Hero Dogs 🐕 Of 9/11 WTC

Hero Dogs 🐕 of 9/11

👇  🐕   👇

Following the 9/11 attacks, over 300 dogs worked tirelessly at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Alongside their handlers, these canines performed dangerous search-and-rescue and recovery missions, provided comfort to grieving people, and served as beacons of hope amid the devastation. 

Search-and-rescue and recovery dogs

• Apollo: As a German Shepherd with the New York Police Department (NYPD) K-9 unit, Apollo was the first search-and-rescue dog to arrive at Ground Zero, just 15 minutes after the South Tower collapsed. He worked 18-hour shifts for weeks and once narrowly escaped death from falling fire and debris because he had been wet from falling into a pool of water. He received the Dickin Medal—the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross—for his heroism.
• Bretagne: A Golden Retriever from Texas Task Force 1, Bretagne was the last surviving search-and-rescue dog to have worked at Ground Zero. She arrived when she was just two years old and spent 10 days searching the rubble with her handler, Denise Corliss. She later responded to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ivan. Bretagne passed away in 2016 at age 16 and received a hero's salute from firefighters as she entered the veterinary clinic for the last time.
• Coby and Guinness: This pair of Labrador Retrievers traveled from Southern California with their handlers to assist at the World Trade Center site. The dogs worked 12-hour shifts for 11 days, locating the remains of dozens of victims. They continued their search-and-rescue careers after 9/11 and aided in other natural disaster efforts.
• Jake: Rescued from the streets and trained for search-and-rescue, this Black Labrador worked 17 straight days at Ground Zero. He later volunteered as a therapy dog for burn victims and also helped with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
• Riley: A Golden Retriever from Pennsylvania Task Force 1, Riley was known for his tireless search for survivors. When the mission shifted from rescue to recovery, he helped locate the remains of fallen firefighters. An iconic photo shows him being transported in a basket over the debris. He was also known for comforting exhausted first responders.
• Sage: A Border Collie who was FEMA-certified at only 18 months old, Sage was deployed to the Pentagon. She was instrumental in sniffing out the remains of one of the terrorists. Later, she assisted with rescue efforts during Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and was deployed to Iraq.
• Trakr: This retired German Shepherd police dog from Halifax, Canada, drove 15 hours to Ground Zero with his handler, James Symington. Just 27 hours after the towers collapsed, Trakr found the last survivor, Genelle Guzman-McMillan, who was trapped under 30 feet of debris. Days later, Trakr collapsed from exhaustion and smoke inhalation but recovered. 

 

Hero Dogs🐕 of 9/11

👇  🐕   👇

Following the 9/11 attacks, over 300 dogs worked tirelessly at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Alongside their handlers, these canines performed dangerous search-and-rescue and recovery missions, provided comfort to grieving people, and served as beacons of hope amid the devastation. 

Search-and-rescue and recovery dogs

• Apollo: As a German Shepherd with the New York Police Department (NYPD) K-9 unit, Apollo was the first search-and-rescue dog to arrive at Ground Zero, just 15 minutes after the South Tower collapsed. He worked 18-hour shifts for weeks and once narrowly escaped death from falling fire and debris because he had been wet from falling into a pool of water. He received the Dickin Medal—the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross—for his heroism.
• Bretagne: A Golden Retriever from Texas Task Force 1, Bretagne was the last surviving search-and-rescue dog to have worked at Ground Zero. She arrived when she was just two years old and spent 10 days searching the rubble with her handler, Denise Corliss. She later responded to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ivan. Bretagne passed away in 2016 at age 16 and received a hero's salute from firefighters as she entered the veterinary clinic for the last time.
• Coby and Guinness: This pair of Labrador Retrievers traveled from Southern California with their handlers to assist at the World Trade Center site. The dogs worked 12-hour shifts for 11 days, locating the remains of dozens of victims. They continued their search-and-rescue careers after 9/11 and aided in other natural disaster efforts.
• Jake: Rescued from the streets and trained for search-and-rescue, this Black Labrador worked 17 straight days at Ground Zero. He later volunteered as a therapy dog for burn victims and also helped with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
• Riley: A Golden Retriever from Pennsylvania Task Force 1, Riley was known for his tireless search for survivors. When the mission shifted from rescue to recovery, he helped locate the remains of fallen firefighters. An iconic photo shows him being transported in a basket over the debris. He was also known for comforting exhausted first responders.
• Sage: A Border Collie who was FEMA-certified at only 18 months old, Sage was deployed to the Pentagon. She was instrumental in sniffing out the remains of one of the terrorists. Later, she assisted with rescue efforts during Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and was deployed to Iraq.
• Trakr: This retired German Shepherd police dog from Halifax, Canada, drove 15 hours to Ground Zero with his handler, James Symington. Just 27 hours after the towers collapsed, Trakr found the last survivor, Genelle Guzman-McMillan, who was trapped under 30 feet of debris. Days later, Trakr collapsed from exhaustion and smoke inhalation but recovered. 

Guide and comfort dogs

• Roselle: A guide dog who was with her blind owner, Michael Hingson, on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower. Roselle calmly and expertly guided Hingson down 78 flights of stairs and away from the collapsing tower. She received a Dickin Medal and was posthumously named American Hero Dog of the Year.
• Salty: This guide dog was on the 71st floor of the North Tower with his owner, Omar Rivera. Salty refused to leave Rivera's side and led him down to safety, even when Rivera tried to release him. Salty was also awarded a Dickin Medal for his devotion.
• Nikie: A Golden Retriever, Nikie served as a therapy dog to comfort first responders and provide crisis intervention. He worked at Ground Zero for nine months and provided emotional support to rescue workers throughout the recovery effort.
• Sirius: An explosive detection dog, Sirius was working with his handler for the Port Authority Police Department in the South Tower's basement. His handler, David Lim, survived the collapse, but Sirius was killed. He is believed to be the only canine to die in the 9/11 attack. His remains were recovered and removed with full police honors. 

Hero Dogs Of 9/11 - Documentary
👇  📺  👇

https://youtu.be/CoYRPg-xxVE?si=MxLm6SJNpADs1lY2

Are there memorials dedicated to 9/11 canine heroes?
Several memorials honor the heroic dogs of 9/11, most notably at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. 

New York
National September 11 Memorial & Museum
The museum has featured several exhibitions and displays dedicated to the service animals of 9/11.

🐕 Plaque for Sirius: A plaque within the museum is specifically dedicated to Sirius, the Port Authority Police Department K-9 who was killed in the South Tower.

🐕 "K-9 Courage" Exhibit: This past temporary exhibition honored the hundreds of dogs involved in the rescue and recovery efforts.

National September 11 Memorial (outdoor plaza): Bretagne, the last surviving search-and-rescue dog to work at Ground Zero, is honored with a cobblestone bearing her name near one of the memorial fountains.
Farmingdale State University (Long Island): The university's 9/11 Memorial Garden is home to one of two "9/11 Rescue Dog" sculptures created by artist Liza Todd Tivey. The statue was crafted with rubble from the World Trade Center and is dedicated to the canine heroes. 

New Jersey
Essex County Eagle Rock September 11th Memorial
A bronze statue of a search-and-rescue dog stands at this memorial. The statue rests on a base resembling the rubble of Ground Zero to honor the heroic canine units. 

Mississippi
Southaven Animal Control Shelter
A plaque honoring Sam, a Border Collie-Chow mix who worked at Ground Zero with his handler Richard Clark, was added to an existing memorial. 

Artistic tributes
Ron Burns' artwork: Renowned artist Ron Burns painted vibrant portraits of many of the canine heroes of 9/11, including Sirius. His work helps immortalize their service. 

 

http://www.thedogfiles.com/2010/09/03/hero-dogs-of-911/#embed_code

 

Guide and comfort dogs

• Roselle: A guide dog who was with her blind owner, Michael Hingson, on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower. Roselle calmly and expertly guided Hingson down 78 flights of stairs and away from the collapsing tower. She received a Dickin Medal and was posthumously named American Hero Dog of the Year.
• Salty: This guide dog was on the 71st floor of the North Tower with his owner, Omar Rivera. Salty refused to leave Rivera's side and led him down to safety, even when Rivera tried to release him. Salty was also awarded a Dickin Medal for his devotion.
• Nikie: A Golden Retriever, Nikie served as a therapy dog to comfort first responders and provide crisis intervention. He worked at Ground Zero for nine months and provided emotional support to rescue workers throughout the recovery effort.
• Sirius: An explosive detection dog, Sirius was working with his handler for the Port Authority Police Department in the South Tower's basement. His handler, David Lim, survived the collapse, but Sirius was killed. He is believed to be the only canine to die in the 9/11 attack. His remains were recovered and removed with full police honors. 

