OPUS Musicians Richard Kensington (Bodhran, Ukelele, Voice), Nick Cutts (Bassoon, Guitar, Voice) and Sarah Matthews (Fiddle, Viola, Voice) at Derbyshire Children’s Hospital – March 2013
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When we work in hospital we never know who we are likely to meet and what reaction we will get to our music. Mostly people react positively to us when we arrive with our instruments, sometimes people join in with us but it is rare to find someone with instrument at the ready and desperate to do some playing!
The other day we were invited into a room where two nurses were just finishing a treatment on a little girl. Her mum and another visitor were with her. We played a piece and her face lit up. Then I noticed that she had a ukulele on her bed, so I switched from playing bodhran to ukulele. She was really pleased about that so I tuned up her uke for her and she showed us the song she knew and we all joined in and played together. She played really well and put so much energy into her song that it was a real joy to watch and play along with her. We had a little chat about music and then did some more playing. We played another song and as Sarah and Sarah played and sang the words I sang the chords and the girl started to join in on the Uke. After about 4 times round the song she had it and again she played along with real vigor even saying that she was enjoying herself so much she didn’t want to go home which she was scheduled to do later that day.
Sarah had a copy of the words and the chords with her so she let the girl have them. We left the room to the sound of the girl playing away on her ukuele with all the adults in the room singing along and saying that if she has to come back to hospital she will make sure it is on a Tuesday when we are in.
I play music everyday and although it is always a pleasure it was a real gift to be confronted with the unadulterated joy that this little girl had in playing her music. She devoured the chance of learning something new and delighted in everyone playing together. Seeing her play reminded me why I started playing in the first place.
It’s a great pleasure to be spending time in Brighton this week, working alongside the lovely Kate Murdoch at the invitation of Rhythmix to deliver a week of Music in Healthcare training to a group of 10 trainees. We have a great group with broad-ranging backgrounds and interests which should make for a really rich week of learning for all of us.
Today was spent in the training room, enjoying music-making together, beginning to generate shared repertoire within the group, and looking at the background to arts/music in health in the UK today. Lots for everyone to take in from today, but a great start. Tomorrow will be another training room day, exploring music-making on a one-to-one basis before heading off to the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital together on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons to make music on the wards with children and young people, their visitors and staff.
Many thanks to Rhythmix and Kate for the invitation. It’s great to be working with you.
Walking onto one of the wards today myself, Richard, Sarah and Roxy observed the space and it was suggested by Sarah and Richard that we spread out around the ward which was in a horse shoe shape with private rooms on the side. This meant that as we dispersed around the room we had to listen out for what each other were playing and respond sensitively to each other as our aim was for us all to be engaged in interactions. On first entering the space we played Sunshine in my heart, an uplifting song. On my left hand side there was a young boy, his father and his sister. The father was hugging the young boy and swaying to the music. Richard handed the young boy and the farther a shaker, which they took with enthusiasm. However, the young girl was reluctant and did not take the shaker. Despite this she sat with her brother and father whilst we played the song. When the song ended the father and young boy requested more. So I conversed with Sarah who was with Roxy on the other side of the room and she signalled to Richard who had gone into one of the side rooms. We then began playing another song Zamina. The father and his son started playing instantly and I could see that the young girl was interested in having a shaker of her own so I went and got one for her out of the box. After the first time round playing Zamina I could hear the father singing the harmony to the songs melody and he had placed his mouth near the ear of his son and was singing this harmony softly. Half way through Zamina the mother had returned to the young boy’s bed side, at first she sat down and picked up a magazine and seemed uninterested. Then all of a sudden she started dancing and so I handed her a shaker, and by the end of the song the whole family were playing and dancing. During their musical interaction the family shared a precious moment where they were group hugging and were swaying in unison to the song. We then played yellow bird and the dancing and singing continued. Jane Edwards (2011) writes how using music is valuable for parent and infant bonding and in this musical interaction I was able to witness the family bonding with each other.
I am thoroughly enjoying doing my placement with OPUS and I have had some fantastic musical interactions with the children, their families and the staff at both Nottingham and Leicester hospital. I have also learnt a lot from taking moments to stand back and watch the OPUS musicians Nick, Richard and Sarah in their musical interactions. On one particular afternoon I also experienced the lesson of ‘‘Have No Expectations’. This is something Nick had mentioned in the musician training course that I attended in October of last year. During my afternoon at the hospital I found that we mainly played and then vacated the space as most people seemed to enjoy listening but not wanting to take up the offer of playing a percussion instrument or singing along.
After a morning of rewarding Social interactions it did seem to move more slowly for me. However, as the OPUS musicians reminded me, in the hospital space we are there first and foremost as musicians and if that is what required at that time that is what we do. This was a good lesson to revisit because being a musician and playing repertoire is just as important as the more social interactions. Ronald Borcazon (2004) Writes how “listening to music can be considered interactive if it is purposeful in nature” (9).I would consider all the music used in the hospital purposeful in nature as its aim is to first and foremost to create a positive atmosphere. My lesson from this afternoon was that I do not need to have a full on social musical interaction to have a positive effect on the space and that allowing people to just listen to the music is a very important part of OPUS has to offer.
A great evening of training and music-making last night with a group of young people and volunteers from the Drop Inn in Belper, Derbyshire. We are working with these young people, developing their musical and leadership skills and working towards taking music sessions into their local care home. A fascinating and challenging project but should be really rewarding for everyone involved.
