

Singing and dancing, alone or in groups, can also release natural stress-relieving chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, says Susan Magsamen, co-author of Your Brain on Art and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Her research shows that—like building healthy habits around exercise, nutrition, or sleep—making art (such as music, dance, painting, or gardening) can be “an entry to stop chaos” and a means to recovery when established as routine.

In other words, music and other art forms can be ritualized to support our personal and collective well-being.

The lure of music isn’t unique to modern humans. Drumming together is instinctive for our evolutionary extended family as well, reports a recent study in Current Biology. The findings show wild chimpanzees drum on trees in patterns that are characteristic of their groups, similar to rhythmic variations found in different human cultures. Chimps vary their rhythms while travelling or resting and “integrate drumming into their long-distance pant-hoot vocalizations,” as well.

Another study in the International Journal of Primatology showed chimpanzees’ footsteps also fall in rhythmic couplets as they “approach a drumming tree.” This evidence supports the theory that human musicality reaches far back in our evolution, beyond the seven to nine million years ago when humans and “our closest living relatives” diverged, according to the researchers.

This research shows that group singing may help humans form large, socially cohesive groups, necessary for building common cause with relative strangers, for good and for ill.

Folk singers, religious leaders, suffragettes, and activists—from Gandhi’s Salt March to South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement to John Lewis’ 1965 Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Alabama—have relied on songs to build solidarity and morale. However, Nazis, ISIS, and the Ku Klux Klan also famously use marches and chants for propaganda and to motivate troops toward violence.

Resonance with music is cross-cultural, says Chet Sherwood, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist at George Washington University. “There’s a neural basis for it,” he adds. “It seems to be universally human.”

Healing Potential

Medical researchers are increasingly interested in the healing potential of music, as well. They are studying measurable, neurological benefits in patients with neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, as well as those with stroke and traumatic brain injury. Research shows music therapy can boost cognition and neural connectivity, improve motor function, reduce anxiety, and promote social interaction.

When people make music together, they don’t simply synchronize body movements; they “align internally as well,” says Alex Pantelyat, M.D., co-founder and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Music and Medicine. Blood pressures and heartbeats sync up, and brain waves coalesce around rhythms, he notes. “At a chamber music concert or Madison Square Garden with 50,000 people,” it takes performers mere seconds to get crowds to clap in unison with the beat, he says. It’s instinctive.

Consistency is critical for sustained emotional and physiological benefits of music and dance, says Pantelyat. He cites Parkinson’s research that shows patients engaged in “tango therapy” twice a week for a year saw notable improvements in motor function, balance, and mobility, as well as greater energy, participation, and quality of life.

Making music can have a “transformative role” in emotional well-being and resilience, as well, according to a 2024 review in the International Medical Journal. If you want to sustain the benefit of taking a medication, Pantelyat proposes, “you keep on taking it. Music is no different.”

Art can be “a catalyst for changing neurophysiology,” confirms Magsamen. “You don’t have to be good at it to get great benefits,” but change and growth require taking risks, she notes. By creating a communal sense of awe and wonder, music can help people feel safe taking part in creative expression or collective action. “If you’re going to transcend, you have to try something different.”

Singing in the streets with strangers might feel “different” to some. It might be a risk beyond imagining. If so, those risks don’t have to be taken in public. A quick scroll through Instagram reveals how essential and diverse music-making can be to form deep social bonds—from shrouded Afghan women creating viral solidarity by singing (privately and in groups) in defiance of Taliban “virtue and vice” laws to middle-aged American moms in sweatpants gleefully lip-syncing with friends to their favorite pop anthems.

Singing and dancing are some of the oldest and most powerful tools we have for well-being and fellowship, uniting us in shared values—for politics or pleasure, combat or comfort.

Music brings us together at the most fundamental level, resonating in our brains and bodies, delivering measurable physical and psychological benefits, and amplifying collective strength. Drumbeats and melodies are wholly accessible, too. Everyone can take part, without any requirements for analysis, expertise, or wealth. As Stevie Wonder wrote in his song, “Sir Duke”—famous for the chorus, “You can feel it all over”—music is “a language we all understand.”

Sarah Hays Coomer is a health writer, author of Physical Disobedience, and National Board-certified health coach.

Featured in Psychology Today