I sang at the Clare Bridge at Silver Lake Alzheimer’s/Memory Care facility on Sunday, August 3rd. Not only was my audience a group of residents living with Alzheimers and dementia, but my daughter who is on the autism spectrum attended along with my wife. I have read that people living with memory impairments such as Alzheimer’s disease are often stimulated by music that skips way back to their childhood. Some of what I experienced at Clare Bridge validates this a bit for me…Even though I put a lot of practice time and emotion into some of Elvis’ tunes, like “That’s Alright Mama”, the songs that I witnessed the biggest electrifying effect on these people in my audience were:
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
and
You Are My Sunshine
And, of course, when I mentioned “Old Blue Eyes” before I sang Frank Sinatra’s “All The Way”….that did elicit some eye twinkling amongn them!
The Music for Alzheimer's and Autism All at Once by Chris Hartzog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License.
Hi Chris! So glad you commented at Slurping Life so that I found you. Love music, but I am mis-named Melody…no musical abilities whatsoever.
In addition to special needs children, we have Alzheimer’s as a common thread. My father passed away several years ago of complications from emphysema, but was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s.
Keep up the good work. We need Hawaiian ambassadors of music.