Tutti frutti - Editor's Letter

The sound of music brings comfort, eases pain and relieves tension. It even helps people with memory gaps due to old age or trauma reorient themselves and recall forgotten events. Like scent, which Marcel Proust famously extolled for its memory-jogging effects, sound can conjure up the past.

Hearing Little Richard sing on a TV commercial recently brought to my mind a vivid image of my baby sitter, Elmina. She and I were laughing and dancing throughout the house to Tutti Frutti, while my baby brother stood absolutely still in his playpen, mesmerized by our movements. I felt the sweat-popping heat of that August afternoon and tasted the sweet iced tea I gulped down while Elmina played I'm Just a Lonely Guy on the flip side. (Remember flip sides?) Replaying those songs in my mind's ear and recalling those dances with Elmina makes me happy.

Without doubt, music can move us to laughter or tears, but can it directly affect our bodies? We know that drumming lifts the spirit, for example, but does it also facilitate physical recovery? In Sound Healing (page 70), Jill Neimark investigates whether the reverberations of gongs, strings or the human voice can enhance our health. Now that scientists can track how the brain processes sound, its effects don't seem to be limited to mood and memories.

The first time Jill heard the otherworldly tone generated by a quartz singing bowl she wanted one. "It resonated through the room--you could feel the vibration in your body," she says. There are now four bowls in her collection. "Listening to that sound is like an active meditation. It moves you into this restful place. Within 30 seconds of hearing the sound, I start to feel peaceful."

I don't have a singing bowl yet, but--feelings of peacefulness being hard to come by--I'm planning on buying one soon. I'm also going to follow the advice of a famous jurist to take a music bath once or twice a week. "You will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body," said Oliver Wendell Holmes. Of course, Justice Holmes passed on in 1935, so he wasn't referring to Little Richard--but that was his misfortune.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group