By Judith-Kate Friedman, Founder and Director of Songwriting Works™ Educational Foundation, a Port Townsend-based non-profit dedicated to restoring health and community through the power of song.
Years ago I was invited onto a team of artists serving frail older adults in San Francisco. I was asked to try a creative experiment in an adult day health center. “You’re a songwriter,” my mentor, then director of Artworks Robert Rice, said, “I want you to write songs with these people. Do it in a way that would be best for the artist in you.”
So I started composing community songs with folks three times my age. My approach was largely intuitive. Drawing on what I’d learned about respecting diversity, I began by showing sincere interest, listening, trusting in and bringing out the musical intelligence that I believe is in all people, and putting to use everything I knew about making music, improvising, and creating ‘on the fly.’ Our aim was to write a memorable song through a process that would be mutually meaningful. I trusted, as the poet Adrienne Rich puts it, that “we can use what we have to get what we need.”
That first session coincided with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. After warming up with a well-loved spiritual, two women shared their memories of marching with Dr. King in Selma. Reminiscences sparked. I scribed the group’s response on a big easel pad taking care to catch their verbatim speech, rhythm, inflection, humor, beauty –– the lyrical and melodic qualities that arise in collective conversation. Soon we had words, music and a completed song (“In the Eyes of God We are All the Same Color.”) More than that, everyone could feel a deepened sense of community together.
Fast forward to Washington State, 2011:
Songwriting Works™ is now a vetted, replicable, research-proven method shown to maximize artistic, social, and health outcomes. More than 3,000 older adults, family caregivers and health care professionals have gained greater access to their creative voices and new avenues to physical, cognitive and mental health as they’ve become songwriters. In collaboration with professional songwriter-facilitators, they’ve composed upwards of 300 songs to date.
Rigorous studies such as Dr. Gene Cohen’s in Creativity and Aging through the Arts confirm what artists serving in community and healthcare settings have known for ages: Music soothes. Art heals. Gesture communicates. Healthier communities grow when we play together.
Author and researcher Daniel Deardorff notes that Songwriting Works’ impact is similar to experiences of communal story-sharing, dance, and the transmission of culture through music that occurs in the Oral Tradition.
Everyone present is part of the moment-by-moment creation of something at once both ancient (folk songs, dances, recounted history) and brand new (the people assembled the performance of a teller or singer, original songs and responses to communally-held truths or roots). The collective synergy in such experiences makes them extremely effective medicine for individuals and community alike.
This Spring, in partnership with Washington Health Foundation, Songwriting Works™ Educational Foundation is creating a new Music for Wellness tool kit as part of a Healthy Living through Music program. “Our vision,” say special projects coordinator Aimée Ringle, “is to inspire young and old, active and frail, families and neighbors, so they may reap the health benefits of making music together. We’re blending key elements of Songwriting Works approach with health tips and science facts.”
If you live in Western Washington, you’re invited to get involved in a series of community “meet-ups” to be held in Jefferson and Clallam counties in March, April and May. Contact Emily at meetups@songwritingworks.org or (360) 385-1160.
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Posted by: Pas Cher Moncler | November 04, 2011 at 03:23 AM
I know that most of Britain have a very high level of respect for their armed forces, but how do americans treat theirs? Are they as respectful as us?
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