Hero Dogs Of 9/11 - Documentary
👇  📺  👇

https://youtu.be/CoYRPg-xxVE?si=MxLm6SJNpADs1lY2

Are there memorials dedicated to 9/11 canine heroes?
Several memorials honor the heroic dogs of 9/11, most notably at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. 

New York
National September 11 Memorial & Museum
The museum has featured several exhibitions and displays dedicated to the service animals of 9/11.

🐕 Plaque for Sirius: A plaque within the museum is specifically dedicated to Sirius, the Port Authority Police Department K-9 who was killed in the South Tower.

🐕 "K-9 Courage" Exhibit: This past temporary exhibition honored the hundreds of dogs involved in the rescue and recovery efforts.

National September 11 Memorial (outdoor plaza): Bretagne, the last surviving search-and-rescue dog to work at Ground Zero, is honored with a cobblestone bearing her name near one of the memorial fountains.
Farmingdale State University (Long Island): The university's 9/11 Memorial Garden is home to one of two "9/11 Rescue Dog" sculptures created by artist Liza Todd Tivey. The statue was crafted with rubble from the World Trade Center and is dedicated to the canine heroes. 

New Jersey
Essex County Eagle Rock September 11th Memorial
A bronze statue of a search-and-rescue dog stands at this memorial. The statue rests on a base resembling the rubble of Ground Zero to honor the heroic canine units. 

Mississippi
Southaven Animal Control Shelter
A plaque honoring Sam, a Border Collie-Chow mix who worked at Ground Zero with his handler Richard Clark, was added to an existing memorial. 

Artistic tributes
Ron Burns' artwork: Renowned artist Ron Burns painted vibrant portraits of many of the canine heroes of 9/11, including Sirius. His work helps immortalize their service. 

 

http://www.thedogfiles.com/2010/09/03/hero-dogs-of-911/#embed_code

9/11 Responders 🗽 Sobering # Remind Us of Sacrifice

 Sobering Numbers

That Remind Us To Honor The Sacrifice

Of   9/11  Responders

 

Inae Oh - Editor, HuffPost New York

 Nick Wing  - Senior Viral Editor, The Huffington Post

 09/11/2014

Thirteen years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, some first responders and rescue workers are still waiting to receive proper care and compensation. From increased rates of cancer and other diseases to a continued failure by lawmakers to pass clear legislation to manage benefits, their burden has mounted with time, as new studies detail the toxic environments they rushed into.

As Americans move forward and look back this Sept. 11, let’s remember the sacrifice of those who put their lives on the line that day.

🙏

414

The number of first responders killed on Sept. 11, 2001.  Personnel responding to the attack on the Pentagon and to the downed plane in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, all survived.

🙏

60,000-70,000

The number of responders exposed to the highly toxic dust from the wreckage of the World Trade Center towers. It contained asbestos, glass shards, cement and other toxins.

🙏

2,000  

The number of first responders injured.

100-250

The number of materials in each particle of dust from the destroyed towers.

🙏

91,000

The number of liters of jet fuel combusted in the attack, contributing to the dust cloud.

🙏

10-11

The pH level of destroyed concrete, which accounted for two-thirds of the total mass of World Trade Center dust. In comparison, ammonia’s pH level is 11. In 2006, Environmental Protection Agency scientist Cate Jenkins said dust created by the attack was “as caustic and alkaline as Drano.”

2,518

The number of rescue workers, including firefighters and EMT personnel, who have cancer.

15%

How much more likely first responders are to be diagnosed with cancer than the general public, according to a federally sponsored study of almost 21,000 World Trade Center rescue and recovery workers.

239%

How much more likely first responders are to be diagnosed with thyroid cancer than the general public.

21%  

How much more likely first responders are to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than the general public. Prostate cancer was not covered under the Zadroga Act, which provides testing and treatment for first responders, until last year.

1,400

The number of first responders who have died from health complications stemming from their work at Ground Zero, since Sept. 11, 2001, according to estimates.

In 2006, FDNY firefighter John McNamara stands outside Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer he contracted Sept. 11

12

The number of years it took for the first sick responders to begin receiving payments for health compensation.

55,188

The total number of complete registrations submitted to the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund as of Sept. 8, 2014, according to a program report. At least 91 people from the Pentagon and Shanksville sites also applied to the fund, according to federal officials in 2013. Would-be claimants are required to register for the fund in order to apply for benefits, and applications are reviewed rigorously.

1,843

The number of applications for compensation that had been paid, as of Sept. 8, 2014. The mean amount of these payments is $267,915.72.

2

The number of years until the Zadroga Act expires, unless lawmakers extend the law, which provides health care and compensation to both responders and survivors.

300

The approximate number of service dogs that assisted in the search and rescue operation. They would later help in uncovering victims’ belongings, such as jewelry, to be returned to victims’ families. Studies have indicated that dogs, unlike their human handlers, have not shown signs of any significant health issues from their work.

 

Moxie and her handler, Mark Aliberti, arrived at the World Trade Center on the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, and searched the site for eight days.

Hero Dogs 🐕 of 9/11
👇  🗽 👇
https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/2020/09/hero-dogs-of-911-wtc.html

9/11 🙏 In Memoriam

Sobering Numbers

That Remind Us To Honor

The Sacrifice
Of   9/11  Responders

👇  🙏   👇

https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/2020/09/sobering-numbers-remind-us-sacrifice-of.html

Hero Dogs 🐶 of 9/11

         👇  🐕   👇

https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/2020/09/hero-dogs-of-911-wtc.html

🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕 

September 🎼 Jazz ☕

September ☕ Jazz

Jazz Music For Stress Relief
👇 🎼 👇

Relaxing Autumn Piano JAZZ Music For Stress Relief

Our Jazz Instrumental Music can be used for relaxing, calm, romantic dinner, cooking, work, and relaxation. This relaxing Jazz music best suited for study, work, cooking, like dinner music, background music, romantic music, relaxation music, or music for stress relief. Let the beautiful, soothing, and inspirational music help you relax!

☕ 🍂 🍁 ☕ 🍂 🍁

https://www.youtube.com/live/E1ACZ4ZDTEQ?si=hfyp2E-YfyZTct-a

🍂 🍁 ☕ 🍂 🍁 🍂 ☕ 🍁 🍂 

Relaxing Autumn Piano Jazz Music

For Stress Relief

 👇 🎼 👇

🍂 🍁 ☕ 🍂 🍁 🍂 ☕ 🍁 🍂
https://youtu.be/q90CJMTjPd0?si=zi6ByKUKVFtOeXSy 

🍂🍁 ☕ 🍂 🍁 🍂 ☕ 🍁🍂

                         

Music 🎼 As Therapy

Listening to Music

Is Therapy

Music reduces pain, increases resilience, and reconnects Alzheimer’s patients with their memories. It’s time for science to take it seriously. 

🎼

The phrase "Listening to Music is Therapy" is generally true, as music can have powerful therapeutic effects, but it is not a direct substitute for formal music therapy. 

Listening to music is a personal, therapeutic tool for relaxation and mood enhancement, while music therapy is a clinical, evidence-based practice led by a certified professional to address specific health goals. 

🎼

Music's therapeutic benefits

Both casual listening and formal music therapy offer proven psychological and physiological benefits. 

🎼

 Emotional processing: 😐

Music helps people access and process emotions, especially those that are difficult to express verbally. It can also validate your current feelings; for example, listening to a sad song when you feel down can be more helpful than forcing yourself to listen to upbeat music.
🎼

 Stress and anxiety reduction: 😨

Studies show that listening to music lowers cortisol levels, reduces blood pressure and heart rate, and promotes relaxation.
🎼 

Mood enhancement: 😊

Music influences brain chemistry by stimulating the release of dopamine, the brain's "feel-good" hormone. A favorite song can provide an instant mood boost.
🎼 

Cognitive and memory support: 🧠

Music engages nearly every region of the brain, including those involved in memory, emotion, and reasoning. It can improve memory recall and attention, which is especially beneficial for people with conditions like dementia.
🎼

Improved sleep: 😴

Listening to calming music has been shown to improve subjective sleep quality in people with insomnia. 

How to use music as a therapeutic tool for yourself. For self-care, you can incorporate music into your daily life to boost your mental well-being. 

🎼

Create mood-specific playlists: 

Make different playlists for various needs, such as a "calm down" playlist for anxiety or an "energize" playlist for motivation.
🎼

Practice active listening: 

Mindfully listen to a song, paying attention to the lyrics, instruments, and emotions it brings up. This can help with emotional processing and self-reflection.
🎼 

Use it for focus or relaxation: 

Play classical or ambient music softly in the background while studying or working. For winding down, choose slower, calmer tempos.

🎼

Engage with music physically: 

Whether it's dancing around the room, singing, or playing an instrument, active participation can provide a healthy outlet for pent-up emotions. 

 

https://mamusiq.tumblr.com/post/801617941435154432/3-ways-music-therapy-improves-brain-function

	Differences between casual listening and clinical therapy	*	The distinction lies in the level of structure, professional guidance, and specific health goals involved.
Feature	Casual Listening		Clinical Music Therapy
Purpose	Self-care, relaxation, and mood-boosting. You choose the music and listen on your own.		A treatment plan with specific, individualized goalsdesigned by a certified music therapist.
Activities	Enjoying music, creating playlists, or singing along on your own.		Can involve listening, but also includes structured activities like songwriting, improvisation, or lyric analysis with a therapist.
*
Setting	Can be done anywhere and at any time—at home, in the car, or while exercising.		Sessions take place in various settings, including hospitals, clinics, schools, and private practices.
*
Professionalism	Does not require a professional. You are your own guide.		A board-certified music therapist plans and leads sessions within a therapeutic relationship.
*
Conditions treated	Provides general relief for everyday stress, anxiety, or sadness.		Clinically treats specific conditions like depression, PTSD, dementia, and substance abuse.

Yes, Listening to Music

Is Therapy

by Daniel J. Levitin     5, Oct. 3, 2024

********

The most important distinction, then, isn’t in separating artists from scientists and doctors but in separating creative thinkers from formulaic ones, separating those who can tolerate uncertainty from those who cannot. Art, science, and medicine trade in doubt—and in its remedy, improvisation. Moreover, to be effective, the musician, the therapist, the scientist, and the physician must establish a rapport and a relationship of trust with people they may have never met. They remain alert at all times while appearing relaxed. They monitor reactions unobtrusively, connecting and responding in real time to their behaviours, to the unexpected.

Music affects the biology of the brain, through its activation of specialized neural pathways, its synchronization of the firing patterns of neural assemblies, and its modulation of key neurotransmitters and hormones. Together, these drive a range of changes that are important to our survival and well-being. Music promotes relaxation when we’re stressed; it can reduce blood pressure or make diabetes management easier; it soothes us when we’re depressed and energizes us for exercise. Professional athletes listen to music to pump themselves up when they compete—often hip hop but not always (LeBron James listens to jazz and Beethoven). Patients with Parkinson’s use it to help with walking; patients with Alzheimer’s find that it reconnects them with themselves and improves memory. Music reduces pain, increases resilience and resolve, and can actually change our perception of time, such as when we’re lying in a sickbed with nothing else to do, going on a long road trip, or immersed in a VR game.

Engaging with music, whether as a listener or a player, facilitates entry into the brain’s default mode network, a path to the subconscious that is instrumental in everything from problem solving to relaxation, from creativity to immune system function. And for many, music can connect us to a sense of a higher power, of great and enduring beauty, and listening to or playing it can provide some of the most exhilarating and meaningful moments of our lives. Those moments may come from a concert by Wiz Khalifa, Beyoncé, or U2; we may experience them alone in the privacy of our earbuds or when the stillness of a room suddenly comes alive as we play the first few notes of Beethoven’s Pathétique sonata on the piano.

