Ma Cushla

The Power of Music

The power of music, especially singing, to unlock memories and kickstart the grey matter is an increasingly key feature of dementia care. It seems to reach parts of the damaged brain in ways other forms of communication cannot. The Piano Accordion is the ideal instrument for Elderly Entertainment and an excellent calming and distraction technique as I found with my Late Mother Bridie Doherty, who had Vascular Dementia & Alzheimers. Mum lived for a song and a dance and sang up to her very last. Bridie died from Pnuemonia in 2016. Still singing to the end. This Website, Macushla is dedicated to her Memory! I’d be nothing without her influence and Dad.s.

‘We tend to remain contactable as musical beings on some level right up to the very end of life,’ says Professor Paul Robertson, a concert violinist and academic who has made a study of music in dementia care.

‘We know that the auditory system of the brain is the first to fully function at 16 weeks, which means that you are musically receptive long before anything else. So it’s a case of first in, last out when it comes to a dementia-type breakdown of memory.’

Many music students throughout the UK, as well as more experienced musicians, now regard care home visits as part of their learning experience. As well as being enormously beneficial to those with various forms of dementia and their carers, they can also be helpful and rewarding for the musicians themselves.

Organisations like Singing for the Brain, Music for Life, Lost Chord, Golden Oldies and Live Music Now have made it possible for every care home in the country to have access to live musicians, both professional and amateur, most of them trained to deal with the special needs of an elderly, memory-impaired audience.

To Book a Session please contact me

Kev; 07785 757245

Email; kev@ma-cushla.co.uk