I sing in a little choir at the retirement community where I live. We give several concerts a year, and before each one we do a rehearsal for the residents from the memory unit. A dozen or more residents come to hear us at the rehearsal, some in wheel chairs. What I have noticed is that when we start singing, many of the residents perk up. Some even sing along, somehow remembering all the lyrics from songs they learned long ago. What is it about music that touches parts of our memory that nothing else can?
Wendy Lesser has written about the power of music to take us out of our ordinary experience:
The springs of our reaction to music lie deeper than thought… Part of what music allows me is the freedom to drift off into a reverie of my own, stimulated but not constrained by the inventions of the composer. And part of what I love about music is the way it relaxes the usual need to understand. Sometimes the pleasure of an artwork comes from not knowing, not understanding, not recognizing.
And Dr. Oliver Sacks, noted neurologist, author of Awakenings and many books on the brain, has noted , “The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.” HIs book Musicophilia describes the many ways music touches us and activates areas of the brain we might not activate any other way.
Have you ever been in a grocery stores or elevator, and a song comes on that just takes you back to a memory from long ago? Maybe it was a song that played while you were in high school, or a song that you loved when you were dating a certain person. We now know that music evokes broad memories in the brain that involve more than just one region of the brain. It has even been used with alzheimers patients to help them stay positive and focused. This story of a patient who has used a playlist to help him manage his Alzheimers is very inspiring.
Looking out at the audience at our concerts, I see residents, slumped in their chairs, suddenly smile and start to sing along with us. It is an experience that reminds me that we have much to learn about the human brain, but we do know one thing for sure — music awakens us to memories we might have thought were long lost and locked away.