Companies such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Pandora hope to curate effective playlists that not only help with mood regulation or mood change but also target your individual tastes. Already, these music services are adaptable, learning what you skip and what you listen to. Within the next five years, they will do even better. Through data mining, the companies’ software knows your age, gender, income, geographic location (often within a few metres), political views, what time of day it is, what things you’ve searched for. Through your smart watch, they log your heart rate and skin conductance. The algorithms register that you’re driving your car across town on a Sunday at 4 p.m., the GPS knows you’re headed toward your parents’ home and, based on previous months of data, that once you get there, your blood pressure usually goes up (perhaps because they berate you for not making more out of your life). These algorithms have tracked what music you usually select for yourself on that drive. They also know from scanning your emails that your latest lab report showed you’ve got high blood pressure. Soon, personalized playlists will be curated automatically and in the background, becoming essentially invisible to you—your car or smart phone will offer to play you what it thinks you need at this particular time, based on your individual tastes. If this sounds far-fetched, consider what existing smart devices already do. Smart thermostats in your home learn your comings and goings, which room of the house you’re in at various times, what temperatures you like when asleep or awake. If you have a smart phone or digital assistant, you may have found that when you say out loud to a friend that you need new walking shoes, a TikTok or Instagram ad for shoes pops up in minutes.

To customize playlists to each person’s tastes, most algorithms use collaborative filtering (people who listened to Drake also listened to Doja Cat; people who listened to the Cure also listened to the Smiths). Elegant research by Cambridge University’s Jason Rentfrow and his colleagues is offering a new and more precise approach to creating taxonomies of musical tastes and preferences, overlayed with demographic information, attitudes, and personality characteristics. This is the future of personalized playlists and, hence, the future of music therapy.

Beliefs about music’s power to heal the mind, body, and spirit date back to the Upper Paleolithic era, around 20,000 years ago, when ancient shamans and other healers used drumming in the hopes of curing a wide range of maladies, from mental disorders to wounds and illnesses. Our word “shaman” comes from the Russian “shaman,” for a person of special status within a tribe who acts as an intermediary between the natural and the supernatural worlds, using magic to foretell the future, cure illnesses, and control spiritual forces. The term was originally applied to the Tungusic peoples of Siberia and northeast Asia. (It is often broadly applied to any ancient or modern person who “travels” in non-ordinary reality to gain information and possibly to heal spiritual, mental, or physical ills, such as the Inuit angakok, the Mentawai sikerei, the Korean mu, the Azande boro ngua, and the !Kung n/um k”ausi.)

The shaman, medicine man or medicine woman, medium, or psychic who is entrusted with healing powers is a cultural universal, recurring across human societies and nearly every hunter-gatherer tribe. The shamanistic tradition was begun by women, and contrary to popular misconception, it was far from a men-only profession. Shamanism is just one historic antecedent of twenty-first-century music therapy. During the eleventh century BCE, near the end of his life, King Saul suffered from periodic depression and agitation. On such occasions, we’re told, he would summon David, the same David who battled Goliath and who was reputed to be among the greatest musicians in the kingdom.

David would take the lyre and play it; Saul would find relief and feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.  (1 Samuel 16:23 NIV)

David could slay a giant with a rock and depression with a lyre. Music for healing is as old as our species and is still practised by a majority of peoples in the world today; music’s ability to heal—to provide a brighter day, to promote physical and mental health—knows no boundaries of language or culture. As Longfellow famously penned: Music is the universal language of mankind. Centuries earlier, a continent away, Confucius wrote: Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.

It is a recent feature of Western society that we have separated these two, healing and music. We tend to see healing as the province of doctors and music as entertainment. Perhaps it is time to reunite two of the most intimate parts of our lives. Scientific advances in the past ten years have provided a rational basis for this reunification, opening a dialogue between health care workers, health insurance companies, and all the rest of us. The research allows us to take what had been speculation, anecdotes, and observations untethered from evidence and join them in equal partnership with prescription drugs, surgeries, medical procedures, psychotherapy, and various forms of treatment that are mainstream and evidence based. The advances were spurred by this 20,000-year history as scientists tested the ideas in the laboratory and in clinics.

