Students in the University’s Musical Therapy department succeed at doing what many doctors fail to do every day — heal the spirit.

“Music touches our emotions,” said Ellen Ritchey, clinical coordinator for the music therapy program.  “We respond emotionally to music. Just about any important life event — weddings, funerals, births, graduation, football games — have music there and it serves a function.”

That function is to help people with physical, emotional, cognitive and behavioral handicaps meet their therapeutic goals. As an established and credited health profession, musical therapy improves the quality of life in ways that medical science cannot.

Ritchey will often volunteer to alleviate grief by playing at funerals. 

“One of my nicest memories was a gentleman who passed away, and he loved music theater. At his funeral service, the family requested that the grandchildren were all going to stand up and sing ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,’” Ritchey said. “It was their offering to their grandfather.”

Though pleasure in music stems from the brain and will affect a person psychologically, Ritchey said music has the capability to also help heal a person’s physical condition. 

“The human body is made up of all sorts of vibrations, if you think of heartbeat and blood and all of the things going on in your body. The vibrations of music can have a tangible physical effect on people,” she said. “A music therapist can work with the physical therapist to create music that

will set a beat or a pulse for that person to walk, which can then be a motivating factor. It can help a person to coordinate their steps.”

Lindi Fogarty, a graduate student from Chattanooga, believes music is a tool that facilities physical rehabilitation. 

While working in a hospital, Fogarty saw lightning-fast results in a patient who was given gospel music in lieu of a sedative to decrease his blood pressure and heart rate.

Fogarty is also part of the Community Music Therapy Group, a program to help children with developmental disabilities. In a clinical setting, however, therapeutic healing takes patience. 

“I haven’t seen a miraculous change in somebody in like a day. But if you could see them at the beginning and then see them again a year later, you’ll see a huge difference,” she said. “However, little surprises happen — things you weren’t expecting. I was working with two children that I work with [one-on-one] after the session and they usually don’t speak. One of them started counting along with me and I was totally not expecting him to say anything.”

Matt Whitaker, a second year physical therapy major from Canton, described children who are ordinarily unresponsive but, when a guitar is strummed, eyes will light up with eager joy and smiles will reveal their pearly whites.

University students Lindi Fogarty and Matt Whitaker lead a musical therapy class for children Thursday. PHOTO BY WES BLANKENSHIP

“Rather than just make a kid move his arm up and down, we give him a shaker,” he said. 

Whitaker accompanies himself on the guitar and sometimes hand drums with a broad repertoire of animal songs, traditional folk tunes, fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

“Parents go into this not wanting drastic change with the kids … but it brings [the children] joy and happiness,” Whitaker said.

One of the parents, Laura Osborne, said she would like her daughter Shelby to stay in the program indefinitely or at least until she outgrows the age requirements. 

“It helps with her motor skills a lot and puts her in a different situation. It helps her get desensitized with some noise,” Osborne said, explaining that Shelby has an unspecified cognitive development disorder.

Kailey Lynn Watson, another student of Fogarty and Whitaker, has right side cerebral palsy and has been taking the class to better her speaking skills. 

Her father, Robert Watson, said that even though her speech often comes out slurred, singing can bring out a whole new side of Kailey. 

“She’ll sing in the car now,” he said.

The child development class isn’t the only clinical offered at the University. Ritchey assigns students to teach group musical therapy in a variety of clinicals. 

One is Hope Haven, a Jackson Creative Community Resource organization established to serve adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Commerce. 

“They’re people that if you see them, they’re clearly different. They may have some unusual behaviors, [such as] very limited verbal skills. You can look at them and see just the disability,” she said. “But when they come into music, you don’t see the disability; you see the person. You see smiles.”

In addition to classes for the physically and mentally handicapped, students in the music therapy school serve at schools, nursing homes, hospitals and substance abuse programs. 

“We try to give [students] a wide range of experiences to work with a lot of different types of clinical populations,” Ritchey said.

Music therapists have to be well-rounded, proficient musicians who know music theory, history and how to play at least three instruments so they can lead the children during activities on guitar, piano and percussion instruments.

In addition, no genre is left behind. 

 “It’s very important that you use music that meaningful for the client,” Ritchey said. “If you’re working with elderly people who have Alzheimer’s, you’re going to use music from the ’30s and ’40s. For small children and adolescents you use different types of music.”

The children in Whitaker and Fogarty’s class escape from the troubles of reality to hear something that’s more than music.

 To them, it’s a form of magic — a taste of paradise.

 When Whitaker sings a Buddy Holly song that goes, “I’d hate to leave you but I really must say, ‘Goodbye Kailey, goodbye,’” Kailey looks at Whitaker and sees a doctor — the only one a child will never fear.