Community Outreach & Public Engagement
Songwriting workshops as creative self-expression & Music as a tool for reconnecting with memory loss patients
Alzheimer’s and dementia are prevalent on both sides of my family.
I watched my grandfather forget who we were, and then forget how to breathe. I’m now witnessing the disappearance of my grandmother’s identity as her memories fall farther out of her reach.
A few years back, I watched a documentary called Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory. My mom, a Doctor of Psychology with a Bachelors of Art in Printmaking, had suggested it, familiar with my obsession with the brain. Social worker Dan Cohen presented something incredible: the use of song recordings to revive and reconnect with memory loss patients, some who were catatonic and unresponsive. Music is everywhere in the brain, wrapped around memory and language, entwined in our identities.
From that day, I have been captivated by this phenomenon and the power of music to awaken dormant neural pathways. During the summer of 2023, when I was back in Iowa for three months, I spent time with my paternal grandmother, Fontella, whose memory had been rapidly declining since a fall and long stay in hospice.
Watching her made me think about the extent to which our memories constitute us. Without them, we are bodies unanchored to the continuum of time. I watched my grandma sit on the couch, lost.
Inspired by the documentary and Cohen’s work, I showed my grandma old photos of when she was a child, standing next to her mom and dad, each of them holding a musical instrument, pictures of her aunts and uncles, all with their guitars and banjos.
We hadn’t had a conversation in days. She usually just whimpered and stared at the TV.
But then she started telling me the story behind the photos. Her dad’s mom had 13 kids. They would all get together and play old jazz and folk standards in the yard at the family home in Bucklin, Missourri, sometimes going across the creek and up the hill to the neighbors’ for jam sessions. She told me about how the local paper wrote an article about her grandmother and how she had taught all her kids to play an instrument and how impressive that was.
For a moment, my Grandma Fontella was back. She had tears in her eyes. Tears of joy and of remembering. I recognized her - the real her - in that moment.
Dan Cohen created the non-profit Music & Memory advocates for access to personal music in care facilities.
Currently, there is no Music & Memory certified center in Iowa City, with the closest being in Cedar Rapids. I would very much like to be part of this program and exchange with thought leaders in the area about what I can do to help with these efforts, as I have seen first-hand the bounds in quality of life for my own family.
Sometimes simple gestures can be the most powerful.
More about Music & Memory
Link to the documentary Alive Inside
Songwriting workshops as creative tools for self-expression.
Studies have shown the positive effects of creativity on well-being and in processing emotions.
What started as a desire to share my experiences as a songwriter with younger generations has since transformed into a real passion for not only the transmission of knowledge but also songwriting as a tool for children to express what they are going through.
It’s not easy to be a kid in this modern world. Depression is on the rise for children in America and suicide is now the second-leading cause of death among those ages 10–14, according to a National Alliance on Mental Illness report.
In 2021, I began implementing songwriting workshops at French public middle schools in underprivileged areas. During these workshops, we dive into song structure and themes and as a group work to create an original song, individually or in small groups for verses and together for the chorus. I assist the class with writing lyrics, thinking about rhymes and images, and creating melodies - though, in my experience, kids are very good with coming up with amazing melodies on their own. We then use a mobile recording setup to record individual and group vocals. For older kids, we are able to look at beat-making and computer-assisted composition and production.
An mp3 of the song is provided to the students at the end of the workshop.
During my fellowship at the University of Iowa, I intend to continue implementing songwriting workshops within the community. Even better if there is a local organization already involved in the area and we can collaborate together in inspiring future generations to lean on music and creative expression to deal with the stresses of their daily lives.
Houilles Middle School.
We spent the day talking with the 6th graders at Houilles Middle School in the Ile-de-France region of France about their experience of starting at a new school and what that was like for them. They talked about bullying and adapting to a more rigorous schedule, about being the youngest and feeling vulnerable and lost.
This is their song, in French, with the English lyrics: