When folk legend Joni Mitchell suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015, the doctors gave her little chance of survival. Until that is, her friend, the musician and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, steered the nurses towards a playlist – with astonishing results.
The songs they played to Joni found a way through, activating parts of her brain when all else failed. It significantly aided her remarkable recovery.
This story, while astonishing in many ways, is not altogether uncommon.
Rossato-Bennett’s documentary Alive Inside, famously showed the spectacular impact of music on 92-year-old, Henry Dryer. His days in a nursing home were passing by in a near-catatonic state, but he suddenly became excited when he heard music from his youth, “singing joyfully and reminiscing”.
When opera star Renée Fleming discovered her friend had suffered a brain bleed, she immediately suggested music.
“She was in excruciating pain, couldn’t do anything, just stayed in a dark room. Then she discovered that Jimi Hendrix – only Jimi Hendrix – played as loud as possible, would offer any relief.”
There are countless real-life examples to illuminate the miraculous power of music on humans. And it’s nothing new. Music has been used as medicine for many centuries and in many ways.
At the simplest level, music alters our mood. We’re all accustomed to digging out a favourite track to give ourselves a lift or soothe a pain. Listening to tunes that we know and love increases dopamine, the neuro-chemical that motivates us. It jogs the memory and triggers anticipation.
Alien or jarring sounds can trigger an opposite, adverse reaction. The ‘right’ songs can also empower, relax, sadden, motivate and energise. But there’s more to it than that. Music can reach our inner-most depths.
It’s now widely acknowledged that music can ease the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, help Parkinson’s sufferers and those with dementia. It can reduce anxiety, lower blood pressure and alleviate depression. One trial concluded that music can lower the risk of a stroke by 13%. Another found that 45 minutes spent listening to music can reduce anxiety by 25%. Music can also dramatically improve the emotional and social development of children, especially when it involves participation.
Indeed, music therapy can come in all shapes and sizes – group work, one on one, mindful listening, songwriting. The charity, Nordoff and Robbins, supports the belief that ‘music therapy is as unique as every person’.
When local musician Andy Abbott worked as a creative practitioner in psychiatric wards for an NHS pilot scheme, he soon found that his role was to react to the ever-shifting behaviours of the patients.
Andy: “I wasn’t always going in and just playing calming music. Some days I could tell it was a very flat, boring day. People would get frustrated. So I’d do something more uplifting.”
Andy’s not the only one in the Calder Valley using music to help improve the lives of others. The Arch-way Project, based in Halifax, uses music, art, beauty therapy and exercise to help people with mental health issues and those feeling lonely, isolated or vulnerable. Music For The Many in Todmorden strives to make music tuition available to as many youngsters in the region as possible.
Also in West Yorkshire, there’s Made With Music, The Music Box and Cloth Cat, to name just a few.
Aside from charities, we have people like ambient explorer Mark Williamson, aka Spaceship Mark, doing marvellous things with his Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra. The PPYO is an ‘experimental children’s orchestra’ providing improv, composition and performance workshops for kids aged seven and above.
There are numerous choirs and collectives in the borough embracing the utter joy of communal music-making. The carnivalesque Calderdale Fantasy Orchestra, who rehearse at The Golden Lion, is one of the most vivacious. And last year, we spoke to Helen Sheard, one of the first members of Chumbawamba guitarist Boff Whalley’s Commoners Choir, a free-spirited, political ensemble that became her salvation from PTSD.
Then there’s Resonance Calder. They stage immersive, sensory events that incorporate specific sonic frequencies, featuring experimental artists like Dudu Kouaté, with many participants reporting transformative experiences.
The holistic benefits of music can be seen in every corner of valley life.
It seems music is more than an aid; it is essential to our chemical make-up, to our very nature. Charles Darwin, the renowned naturalist certainly believed so. Scientists have since shown that, as babies, we have a natural ability to predict rhythmic beats. We are the only primate born with this skill. Babies can also transpose melodies.
Our inherent musicality lies in our ancient brain and, more specifically, the cerebellum. But perhaps this goes beyond even our ancestral roots, to something more cosmological. After all, vibration and sound are the shaping matrix of the entire universe. As Einstein said, “everything in life is vibration.”
In certain eastern philosophies, creation started with the Sanskrit Om – or phonetically, ‘aum’. It is the first sound, considered the vibration of the soul, the Self within.
Frequency is important. The Solfeggio range, as ordained by Dr Joesph Puleo in the 1970s, goes from 174Hz – often deemed ‘the healing frequency’ – up to 963Hz. These tones can have profound effects on body and mind, clearing subconscious fears, giving mental clarity and leading to elevated states of being.
But lower frequencies can help us too. The vibrations of a cat’s purr can reportedly heal bones, lower stress levels and offer pain relief.
Ultimately, science can only explain so much. Despite his analytical background, the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, subject of the Robin Williams film Awakenings, was always awed by the “great mystery” of music.
“Music doesn’t convey information in the usual sense,” he said. “It exists in every culture and speaks to people in a way that is deeper than language.”
Oliver’s book A Leg To Stand On tells of his own experience of the power of music. A brutal encounter with a violent bull on a desolate mountain in Norway left him injured, scared and envisaging a slow death. Then, for some reason, he called to mind the Volga Boatmen, a traditional Russian folk song. Chanting it to himself, mantra-like, he slowly summoned the energies to descend the mountain and was eventually found and rescued buy two reindeer hunters.
Oliver’s story helps confirm two things. One, that music can be our saviour in the most dire and unlikely of situations. And two, in times of trouble, we all have our own favourite song to sing.
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