Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

What Musicians Can Teach Health Care Professionals

What Musicians Can Teach Doctors
by Ann Drinan
September 2012

I attended a meeting of the Hartford Medical Society last week to hear a presentation by Dr. Lisa Wong, a pediatrician who plays violin with the Longwood Symphony in Boston – the doctor’s orchestra. She’s written a book, Scales to Scalpels, about the orchestra and the role of music in medicine.

As I was chatting with the Society’s librarian, I was introduced to her father, Dr. Frank Davidoff, an internist and former editor of “The Annals of Internal Medicine.” Last year he published an article titled, “Music Lessons: What Musicians Can Teach Doctors and Other Health Care Professionals.” Dr. Davidoff is well-suited to write such an article; he is a serious piano student, and takes lessons from Anne Kan, who frequently subs with the Hartford Symphony.

 Davidoff's Article:  Download Davidoff - Music

 

Music Links the Cell and Soul

Brenda Dintiman forwarded this amazing link about "Music and Medicine."  Some of you will have seen it -- but for those who haven't, it will touch your soul.

For better viewing Click Here.

When Robert Gupta was caught between a career as a doctor and as a violinist, he realized his place was in the middle, with a bow in his hand and a sense of social justice in his heart. He tells a moving story of society’s marginalized and the power of music therapy, which can succeed where conventional medicine fails.

“For those living in the most dehumanizing conditions … music offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them, to remember that they still have the capacity to experience something beautiful.” Robert Gupta

We featured another piece by Gupta a couple of years ago:  Music is Medicine:  Music is Sanity.

Walk Your Walk

K'Naan, in a remarkable Op-Ed piece in the NY Times, relates a Somali fable which speaks to all of us:

"The fox, they say, once had an elegant walk, for which the other animals loved him. One day, he saw a prophet striding along and decided to improve on what was already beautiful. He set out walking but could not match the prophet’s gait. Worse, he forgot his own. So he was left with the unremarkable way the fox walks today."

In the remainder of Censoring Myself for Success, he describes how he has been pressured to change his Somali "walk."  How many of us, especially those still in school or professional training feel compelled to imitate the gait of others? 

K'Naan - Wavin' the Flag

Strange Fruit

In 1999, Time magazine named "Strange Fruit" the "song of the century." The Library of Congress put it in the National Recording Registry. It's been recorded dozens of times, most famously by Billie Halliday. The man who wrote "Strange Fruit" is New York City's Abel Meeropol, and he has two stories.  In one, he is a communist writer, teacher and songwriter; in the other, Meeropol and his wife adopted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's two sons after their parents were executed for espionage.

NPR had a moving piece on Meeropol this past week.  He was an amazing man.

Booksigning, Bach and Reading

Lisa Wong, a pediatrician, musician and president of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, wiil be speaking in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on Thursday evening, July 19th.  

Booksigning, Bach, and Reading
Thursday July 19 at 7:00 p.m.
First Congregational Church of Stockbridge
4 Main Street, Srockbridge, MA

Download Flyer for Stockbridge Congregational Church 7.19.12 FINAL

Here is a message from her:

"Dear friends:

In case you're in the Berkshires on Thursday 7/19, please join me for a reading/performance  evening at First Congregational Church in Stockbridge to introduce my new book, Scales to Scalpels: Doctors who Practice the Healing Arts of Music and Medicine.

I'll be sharing some of my thoughts about the many connections between music and healing, from the perspective of the medical musician, caregivers and patients, and will touch a bit on the exciting field of the neuroscience of music.

In the spirit of Albert Schweitzer, who was devoted to Bach, healing, and service, the presentation will include excerpts from Bach's Goldberg Variations especially chosen to augment the remarks and performed by Tanglewood Music Center faculty members Norman Fischer, Matt Dane and Andy Jennings.

I hope you can make it and join in the discussion about music and healing! The evening is free and open to the public.

Sincerely,

Lisa M. Wong, M.D.
www.drlisamwong.com - visit my new website!

Haitian Drummer, Obit

Frisner Augustin, a Haitian vodou master drummer whose deep knowledge of traditional rhythms and leadership of the Brooklyn-based Troupe Makandal made him a major force in preserving and popularizing his Afro-Haitian heritage, died on Feb. 28 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was 63. NY Times Obit.

Marginal Notes: Great performances, poor players

Arthur Fiedler, Conductor, Boston Pops

Years ago I recall watching a television documentary on Arthur Fiedler, the conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra. The camera caught Fiedler backstage, stooped and shuffling slowly about as he struggled with his tux in preparation for the evening performance at Symphony Hall. He looked like the old man he had become—tired, fatigued, worn out. But then, as he stepped out onto the stage, a miracle happened. more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for 32 years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Death Music: Our Sweetest Songs

Waking or asleep,     
Thou of death must deem     
Things more true and deep     
Than we mortals dream,     
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?     
 
We look before and after,     
And pine for what is not:     
Our sincerest laughter     
With some pain is fraught;     
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

            Percy Bysshe Shelley.  To a Skylark.  Poets knew it.

On May 24, 2011,  we posted an article, The Hospice Flute, about Elaine Whitman who plays the ancient Indian flute for dying hospice patients.

This week, a similar article appeared in the NY Times. Relaxing, Touching the Memory, Music Helps With the Final Transition supplements Ms. Whitman's post. One wonders for how many millennia music has been a balm to the dying.  In Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams we see a flute fashioned from a bird's thigh bone that dates back 32,000 years.  The language of music has been with us far longer than any language now spoken on this blue dot.

On Music

The Hospice Flute

by Elaine Whitman

"The sign in the Salt Lake City Public Library read "Make Your Own Native American Flute: One-Week Class by Master Flute-Maker Bill Hughes." I was intrigued. I had been playing the NAF for six years, and loved the easy free-form improvisation of the instrument; so different from the classical silver flute I had studied so seriously when I was in my teens. I registered for the class"... Read on: Download NAF

You can contact Ms. Whitman at EW Email.

Listen to Ms. Whitman's NAF: Download DecemberSnow

Author Bio:  Elaine Whitman started to play the classical flute when she was nine years old and studied with virtuoso Julius Baker when she was in high school. When she got to Boston University, Elaine took a new direction in life that led to becoming a professional educator –– first as an elementary school teacher and then as a consultant to business and industry. This was followed by using her talents as as writer and speaker in the field of domestic violence awareness. She began playing the Native American Flute in 1998. In her so-called retirement years, she expresses herself creatively with music and photography. She brings her music into hospice and poetry recitals with her husband, Neal, who took up poetry in his retirement. Together they create haiga – her photographs combined with his haiku poems. Elaine and Neal met getting their Doctor of Education degrees at Columbia University's Teachers College and, on May 20, 2011, celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary.