Radio Workshop

Music Therapy (Transcript)

by Catherine Fenollosa

CRF: Walk into Mount Moriah Baptist Church on 127th and 5th Avenue on any given wednesday, and you'll hear this:

(bring up music full)

CRF: Singing in front of a packed house are 24 former drug addicts. Dressed in gold and maroon robes, the men and women sway back and forth as they sing "Guide My Feet," a song

about living life with support and purpose.

(music)

Tape: My name is Cheryl Scott. I've been singing with the choir for 13 years. I'm 41 years

old.

CRF: Before Cheryl joined the choir, life on the streets left her fragile and sick.

Tape: There were times if I wanted to get high, I would get money and run. There was a lot

of times I didn't want to have sex. Sometimes I had to do that, to sell my body. :13

CRF: But13 years ago, Cheryl's mother drove her to the Addicts Rehabilitation Center. She weighed less than one hundred pounds. The center helped her come off drugs. And Cheryl discovered her recovery in music:

Tape: It inspires me to move on. I don't even know if it sounds right, but it keeps me sober, it keeps me happy. :08

CRF: The choir began almost by accident. It's an offshoot of the Addicts Rehabilitation Center founded by James Allen in the late 1950s. In the 1970s, Allen was looking for ways to raise money. A musician himself, he decided to create a choir that would sing for fundraisers. He says it was also a concrete way to show society that addicts can be rehabilitated:

Tape: If the people who use drugs could be salvaged, and they can, we would have more qualified doctors, lawyers, school teachers and everything else. People who are highly qualified, drop out of the mainstream of life behind drugs. :17

But Allen soon discovered the choir was much more than a money maker. It gave addicts a way to escape from their problems in music rather than turning back to drugs. The singing kept them focused and disciplined. Susan Feiner is the Associate Director of NYU's Music Therapy program. Music therapy dates back to ancient cultures but she says it became more widely used after World War II, when soldiers returned from fighting... shell-shocked or unresponsive... Hospitals played music to help veterans reconnect to society. Fiener says music is a way to communicate when words aren't enough:

Tape: "Much of the research looks at those people who use substances or who can't handle pressure, strain, or overburden w/socio-economic, personal or whatever those stresses are, and don't have an ability to sooth themselves, to find a way to make themselves feel better, to relate and alcohol and drugs become a way of feeling better. Well playing and singing music makes people feel better and not dependent on a substance :29

Fiener says replacing music for drugs as a way to relate to society is natural since people start out as musical beings in the mother's womb... listening to the heartbeat.

Tape: "So it's no surprise that someone's made a lot of money giving tapes of the heartbeat to give to newborns. Music has been our first way, rythem of connecting with others. " :09

Feiner says when recovering drug addicts connect to others through music, they create a new for identity for themselves as singers. Music Therapist Gillian Langdon says music can blend together a person's competing emotions and thoughts:

Tape: "So you can do in music the past, the present, the sad, the happy, the traumatic, the wonderful, all together." :13

In their drug rehabilitation, James Allen says members of the gospel choir in Harlem change the behavior of their drug using days.. Instead of hanging out on the streets and medicating their problems away... they show up for choir practice at least three times a week.

Tape: "A lot of people don't realize but the Real rehab comes about in being able to refocus your mind and your thought process so you don't think about getting high. The real rehab is psychological." :19

(ambi: gospel choir singing)

Back at Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Harlem... Sharon sings soprano in the choir:

Tape: "I used crack, I smoked mar, I sniffed heroin. I did just about everything except shoot dope." :07

She has been drug free for 4 and a half years. The music soothes her, she says, especially the song Almost Home:

(bring up song: almost home)

Tape: "It just reminds me of where I came from, how far I've come and how far I'm going to go because I'm on a mission to do better things for myself and my family." :15

(keep music up)

The ARC Choir is recording a CD for release and plans to perform at the Apollo this summer. For Columbia Radio News, I'm Catherine Fenollosa.