When Music Is Medicine

As it turns out, tunes can soothe us all

- Anicka Quin

THERE'S ONE PATIENT that SarahRose Black still thinks about. Back in 2019, the nursing team in the palliative care unit at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto asked if she could reach out to a patient who had been there for about a week. The man seemed to be struggling and was unwilling to engage with staff or be part of any activities. "They told me, 'He's short and grumpy with us, and we wonder if you might have an in."

Black isn't a doctor or a nurse. She's the on-staff music therapist. On any given day, she might see one person who's anxious about an upcoming procedure, another who's undergoing chemo and in need of soothing. Or she might encounter someone, like the man in the palliative care unit, who doesn't yet know he needs her.

So, on a wintry Wednesday afternoon, Black approached the patient's room and introduced herself. She asked if she could sit, and offered to play some music. "If you don't like it, you can tell me to leave," she said.

After some gentle urging, the 70-something man, who had lung cancer, told her a few classical composers he liked and then turned away. But as she started to play one of his favorites, Bach, on her portable keyboard, the man's arms unfolded, and he turned toward her and started to cry.

Black stopped the music. "Do you want me to continue?" she asked.

"Absolutely," he said through tears.

"It was as if the music went places that nothing else could," recalls Black. "He shared with me afterward that he had been holding in so much and had been unable to talk about anything, but the music showed up at a moment when it felt like a hug."

Anyone who has felt that spark of joy when a favorite song comes on the radio at just the right moment or wept along with a singer expressing heartache will understand the emotional resonance of music. Now, a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that music can be medicine too.