MUSIC AND ITS REDEMPTIVE POWER

There have been numerous times I’ve felt discouraged and music has lifted my soul. At age 14, my mom had died. Music was my therapy to help me through the tough emotions of loss. I sang in my school and church choirs, played trombone in the marching band, and played the guitar for 5 hours a day. I even began writing my own songs, expressing my heart and feelings through music. Even today, music is a part of every aspect of my life and still brings relief and encouragement.

Robert Vijay Gupta also experienced music as a redemptive force. He is an Indian-American violinist and musical activist. He joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 at the age of 19, after completing a Master’s degree in Music from Yale University, and a Bachelor’s in biology from Marist College. TED.com says it well, “Gupta is passionate about education and outreach, both as a musician and as an activist for mental health issues. He has the privilege of working with Nathaniel Ayers, the brilliant, schizophrenic musician featured in ‘TheSoloist,’ as his violin teacher.”

In this TED-Talk video, Robert Gupta talks about a violin lesson he once gave to Nathaniel Ayers, a brilliant, schizophrenic musician, and what Gupta learned in the process. Nathaniel Ayers was a double bassist who graduated from Juilliard School. He had a series of psychotic episodes in his 20’s and was treated with Thorazine (used for treating certain mental or mood disorders like schizophrenia). He dropped out of Juilliard and ended up homeless on Skid-Row in downtown Los Angeles 30 years later.

Gupta was able to give a violin lesson to Ayers, which affected both of them. Through playing music and communicating about music together, Gupta discovered that Ayers was transformed, exposing a brilliant musician, experiencing sanity in those moments. Music acted like a medicine for Ayers, a healing balm bringing him back to a place of creativity and rationality.

At the end of the TED-Talk, Gupta says music caused Ayers to “take his thoughts and delusions and shape them, through his imagination and creativity, into reality.” This is the essence of art – taking our emotions and expressing them through music! “This is what reaches us, moves us, inspires us, and unites us.” Watch this video here and comment below with your thoughts on music as a redemptive power.