Natalie Petrillo sees it firsthand: the power of music in helping children. As a graduate student in speech pathology, she works alongside music therapists with kids whoāve been diagnosed with autism.
āSo Iām exposed to music therapy all the timeāand itās amazing,ā she says. āThereās this one student I have, he doesnāt speak. But he can beat-box. And he can beat-box very well.ā Through beat-boxing, in fact, heās learned certain speech sounds.Ā
It was Saturday. Petrillo was sitting in the House of Yes, a seriously hip Brooklyn venue hosting an all-day dance party for Sound Mind Live, an annual fest showcasing the intersection of music and mental health. Created by musician Chris Bullardāwho recently spoke with me and my colleague Karin Jervert for a Mad in America podcastāthe event featured panel discussions and immersive, meditative āSound Sessionsā to complement the ongoing music.
Inside the club was a thunder of nonstop, pulsing dance tracks. Outside was a deluge of nonstop, pounding rain. Attendees huddled under umbrellas as they moseyed from tent to tent, picking up free beverages and leaflets, and gathered for the quartet of musical acts that played over the course of the day on Wyckoff Avenue.Ā
Sitting beside Petrillo on Saturday was Jake Watkins, whose own take on music has evolved since childhood. Growing up in conservative churches, he said, he had a fixed idea about what an individual piece of music can mean.Ā
āYouād feel chills go through your body, and youād think youād be connecting with whatever message that theyāre trying to portrayāwhen, really, thatās just a universal experience that a lot of people go through.āĀ
Chills are a common response to music (research has explored this and other aspects of musicās powerful impact), yielding a sense of connection beyond the individual artist and message.Ā āItās up to the listener to kind of bring it in,ā he said, āand make it meaningful to themselvesā¦It kind of opens your mindāāto both someone elseās interpretation and your own. āWhen you can accept that music is a universal art, you can open your mind to universal interpretations.ā
Overwhelmingly, the folks in attendance at Sound Mind were younger adults, perhaps drawn by the musical acts and free admissionāand, perhaps, the emphasis on mental health. For Petrillo and Watkins, it was all three. āWeāve both been having some things going on. . . We live in high-stress environments,ā he said. For them and their peers, Petrillo added, āMusic is the outlet.ā
My conversations with themāand others at the eventāunderscored both the significance of music in helping alleviate stress and the generational shift toward openness in discussing mental and emotional challenges and the quest for wellbeing. To be sure, some of that openness is linked to the prevailing diagnostic model of mental health, which reaches far and wide in the current culture and includes social-media influencers.
But at the same time, there is extraordinary power in being open about our struggles. This is true of every challenge in life, in every context and corner of society, and has been since the dawn of history. Poets, philosophers, writers, artists, filmmakers, and, yes, musicians, have long expressed themselves in sound and word and image, finding meaning in the chaos and embodyingāshowing usāwhat it means to be alive. And not in any well-versus-unwellĀ sense, but in the most inclusive and illuminating way possible. As the rapper KAMAUU articulated at one of the Sound Mind panels, a discussion of mental health in communities of color: āI just am.āĀ
This is how we connect: By being authentic in who we are. By learning about ourselves, understanding ourselves, and being real. By telling our stories. Each story, whether sung or spoken or conveyed some other way, can help someone else feel less alone. For many, this is the gift of the Mad in the Family community and, more broadly, Mad in America, which puts stories of lived experience front and center in the dialogue around mental health. Authenticity is empowerment.Ā
Lived experience was, in fact, the topic of Sound Mindās closing panel, which included Bullard, singer-songwriter Langhorne Slim, and MIAās arts editor, Karin Jervert. The event was in its literal final minutes when a distressed mother, in tears over the recent psychotic break and subsequent incarceration of her 18-year-old son, appealed to panel members for help.
What could she say to him to encourage him, given all that had happened? What could they share that she could pass on to her son? Speaking from their lived experience, the panelists gave advice ā and more than that, hope. He’s not broken, Jervert said. Itās not the end of his story, she added, and Bullard agreed. He’s not anything but a human being on a journey, and heās not alone. Heāll find a way.Ā
Hearing their words, filled with love and empathy and their own truths, reminded me of that little boy Petrillo describedāthe beat-boxer. Though he didnāt have the words to tell his story, he figured out a way to tell it anyway. āHeās finding his voiceāyes. Thatās a perfect way to describe it,ā she said.Ā
The story of that boy touched me the way music touched Watkins, and still does.Ā
āI just got chills,āĀ I told them.
āThere you go,ā he said, smiling. āItās come full circle.ā
Everyone is on a journey, after all. Everyone is finding their way. Thatās the message of music, and the message of life.
āAmy Biancolli, Family Editor