Music is uplifting when one can connect to it. Whether it is a sad song or a happy one, when there is a connection the experience is uplifting, because one feels not alone. If one can actually hear what the musician is trying to get across and can understand where they are coming from and what they must have felt, the music has been listened to, it has surely been heard. The listener has experienced a part of the musician's life, and that music has bonded them together. "I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, and what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen"(From "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin