More than a billion people are living with mental-health disorders, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported this year.
“For every single therapist that we have in the United States, there are 350 people looking for that type of support,” said Trina Clayeux, founder of Stand Together, in a provocative article titled More Therapists Won’t Fix The Mental-Health-Care Crisis. While professional one-on-one counseling is a solution, clinical care is not enough, she argues, even if a person sees a counselor regularly. It’s critical to identify, learn, and utilize other ways to cope with, process, and release one’s emotions.
Clayeux argues for community being an additional component to a mentally healthy life. Music is one of the main ways people are finding community in the Hudson Valley. Listening to and making music can be a lifeline.
Events combining mental wellness and music are increasing, starting with the first O+ Festival in an event centered on the exchange of art and music for healthcare. BLOK Party is a gathering of BIPOC musicians, artists and makers from the region. Heart of Midtown is a free mental-health, art and music festival created to connect the community. Into the Well Dance Parties are a collaboration between DJ Dee Dee Dame, Ruben, and the Mental Health Association. Rewind Unplugged is presenting a new series of performances and conversations about coping, creativity, music, and mental health.
Music listening
David Cruz, known locally as DJ Jams Bond, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and artist who co-founded Kingston Techno, a community-driven electronic music and arts collective creating dance spaces that are safe and inclusive to all. Cruz deejays a variety of events, including Skate Time in Accord, the Switch’s Salsa Nights, and weddings and dance parties. He believes there are many different ways music can impact one’s mental health, emotion being a major factor. “There’s listening to music. There’s experiencing music as if we are dancing or playing it,” Cruz says. “Experiencing music as a listener, you are perceiving sound and that sound of those songs, that type of experience is more of a receiving aspect. And that could bring up a whole range of emotions. Music is one of the most human things that we have.”
Music allows people to tap into something and be very present, Cruz explains.
Research that has shown exposure to diverse musical genres and artists can broaden perspectives, challenge stereotypes, and foster empathy.
“In terms of community, it’s just about being able to relate to people. It’s a connective tissue between a lot of us and the community. Music can help others feel more connected and less isolated if they are participating in the music, if they are dancing together or clapping together, or there’s some activity in music creation. I think there’s participation involved with that which is very present and can be done without our usual sense of language and interpretation.
“There’s another way of connection that is still very human and still feels like a language even if it doesn’t necessarily bear words,” Cruz continues. “Everyone can be involved in music, and when people are present with it, it removes a lot of the feelings of disconnection that people may be prone to feeling. Experiencing music in a dance setting allows one to be present with themself and their body, and then it allows them to be present with their surroundings and the people in their surroundings.”
Cruz notes the shift in energy while he’s playing music for a crowd. “What I notice is that people feel moved or changed after experiencing a dance event or a concert. People come into that space and leave slightly different. There’s emotion that’s tapped into.”
Music helps unite people. It brings all generations and different cultural backgrounds together, especially music with which people are familiar. “Most of the time,” Cruz sums up, “people are leaving with some level of positive outcome from the power of community bonding over music.”
Scientifically, music can strengthen your brain, too. A heady 2023 medical tome, “Cognitive Crescendo: How Music Shapes the Brain’s Structure and Function,” concluded that “music listening improves cognitive functions such as memory, attention span, and behavioral augmentation. In rehabilitation, music-based therapies have a high rate of success for the treatment of depression and anxiety and even in neurological disorders.”
Music making
According to “Your Brain on Music: How Tunes Can Impact Your Mind,” researchers see music as a universal phenomenon that utilizes a myriad of brain resources. “Engaging with music is among the most cognitively demanding tasks a human can undergo, and it is identified across all cultures. Therefore, it underscores its fundamental human nature.”
Writer, artist and community organizer Callie Mackenzie sees music as an opportunity for her to process her feelings. “Sometimes it can be hard to talk about something, but singing about it is easier. So many times, people come up to me at a show and get very emotional and tell me how those lyrics sum up something they were feeling and couldn’t express it, or a message they needed to hear. Performing music is a tender, intimate conversation I can have with many people at once.”
Ginger Winn, a songwriter, a singer and producer living in the Hudson Valley, has been using music as a coping mechanism since she started playing guitar and songwriting as a twelve-year-old. After losing her dad, she turned to music instinctively, writing the song “To, Dad” the day her father passed this previous year.
“Writing helped me process grief that felt too big to face head-on,” she says. “Putting my thoughts on paper and shaping something beautiful from something painful was healing. Whenever I’m going through something difficult, I write a song. It helps me release what I’m feeling and makes the moment feel less heavy, almost like it loses some of its power once it’s written down.”
Making music activates more parts of our brain neurologically than most other activities, says Cruz, because it taps into so many different parts of our body and our brain; the emotional level, the auditory level; and the participation of sounds and rhythms and timbres and harmonies. People can remember things immediately if they hear a song. “When people hear familiar music that they’ve heard, then there’s some level of experience there with memory and emotion.”
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