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MUSICIANS ON CALL - It's not just entertainment anymore!
When I first left classical music to pursue my calling as a songwriter and healer, I found myself in the typical position of a 10pm to 2 am musician, performing in whatever club would have me-basement music rooms, biker bars, and smoke-filled lounges throughout the Midwest. This presented several major obstacles-I was generally a morning person, I had a young daughter who needed her mom to tuck her in at night, I preferred to perform my original music rather than the staple of cover tunes most bars prefer, and I had a debilitating allergy to tobacco smoke. Halfway through my sets, I would lose my voice and often come down with bronchitis afterwards. I had to find another niche.
While in college, I often visited a 92 year old woman in a nursing home and she begged me to perform a concert for the residents that Christmas. The response was so wonderful, the pay was decent, and the gig was so easy to get that I decided to make it a regular part of my schedule. My sister had been a nurse in an Alzheimer's ward, so the usual smell and unpleasant sights one often sees in nursing homes were not a shock. I just felt bad for the guy in the wheelchair in the front row that had been wheeled in first and now had to desperately use the bathroom within the first song of the performance. Overall, however, I found it highly rewarding. The residents were just happy to hear some live music that was pleasant to listen to.
After my grandfather's death in 1998, I branched into hospice performances, but found that many of the residents were too sick to come to the recreation room to listen. Family members began asking if I could come to the rooms to perform a private song bedside. This became a regular part of my gigs, and I enjoyed it even more than the group performances because it was so intimate and so special to the individual. I began to use my sensitivity and empathic feelings to figure out the best song in my repertoire to fit the mental, emotional, and physical state of the patients I played for, and the smiles and immediate change in mood were all the reward I needed. Not everyone wanted a bedside performance, but the ones who did enjoyed it immensely.
During this time, I also discovered the wide-open field of Music Therapy. I began interviewing at graduate schools around the country, trying to find a good fit for my own research, theories, and practices, but was told that I was too "new age" for most schools and that there was a difference between music "therapy" and music "healing." I never understood this, as I feel one is merely the means to the end, but I held strong to my passionate belief that we are just barely tapping the surface of this field. I knew that I would not be alive today if it weren't for the healing powers of music in my own life, and I felt that there was a whole cross section of people who needed to hear and experience live music, but could never access it due to lifestyle, geographic location, age, or health issues. I wanted to help change this.
In 2000, my career took some leaps and bounds and I found myself getting divorced and moving to New York City to further my commercial career. Before September 11th, I had no problem finding regular gigs through several promoters and agents, so I found myself back on the club scene. Since I'd enjoyed my nursing home and hospice concerts so much, however, I began developing community music and arts programs and distributing information on the healing powers of music in music industry circles. At networking meetings, I would start heated debates on the responsibility of artists, managers, promoters, and record labels to at least acknowledge the powerful tool they were so often misusing and abusing. As the technology, research, and public awareness grew, the more the music industry began to acknowledge that music was not just for entertainment anymore.
In the fall of 2001, I attended a press conference and reception for the Beth Israel "Music Has Power Foundation for Neurological Research." It was there that I met Leslie Faerstein, Director of "Musician's On Call," an organization founded by two singer-songwriters like myself who found there was a huge need and hungry audience for bedside hospital performances. Thanks to the support of private donors and a prestigious list of rock and pop stars (i.e. Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, etc.), the New York based non-profit was growing fast and expanding its programs to encompass the adult and pediatric cancer wards at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Rivington House AIDS center, the Village Nursing Home, the Harlem Hospital Children's Ward, and others. They were in need of volunteer musicians to handle the increased demand for services, and I was eager to get back to practicing my musical bedside manner.
I attended the orientation and began performing twice a month in September 2002. A volunteer guide with a list of patients who want live music meets me at the facility and we go room to room as I perform one song per patient-often performing up to 30 different songs and for 40-60 people, including family members and staff. I perform mostly my original songs and simply ask the patient if they are in the mood for a particular genre, happy and uplifting, or slow and soothing. From that determination, plus age, religion, and ethnic considerations, I use my intuition to choose the song that will have the most desired effect for the patient.
