Why do patriotic songs evoke a good feeling of attachment to one's country?

Patriotism is love and devotion expressed towards one's country. It evokes a feeling of belongingness to one's country. Some songs, music and dances have messages of praise to one’s country, call for dedication, devotion and togetherness to one’s country. In this effect when such content is delivered to the audience it awakens the feeling of attachment and re-kindles love for one’s nation. When we live at a place, we tend to develop a feeling of attachment towards that place. This feeling grows in us the most when we are young. When we are young the events such as Independence Day, Republic Day are celebrated with great enthusiasm at school and everyone is encouraged to participate in one or more events to happen that day. Sweets are distributed and films which show the sacrifices of the people to bring about this state of freedom are screened with the teachers telling us about the way life would be if not but for these men. This commentary evokes a sense of gratitude towards the men who fought for the country. All the events taking place that day are emotionally charged and make up for a pleasant day. It is a fact that the emotionally charged events can be remembered better than the boring ones. It is more likely that we would remember information if it is followed by something that is strongly emotional. Also it's the emotional arousal, not the importance of the information that helps memory. And the pleasant emotions are usually remembered better than the unpleasant ones. So the stronger the emotions aroused, the greater the effect on memory. So when you retrieve the information after growing up your current state (mood) will be affected by the memories of the past events which occurred at similar times. This is why patriotic songs or films evoke a strong emotional response in us. If the same song is played at a different time, then the emotional response to it will be different than what you will experience on Independence Day.

Music and Emotions The most difficult  problem in answering the question of how music creates emotions is likely to be the fact that assignments of musical elements and emotions can never be defined clearly. The solution of this problem is the Theory of Musical Equilibration. It says that music can't convey any emotion at all, but merely volitional processes, the music listener identifies with. Then in the process of identifying the volitional processes are colored with emotions. The same happens when we watch an exciting film and identify with the volitional processes of our favorite figures. Here, too, just the process of identification generates emotions.   An example: If you perceive a major chord, you normally identify with the will "Yes, I want to...". The experience of listening to a minor chord can be compared to the message conveyed when someone says, "No more." If someone were to say these words slowly and quietly, they would create the impression of being sad, whereas if they were to scream it quickly and loudly, they would be come across as furious. This distinction also applies for the emotional character of a minor chord: if a minor harmony is repeated faster and at greater volume, its sad nature appears to have suddenly turned into fury.   Because this detour of emotions via volitional processes was not detected, also all music psychological and neurological experiments, to answer the question of the origin of the emotions in the music, failed. But how music can convey volitional processes? These volitional processes have something to do with the phenomena which early music theorists called "lead", "leading tone" or "striving effects". If we reverse this musical phenomena in imagination into its opposite (not the sound wants to change - but the listener identifies with a will not to change the sound) we have found the contents of will, the music listener identifies with. In practice, everything becomes a bit more complicated, so that even more sophisticated volitional processes can be represented musically.   Further information is available via the free download of the e-book "Music and Emotion - Research on the Theory of Musical Equilibration:   http://www.willimekmusic.de/music-and-emotions.pdf or on the online journal EUNOMIOS:   http://www.eunomios.org/ Enjoy reading   Bernd Willimek, music theorist