WE BECOME ONE: ALPHATHETA DOCUMENTARY
at Soho House in London on 24/03/2025
by Alex Shukri

Music is the universal language. It’s said all the time by music teachers, choir merch designers, and music lovers alike- but what does it mean?

Take three songs that have been buzzing around recently. Puerto Rican’s pain is tangible through Bad Bunny’s song ‘DtMF’, John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ can make anyone feel like they’re at home in the beauty of West Virginia, and ‘Bella Ciao’ ignites a fire in any revolutionary’s soul to continue on the good fight.

But when someone doesn’t speak Spanish, English, or Italian, how do they feel the pain of Bad Bunny and Puerto Ricans mourning the loss of their homeland or John Denver cherishing the beauty of West Virginia?

They understand the rhythm, the reactions of those around them, and the beat. Everybody can understand a beat, even those who clap on 1 and 3.

How music is a universal language hadn’t been explored widely until AlphaTheta’s new documentary, We Become One. It follows DJ/producer/curator Kikelomo Oludemi to understand how music can be the universal language for everyone — sociologically, physically, and mentally.

She travels to the USA, Ghana, South Africa, Germany, the UK, and France to talk with industry-leading scientists and researchers, and legendary artists.

In a 60-minute documentary that gracefully toes the line between entertaining travel vlog and interesting school lesson, We Become One gets the job done of explaining how music can connect people and why it is so important, now more than ever with club closures and globally rising tensions.

Thanks to people like Dr. Julia C. Basso, a neuroscientist and director of the Embodied Brain Lab. She explains that when people dance to the same music together, specific parts of their brains are stimulated simultaneously, creating a feeling of unity. “That whole social network of brain areas is lighting up, firing together, so there’s a lot of inter-brain synchrony that’s happening,” says Basso. “Sound and music is a non-semantic [form of] communication, so you can communicate your emotions even to someone who doesn’t speak your language. I think that’s why even people with completely different experiences somehow feel the same emotions at the same time [when on the dancefloor]… Sound is the unifying form of communicating emotions.”

While occasionally overwhelming through its non-linear storytelling, each new interview does have its place in the film. Like hearing from Dan Ghenacia, a respected DJ and member of production trio Apollonia, who’s also the creator of the Alpha Wave Experience. Inspired by Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine and backed by neuroscience, the experience uses a machine that combines flashing lights with music to create brain entrainment and induce people into different brain states, such as psychedelic or meditative ones. “Clubbing is an old form of shamanism – using rhythms and drums to put people in ecstatic states,” says psychologist Francisco Teixeira, who works with Ghenacia on the project.

“You're outside yourself, and electronic music is really great at inducing it, which is why so many raves and even therapeutic uses of music involve the repetitiveness. You can close off the inner chatter of your brain and the inner dialogue and just be. When you can relax into that state of here and now, that's when the trance can come.” Daniel Levitin, Cognitive Psychologist, Neuroscientist, Musician, and Record Producer, also said within the documentary.

One beautiful through-line of the film was started by rhythmanalyst and music producer Deforrest Brown, Jr.’s interview about the importance of acknowledging the Black roots of techno and club music and finished at the Boiler Room set in Accra, Ghana. Plenty of aspiring DJs were learning how to mix and do their own sets at Oroko Radio and Vibrate Studios and got to participate in the Boiler Room set after. The community came together to support them and see the next generation of DJs discover their love and connection to music and each other.

While the film was jam-packed with information and well-designed graphics of the brain, it was crafted in such a digestible way that it could almost be the start to a good club night.

Because a good night means being on the dance floor, ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ optional.

Alex Shukri
★★★☆☆