Monday, December 15, 2014

Gratitude Monday: Healing sounds

Writing yesterday’s post got me thinking about the healing properties of music.

The thing about music—especially in the Age of the Interwebs—is that it’s easy to acquire. A couple of clicks on a streaming site and a pair of earbuds, and you can be immersed in whatever type of music feeds your soul at any particular moment, whether it’s Jay Z or Prokofiev.

But also, as shown in this NPR story, creating music is a way for the bereaved and the broken to share their pain, and thereby mitigate it. When his six-year-old daughter Ana was killed two years ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School, jazz musician Jimmy Greene was devastated. It took him months to be able to face any sort of music, which was one of Ana’s great joys. But eventually he built an album around his daughter’s memory, Beautiful Life.


One of the cuts is Greene’s take on “Maybe”, one of Ana’s favorite songs, from the musical Annie. Greene’s soprano sax approximates his daughter’s voice beautifully.

You should listen to it.




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