by Linda Silva
At a conference I attended last year a speaker asked audience members a series of questions about the place of music in their lives, yet couldn’t get a consensus. We had all come to it at different ages, it seemed, played different instruments, learned by different methods, were professionals, were hobbyists, were teachers. Music was folded into our lives in as many different ways as their were people in the room. Finally she asked: How many of you were saved by music?
And every hand went up.
This is the thing all musicians have in common, I’ve found, whether it’s a successful singer who’s found a career they love, a guitarist who looks forward to weekend gigs with their friends, or the not-too-athletic middle-schooler who realizes they can impress their friends with ragtime. Music came into their lives and made it better.
I was saved my second year in college, when I had just transferred to a new school and was slogging through what I thought was the beginning of a speech pathology major. While I found the subject interesting, I remember feeling flat all the time—not a lot of stress but no leaps of joy either. And then I took a music class and found what I had been missing. I was intrigued by how different the department was from others--the sometimes fluid, sometimes halting efforts coming from the practice rooms, the ensembles rehearsing in room 150, the students in the hallways loudly arguing the merits of jazz over classical or vice-versa. I badly wanted to be part of it. Luckily I had taken piano lessons throughout childhood and studied voice in high school so I had just enough skills to squeak through an audition. I plunged in, worked hard, and figured out more than I should have as I went along. I was challenged, I was happy, and I met the man who would be my husband by barging into the grand piano room and pointing out he had overstayed his time by ten minutes. He became a composer, I became a teacher, and music has continued to save us for 27 years.
More dramatically, music can save by helping stroke victims recover, by teaching young parents how to bond with their babies, or by allowing tired workers to de-stress at the end of a long day. I can’t help but think there’s a bit of the divine in it.
Ask any musician for their how-music-saved-me story. One day your child may be lucky enough to have one. Or you.