Music has charms to soothe more than a savage breast
Former Woolwich resident Jennifer Jonas draws on her experience as a music therapist
MUSIC, AS WE ALL know, can be powerful stuff. It’s a palliative when we’re blue, a spice that flavours and colours the occasion. It can incite a feeling, or drag up memories decades past. Even the most basic lessons in life – our ‘ABCs’ and ‘123s’ – are taught to us by way of song. But applied with precision and care, music can also have a powerful restorative effect on people’s lives.
That’s the message of music therapist and Woolwich native Jennifer Jonas in her new book, Touching Lives, One Song at a Time.
“Over the 25 years I have just had so many wonderful moments that I wanted to share them in a book,” said Jonas from her home in Alabama.
She’ll be in Waterloo this weekend for a book signing. To mark 25 years as a music therapist, Jonas decided that she would share 25 stories drawn from her experience.
She says she hopes to touch her readers’ lives – as well as educate them on just how beneficial music therapy can be to people. “Whether it is to a child with Down syndrome, or an adult with Alzheimer’s, or for a person who is wanting to die a peaceful death.”
Jonas graduated from Elmira District Secondary School in 1983 and went on to study as a music educator. However, seeing her true calling elsewhere, Jonas then pursued her master’s in music therapy at Michigan State University.
“What I really wanted to do was to offer music to people who had a special need like the clients that I have sung to: Alzheimer’s, dementia, Down syndrome, where I could offer music to people who would truly benefit from it.”
Music therapy is still a relatively new practice in a clinical sense, so Jonas is hoping to raise awareness about how it works.
“What you’re doing is pretty much using music to reach a goal in somebody’s life,” she explains. “So that could be for a child with Down syndrome to help improve their speech or their walking. For an Alzheimer’s patient it may be to bring back memories; it may be to work on reality orientation like what month is it, what season is it.”
There are specific way to go about this.
“If I want my child to improve say fine-motor control, I may give them a drumstick and then we get to play the drums together,” she says. “They’re working on their fine motor grasp, but at the same time they’re creating music and so for them it’s just having fun – they don’t know they’re working on a skill.”
Sometimes, Jonas’ clients even discover through their sessions that they have a real passion and
exuberance for music – like young Darby Jones, who had Down syndrome.
“[The music therapy] inspired her to sing and dance, play the piano, and it wasn’t long before she wanted to take dance lessons.” Jonas recalls how Darby lit up when she was on stage, and how she instilled confidence in the other dancers and always shared the limelight.
When Darby passed away from cancer, her mother requested that Jonas sing her favourite song at her funeral – the song she sang every night – ‘You are my Sunshine.’
“It meant a lot to Darby’s mother, but that was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do.”
While music therapy is still a fairly novel concept to many, Emily Carruthers, music therapy placement coordinator at Wilfrid Laurier University, says that is changing.
“There’s music therapist working in big hospitals,” she says, like Sick Kids, Sunnybrook and Princess Margaret in Toronto. “Even here, Grand River Hospital has a couple music therapists that work in the Waterloo Region. Guelph has a few. So it’s starting to become more present in health care settings.”
Carruthers says she thinks music therapy is being increasingly recognized, nowadays, as complementary to more conventional treatments like psychotherapy.
But for Jonas, who has been practicing for 25 years, the benefits of music are undoubtedly clear – and in a certain way, universal.
“So that was my goal to touch people’s hearts but also to inspire people to sing to a loved one or ... if they cannot sing, then they could share a memory with a senior or read a story to a child. But my point is to spend time with an individual and be there with that person, and by doing that you will feel joy.”
The book signing will be held on July 15 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Chapters bookstore on 428 King St. N., Waterloo.