Many Hearts Beating as One

Alive Inside powerfully tells the story of how music connects people with themselves and with each other.   Filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett chronicles the work of social worker Dan Cohen who uses music on iPods with people who are suffering from dementia.  Music that they loved when they were young has the ability to reconnect the people with memories and enhances their physical and verbal functioning.  Cohen founded the non-profit organization Music and Memory that trains volunteers to work with people with dementia using individually selected music.  The results are quite startling as uncommunicative seniors start to sing, speak and move once the music is turned on.  You can watch the trailer or order the film from Music and Memory or Amazon.

The film includes information on biology and neurology applicable to music.  At a few weeks gestation, the human embryo develops cells that begin to “beat together”.  These cells go on to form the heart.  The filmmaker shows these early cells firing together and concludes that we are wired to share a common rhythm, that we are musical beings that are meant to share that music with each other.  This uplifting film won the Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Last spring, I saw the Red Dirt Skinners, a British duo, perform at a house concert in Waubaushene, ON.  On their promotional information they invited audience members to bring used iPods to donate so that they could be used by people with memory loss in England.  It seemed that this idea was happily spreading.

This past weekend, I heard a CBC radio interview from Ontario Morning with Wei Chen.  Sixteen year old Naomi G. has witnessed the changes in her grandfather who has dementia, when he listens to songs by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole on an iPod.  He becomes communicative and engages again.  This experience and seeing an intergenerational choir in London, ON motivated her to start an intergenerational choir in Kingston linking student volunteers with people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.  She started the group off by doing a group sing along session for a few weeks and realized that most of the people had smiles on their faces by the end. 

Naomi chose to pair students with seniors so that they could also develop relationships that enrich both of their lives since not all young people have grandparents and not all elderly people have grandchildren. The choir sings what Naomi calls the old classics like You Are My Sunshine, Amazing Grace and When Irish Eyes are Smiling.  Naomi’s goal is “more about happiness than creating a great sound” and she hopes that the happiness experienced during the choir sessions continues when the participants go home.  The students had some training from the Alzheimer’s Society and a staff person from that organization also attends the sessions just in case help is needed.

I belong to a drum circle, Harmony Grace, where people play African drums such as djembes and other percussion instruments.  We play intuitively with no set leader, listening to one another and finding our place, our voice, our rhythm as part of the whole.  Sometimes the creation is amazing and sometimes it is not, but the process of playing together is always good.  In the summer we play outside by Lake Simcoe.  Passing people are welcomed in, accepted and celebrated.  Sometimes children drag their parents over and are delighted to participate with the rhythm instruments we share.

                                             Rob (standing) in good health

A year ago, one of our members passed away.  We had watched him grow thin, then gaunt and tired from the journey of cancer but he still added his wild energy to the group when he could.  A few months after he died, we were back at the lakeshore again. People brought drums that Rob had left to them and we took turns playing them.  As I played one of his djembes, I thought about life and death.  I thought about the drum made from a hollow tree trunk and covered by goat skin.  The African tree and goat and Rob are no longer living physically.  And yet the music we made connected us to those lives.  It helped us to heal, I believe, playing together, sharing memories of our friend, drums beating together, hearts beating together.  I thought of the embryonic heart cells firing together and I had to agree with Rossato-Bennett that we are wired to create rhythm and music together, our hearts beating as one.