Walking through the wards this morning, we came on to one ward and Nick had gone ahead to observe the atmosphere on the ward. Whilst he was making his assessment Sarah and I began playing the song “I can see clearly now the rain has gone”. We began the song instrumentally and in a calming manner, and then we wandered into a bay area. Once in the bay I introduced the vocal line to the song.
As we played the song a young toddler from a different area of the ward expressed an interest in the music. Nick handed the toddler an egg shaker, as we played through a variety of songs and pieces of music, she continued to play along. After a while she became interested in my guitar and so I sat next to her in the ward space. I then invited her to strum the guitar, which she accepted and then proceed to say the words ‘music’. To acknowledge this verbal expression I sang the word ‘music’ back to her. As she strummed the guitar I alternated between the chords C major and G major. She strummed the chords in various ways and I used my voice to mimic the strumming pattern she performed. Sarah and Nick proceed onto the next bay, I felt compelled to follow and the toddler also came with us to the next bay. Here we continued our musical interaction, briefly moving from the guitar to the xylophone and then back to the guitar. We finished this interaction with a funky version of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ in C Major.
What I realised from this musical interaction was that it was not important for me to follow Sarah and Nick into the next bay, and It could have affected my musical interaction with the toddler. However, I was fortunate enough that this did not happen and it actually gave the toddler the opportunity to investigate the other instruments available to her. This time it actually worked well but it is something that I will be aware of in future musical interactions.
After waving the toddler goodbye I looked around the environment and observed the space to be calm and relaxed. Later when we left this space Nick informed Sarah and me that when he had inspected the ward at the beginning of the session the ward was actually very busy and stressful. I could not help wonder if the music may have been responsible for this change in atmosphere. In ‘Music and the young mind’ Harris (2009) writes that “Music can have a calming effect on us although we may not be very conscious of it” (19). Reflecting on my experience and this statement I cannot help but feel that this was the case on this occasion.
Tuesday 29th Jan at Leicester Children’s Hospital, working with Sarah Steenson and Nick Cutts. We began work playing on Ward 12, progressed through to Ward 28 and finished the morning in Ward 14. A busy morning that finished quite late. The afternoon was productively spent only on Ward 10 for the whole time. I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of movement to music on this particular day, all day long…..
A father joined us in our music, singing to his daughter in her wheelchair initially. She was smiling so much that her gas breathing mask kept slipping off. We played Twinkle Twinkle, and a few other songs, and then progressed to a gentle waltz with the suggestion that they might share some rocking movements together. Dad needed no encouragement from us really and for several minutes the two of them engaged in lovely eye contact and moved back and forth with the wheelchair rolling to and fro on the floor fullly engaged in a beatiful dance.
Over to another ward, and we met up with an enthusiastic mother and her autistic son. She spent quite a while talking to me about how she had worked with her son in his early youth to develop his tolerance to touch, and this was evident as they danced together to our music while we played a mixture of Polkas, Hornpipes and Schottisches in the waiting area and outside their private room.
Another ward led us to meet a family with a toddler sitting in a toy car. She listened to our playing and started to wiggle from side to side. Her dancing developed and became more exaggerated. Nick started to sing “I’m in a Dancing Mood” which enabled us to progress through the song, changing the lyrics to suite the occasion – “I’m in a Singing Mood” ….”Wiggling Mood” etc etc.
Just around the corner, we found a mother and little baby, seemingly with some learning difficulties, and across the other side of the room a young girl in a wheelchair with the most amazing stripey tights on! We played Twinkle Twinkle and the mother sang to her baby and held her in the closest hug in her arms, and began to dance. Those stripey tights also started moving in time to the music. We played the Mazurka de St Pierre and Off to California, and there was much movement to be seen and pleasure exchanged just by the sharing of those musical moments.
In the afternoon we met up with a male patient we had seen before the previous visit and shared some music on the guitar. We all had a similar experience today with the young man playing on Sarah’s guitar with her as we sang. Nick then approached with an improvised song and music in Em. The chord progression was predictable enough for me to join in with an improvised melody. The lyrics Nick created were all about the patient’s name and how the song was made specially for him. The patient beamed with joy and his upper body became energised enough to lean away from the pillow and move about in the bed to the music.
In all the days that I have worked in hospital so far, I don’t think I have ever noticed quite as much of a physical response by so many people on the same day. Just coincidence? Maybe it was the way we were playing this day – I cannot say. But I did go away thinking of the uplifting feeling that I know I get when I have been dancing – the positive hormones that are released when you share music and movement with another human being – and I felt very strongly that we had brought a pretty special cultural dimension to these people’s day in hospital.
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I had a great experience at the very start of the day; we had entered the ward space already playing. As the ward was very quite I was playing at a very low volume, we had gathered round the bed of a young boy who was very much interested in the music and he knew Sarah and Richard well. I had also met this young boy two weeks before and he remembered my face. When we started playing the song I was the furthest away from the young boy. I think this made it difficult for him to hear what I was playing and so he requested for me to come and stand by his bedside. I experienced this invite as enthusiasm for the music and this enthusiasm became even more evident when we played the song Zamina. He was eager to have this song replayed; as there were other patients on the ward it was important to play other songs in between Zamina. Initially, Sarah, Richard and I sang Zamina at a well projected volume, eventually the young boy began to join in. However, by the fourth time of playing the song the young boy’s singing was a lot louder, I had lowered the volume of my singing voice and eventually the young boy was singing on his own. I found it moving to see him passionate about singing this song. He also wanted to invite the nursing staff and other people who were on the ward at the time to join in and sing along. However, some were too self conscious to join in and the nursing staffs were very busy. However this did not stop him enjoying the moment, building a musical relationship with myself and the other musicians, as well as increasing his confidence in his own vocal expression.
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