My first song, Music Matters (listen on Ginger’s Songs page), tells two stories of the importance of music at each end of my life (verses) and all of my life in between (choruses).

The first verse recounts one of my earliest memories. In the early 1950s my father sang me to sleep every night with songs in which he changed the lyrics to be about me. He may not have been a major figure among the world’s great lyricists but he was, after all, composing nursery rhymes for his young daughter. And for little me he was the best…his efforts still remembered 70+ years on! Dad modified the verses of a traditional Irish song So Early in the Morning (Dad left off the ‘So’) and, as this is the song I best remember, I’ve recorded it and included MIDI instruments in memory of my father (Duncan – trombone), his father (John – concertina) and his paternal grandmother (Charlotte – piano). My hope is that someone in the family might sing this song to at least one of Dad’s great- or great-great-grandkids (of course, changing my name to the child’s and, where required, the pronoun) and that the song, and Dad, might be remembered in another 70+ years time.

The back of Dad’s medal reads “Quickstep Contest Hurstville, 1929, Won by Kog[arah] Mun[icipal] Band, D Hunt, 9ct “

The second verse is about the positive effect of music experienced by my husband, Gordon, during his final years living with Alzheimer’s. Three or four times a year Gordon would go to a local aged care facility for 2 weeks respite. On return, his physical & mental abilities had noticeably declined. After a short period of all-day music, videos or live, those abilities returned to the level before respite. On telling a friend of what I was witnessing she suggested I read Oliver Sacks’ book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. I did and was pleased to discover confirmation of my belief of music’s affect on the brain from one of the world’s best known neurologists.

A particularly harrowing experience occurred when, unable to go to the usual facility due to a gastric outbreak, and unable to stay at home as the builders rebuilding our bathroom for Gordon’s needs had reduced the bathroom to studs, Gordon was placed in a different facility. He walked in on a Monday after playing 18 holes of golf on the weekend. Ten days later I was informed he couldn’t walk or feed himself. On arrival at the facility I further discovered he didn’t recognise me. The facility doctor had drugged him to a virtual vegetable state. His GP got the drugs stopped and he was taken to hospital. A few weeks later we visited his GP and she calculated that all the drugs had left his system and therefore he could make no further recovery. A month later we returned to the GP, Gordon walking unaided. The GP was literally gobsmacked and asked how such a ‘miracle’ had been achieved. The answer was simple…wall-to-wall music.

The wonderful thing was, the GP believed me and said that Gordon’s experience had changed how she would deal with her dementia patients from then on. Sadly, the aged care facility didn’t believe me. I asked them to turn off daytime TV (liberally peppered with funeral & funeral insurance ads!) and replace with music videos which I would happily supply when Gordon was there…they wouldn’t!

Finally, ten years later the positive effect of music seems to be recognised by aged care professionals and the facility that dismissed my pleas over ten years ago now provides regular musical performances for their residents.

Read a November 2021 article about ‘recent’ research on music being used as brain damage treatment here