Sometimes, if the occasion calls for it or the patient is hesitant about accepting a song, I'll pull an old cover tune or silly song out of my hat, which usually brings about joyous laughter or tears of joy and gratitude. Recently, in the adult cancer ward of Memorial Sloan, a priest was visiting a nun incognito and when they requested an Irish tune, so not knowing their religious inclination, I broke out into a rockus rendition of "Maids When You're Young, Never Wed an Olde Man...for he's got no fal lu rum and he's lost his ding du rum.." They began roaring with laughter and she forgot her chemo for awhile.
Another beautiful young Indian woman smiled with tears in her eyes as I performed one of my favorite hope and inspiration compositions, "Falling Down," almost making me choke up mid-song. Afterwards she proclaimed, "You took my pain away!!!" Suffering from an inflamed fibroid in my abdomen at the time, I responded, "It took my pain away too!" That's the beautiful thing-I receive as much healing as they do.
Performing for Musician's On Call isn't for every musician, however. It takes certain strength of character and humility that many do not possess because they've bought into the illusion of popularity, stardom, and ego-gratification. It's not easy to watch a teenager puke in a bucket in the middle of a song because he had radiation treatments that morning, or to watch a mother inject a syringe of medicine into a tube in her 18 month old child's chest as you sing "You are my Sunshine" because it's her favorite song.
Some musicians need positive feedback and applause and might have a problem if a cancer patient falls asleep during a song, or an AIDS patient gives them the finger after a song-even though it's the first emotional response that patient might have shown in weeks and the nurses consider it a milestone. Then there's the possibility of bacteria in low-immunity cases, so a musician must be able and willing to don a mask, gown, and latex gloves and learn to play a guitar through rubber. It requires a musician to give 110% and be willing to receive nothing but gratitude for a momentary escape from pain and looming mortality-to take that patient's mind off of their condition for just a short while. I've been told a lullaby or soothing folk song works better than morphine to put a patient to sleep, and no painful needles accompany my music-only love, energy, compassion, and the Grace of God that they might somehow, on some level, be healed.
My fans at the cancer wards and at the PTSD clinic in the VA Hospital have said that I have been anointed by the hand of the Almighty--that I have a special gift to do what I do. I believe, however, that music is the gift and it's up to all of us to learn how to use it in the most positive, effective manner we can to benefit humankind.
I've sometimes received pretentious glances and heard unkind snickers from young residents who see our "Musicians on Call" nametags and try to belittle our presence there. I am tempted to ask them how many years they've been studying and practicing their healing craft, for I've spent 30 of my 34 years playing music, over fifteen years formally studying it, and 17 years performing professionally. This does not include the many years I have studied the human energy field, yoga, meditation, neuroscience, education, and ancient color and sound healing charts so that my body can further amplify the energy that flows through my verve pipe.
The reality, however, is that the doctors are the ones who get to go home to the big houses and drive the fancy cars on their fat salaries while I choose to volunteer my time and efforts, receiving no monetary compensation and going home to struggle as an artist in American society. We will continue our efforts to compile research, publicize the findings, and recruit the support of public figures and commercial artists to help spread the word. Unfortunately in America, less than 2% of music and arts programs are publicly funded, and it takes a media blitz of sensational proportion to create fundamental change in education, health care, and the music industry.
So even though the mayor of New York City recently instated a law prohibiting smoking in public restaurants and bars, I think I have found my live performance niche. My daughter is older now, I don't have to worry about my tobacco allergy, at least while I stay in New York, and I have found something with substance, purity, and a bright future to dedicate my life's work to. All I can hope is that others follow and that collectively, we might remember what it is we have forgotten about music and its purpose in our lives. In the meantime, I'll keep reaping the rewards of the services I provide, and when life starts to get a little rocky, I'll be grateful from the perspective these cancer patients, senior citizens, and hospitalized children have given me. Thanks Musician's On Call! I hope your programs branch out across America.
For more information on Musicians On Call, visit www.musiciansoncall.org or call 212-741-2709. To contact Pamela West, email pimpamjam@aol.com, call 212-502-8677, or write her c/o The Community Music & Arts Network, PO Box 33, Highlands, NJ 07732.
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