It has been said, “Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” Plato believed that music can bypass our rational mind: “More than anything else, rhythm and harmony find their way into the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it.” It is perhaps no surprise to learn, then, that the Greek god of medicine, Apollo, was also the god of music.

Hippocrates (fifth century BCE) is known as the father of Western medicine, and he believed strongly that music could be used to treat a variety of physical and mental health conditions. Although no musical prescriptions have survived, we do know that specific scales were used to treat particular ailments, and Athenian physicians would prescribe particular tonalities to heal colds, aches, depression, or injuries. For example, Dorian mode was considered suitable for mourning; Phrygian was used to control digestive problems; Lydian imparted good cheer, optimism, friendliness, and a tendency to laughter, love, and song when it was well executed but could lead to weeping and sadness when not. Seven hundred years later, Ptolemy, living in the Roman Empire, wrote his treatise, Harmonics, in which he elaborated on the relationship between music, emotions, and therapy.

Today, some sound-healing therapists, meditation headphones, and relaxation music apps use tones of particular frequencies, or music that contains those frequencies, to achieve goals for healing and self-care. Although the ancient Greeks knew (or intuited) things that took years for science to catch up with, they were also wrong about many things, as science has borne out. For example, there is no scientific evidence that music’s ability to heal, or to cause changes in mood, or to have any other cellular effects, derives primarily from the specific frequencies of tones used; this has been exhaustively studied. The notion also doesn’t make logical sense, for much shamanistic healing was conducted by singers who would have had no way to calibrate their precise frequencies from one occasion to the next or from one tribe to another. The power of music, then, probably comes not from specific frequencies but from trance-inducing rhythms or a combination of musical elements as they stand in relation to one another—elements including harmonic structure, melody, tonality (major or minor), rhythm, and tempo. In other words, whatever effect a piece of music or sequence of sounds has on you, it’s unlikely that it would stop having that effect if it were shifted by a few hertz in one direction or the other.

Another important attribute of music is timbre, the tonal colour that distinguishes two instruments both playing the same note—or that distinguishes one person’s voice from another’s when they’re saying the same thing. Ravel’s Bolero in 1928 introduced timbre as a form-bearing medium—that is, an element of music that could impart both meaning and a unique identity to a musical piece. By the 1950s, timbre had become among the most important attributes of music. Timbre is what allows us to distinguish John Coltrane’s saxophone from that of Stan Getz, or Johnny Cash’s voice from Elton John’s. It is a unique sonic fingerprint. Even records have a timbre all their own—most of us can tell the difference between a recording made in, say, 1940 and one made in 1970 or 2022 by “the way it sounds”—just another way of describing timbre.< br />
Some of the beneficial effects of music across history may have accrued by putting patients or entire tribes into a trance state, or by accessing the subconscious, thereby opening a route to healing. An important question is whether there’s something intrinsic in music that promotes healing or, alternatively, if it’s the trance state itself that facilitates healing. It may be that music is just one of several psychological enzymes—catalysts—that can lead to healing through trance. But if there are others, they have not revealed themselves to us as clearly as music has.

I take inspiration from the many compelling testimonials of poets and philosophers. Consider the words of the poet Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (Novalis), circa 1799: “Every illness is a musical problem—its cure a musical solution.” And it was the philosopher and composer Friedrich Nietzsche who articulated what has become a North Star for me in my own research—that music is a way to express thoughts and feelings that cannot be expressed in words. “Life without music,” he wrote, “would be a mistake.”

Adapted from I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine by Daniel J. Levitin (2024), published by Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Daniel J. Levitin is an award-winning neuroscientist, musician, and bestselling author.

https://thewalrus.ca/yes-listening-to-music-is-therapy?utm_source=pocket_shared

https://getpocket.com/read/aKNg7d9dpf7cUnb9f2Tk111odSA9p8aoPU5jt8zIhYgdt2ye0974cvItR58NdeWN_bee4058ed289344d081cf91496d8c277

Annals of Sound
What Is Noise?
Sometimes we embrace it, sometimes we hate it - and everything depends on who is making it.
By Alex Ross   April 15, 2024  The New Yorker

“Unwanted sound” is the basic definition. An act of aggression is implied: someone is exercising power by projecting sound into your space.