Healing music

I've told this story on here before, but it seems an appropriate place to tell it again.  When I was a young buck, maybe 15 or 16 years old, I played bass trombone and upright bass in a stage band.  We played the crazy, fun stuff of the big band era.  The only gig we could ever get was at Susque-View, which was a 'home' attached to a hospital in my home town.  We didn't get paid, but it was a gig.  The home was a good one, with a caring staff.  It was clean, well organized, and provided good care.  When my grandmother died, she died in that home.  So once every few months we'd go up there and play some of our songs that we'd been working on.  The candy stripers and nurses would wheel patients/residents in.  Many of them were confined to wheelchairs or bed.  The two folks who stuck in my mind the most was a gray old lady who was so weak that she couldn't sit up.  If they propped the bed up, they had to strap her in or gravity would pull her down to a slump.  She waggled a finger at a nurse and asked to have the blankets pulled off her feet.  "You're feet will get cold."  "I don't mind.  Just pull the blankets off."  The nurse did, and we in the band nearly cried.  She wanted to tap her toes together but the blankets were too heavy.  It's the closest she could come to dancing, and by God she was going to DANCE!  Another woman had had several strokes and was completely paralyzed but for her right wrist.  She could move her right hand just a little bit.  She was strapped into an electric wheelchair that had all the controls on the right for her.  She got that wheelchair into a dance floor of her own making and danced with it just moving her wrist to the beat. 

I agree with the Henry in the video.  Music is a gift from above. 

- Zurf

Really great stories.  Music is a healer.

zurf that was a powerfull story,it really shows the power that music has.

Thats really a moving story roger

Great stories!!!!

This is the reason I would love to teach more people to play guitar. I'm sans student right now, but have my fingers crossed.

That was cool Z - Thanks for the share

Thanks for sharing the vid

I have a binder that houses many of the songs I've written.  In the front of the binder is a copy of a speech made by the director of music at Boston University (Karl Paulnack) to the parents of the freshman class.  The copy was given to me by a music friend several years ago and has provided inspiration when I've been in a music "funk". It discusses the healing power of music.  Here's a link to the speech:

http://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/cen … vatory.pdf

DE

I have not seen m.b. on here for at least over a year and I have wondered where she went also,she seemed like such a sweet girl.