Rachel’s Blog

I want to draw attention to this wonderful choir based in London. Called Sing for Joy, it is made up of people with Parkinson’s Disease, and their friends and carers. It was initiated by two women who were diagnosed with PD and did not want to sit back and be medicated.

I heard these women speak at a conference last year, and there was something so inspiring about them. I felt they refused to be pathologised in a way so common in the healthcare system; you are your disease. And I felt it must be so empowering to feel, as someone with a life-changing condition, that there is a way of self-medicating, that something you are doing is helping, and you’re not just sitting back and letting someone prescribe drugs for you to passively swallow.

In fact, there is something about singing which is the antithesis of ‘passively swallowing’. Singing is powerfully life-affirming; I am still breathing. This is my voice. My voice. Do you hear me? Listen.

A friend of mine, a freelance writer/philosopher/theologian (who’s blog can be found here) has just scuppered my attempt to convince people in my risk assessment that singing is safe, by saying the following…

“Singing is one of the most dangerously subversive, creative, life-affirming, anti-consumerist activities in the universe. “

Damn!

In November I traveled with a young people’s peace delegation to Israel/Palestine. You can read all about it here. Singing was an important part of the trip for me for various reasons. The most memorable singing times happened when…

• in the olive groves near Jenin at a Fairtrade Co-operative pressing plant, a group of young men got out a drum and started singing and dancing, full of pride
• we stood at the foot of the wailing wall and listened…
• singing on the bus with our American friends… swing low, pick a bale o’ cotton, belle mambe
• humming a taize chant at the airport to stay calm during the strip-search.
• a man who we met in D’heisha refugee camp, Bethlehem, who spent ten years in Israeli prisons, who sang to stay sane over 40-day stints of solitary confinement.
• the verse from Fred Marchant’s (who travelled with us) poem ‘First Song Again’

“Trust above all the imminent return

Of the small, but persistent

Impulse to sing.”

On 28th October I joined a Singing for the Brain session supported by the Alzheimers Society. It was a cold, rainy day, but despite this there was a good number of people there – 20 in total with 9 clients and 11 carers/musicians/volunteers. The session began with tea and cake and as people arrived they were given name labels.

An opening song welcomed everybody and affirmed each person by name – always an important aspect of building relationships within a group. An interesting action to this song was to pass around a long ribbon which each person held – and then for everyone to raise their arms, guiding people’s hands with the ribbon, if they were unsure or unco-ordinated for any reason, and it was a way of linking each person together.

My criticism of the session was that it perhaps ‘rattled through’ the repertoire a bit too quickly. We really covered a lot of songs and at times I had the feeling that the clients’ voices were being ‘pasted over’. Another aspect which I, and perhaps others, found difficult was the noise level, especially during the songs which included percussion instruments. This may have been because of the acoustics of the room.

A real challenge for people providing participatory music for older people with dementia is being able to guide them through repertoire in a way which allows that person to express themselves and to engage with others around them.

This session was enjoyed by most of the participants present. It also felt like a great way of bringing together carers going through similar situations. One woman I spoke to who was caring for her husband who had had a stroke commented most strongly on the social aspect of the singing group, and the importance of being with other people, which ties in with a school of thought that social relationships are a major determinant on health.