One of the early video images the world saw of Gabrielle
Giffords after last Jan. 8 showed her singing.

Her therapist was trying to get her to speak, but words weren’t
coming.

When she sang, though, her voice was clear and the words rolled
off her tongue in near-perfect enunciation.

“Music has special powers. It has charm, but more than that it
has medicine,” said jazz pianist Jeffrey Haskell, a longtime
University of Arizona music professor. “It has ways to excite parts
of people’s brains that just come alive, and it’s very helpful in
treating people, both people who are well and people who are
damaged.”

Music has been practiced as therapy since wounded soldiers
returned from World War I. Therapists in veterans hospitals quickly
embraced the notion of using music to reignite damaged areas of the
brain. Unlike speech, controlled by the left side of the brain,
music engages both sides of the brain. And because both sides of
the brain are involved, music is ideal for reigniting the brain’s
spark plugs, said longtime Tucson music therapist Barbara A.
Else.

“While a person who has had a traumatic brain injury immediately
may not be able to retrieve a word … when we tap into music … in an
area of the brain that controls rhythm and tempo, (the person) is
able to retrieve those words,” said Else, a senior adviser for
research and policy with the American Music Therapy
Association.

There are about 5,000 board-certified music therapists
practicing in the United States today, the association says, but
until recently, they have worked below the mainstream radar.

Until Giffords.

It’s sad that it took an event like the Jan. 8 shootings to
raise the profile of music therapy, Else said.

“It’s easy to believe when you see a congresswoman and everyone
knows her now and she’s recovering … in part because of music
therapy. Other things can be activated because of music,” added
musician Ben Folds, who will headline the Second Annual Concert for
Civility at Fox Tucson Theatre on Jan. 15.

“Music therapy is an important tool that we’re learning more and
more about. And it’s good to have a high-profile person who can
point out the benefits of it,” he said during a phone interview in
late December. “It was a small good thing to come out of something
horrible.”

Folds has taken classes in music therapy and has agreed to
testify in Washington, D.C., this spring on its benefits. He and
other advocates believe Giffords can be the poster child for
advancing music therapy as a medical tool that would be covered by
health insurance. Else said music therapy is covered in part in
some cases, but only to a small degree.

Folds and Haskell also hope that the spotlight shining on music
therapy also shines on public school music-education programs,
whose funding has been decimated in recent years.

“Music and arts education … is atrophying and is finding a hard
time elbowing its way into the political discourse,” Folds said. “I
think what’s happening is that people are far quicker to be
interested and believe in the benefits of music therapy. There’s a
lot of emotional energy that people put into music education going
away that is finding footing in music therapy.”

“I think anybody who’s a musician who has had a student – and
I’m no expert – and can see the light in their eyes as they put
together lyric and music and are able to deal with it, they realize
that they are really getting at something,” added Haskell. “The
synapses go off, and you can see it in their eyes.”

If you go

Second Annual Concert for Civility

•

Article source: http://azstarnet.com/lifestyles/fashion-and-style/the-magical-medicine-of-music/article_ca90d535-8826-5b40-a69c-295453dbeb17.html