|
Can you share an early music experience that was defining to your development as a music lover?
As a child, I was fortunate to be exposed to everything from The Beatles to 2Pac, to klezmer music and show tunes. One summer when I was around 10 years old I saw a band performing at an outdoor stage in Philadelphia, PA. I don't remember the specifics, but I recall hearing the bass from blocks away, feeling the bass vibrations as I got closer, then watching the bass player, everything just “clicked.” I realized and felt that there was a whole conversation happening between the band, within the music, and between the band and the audience. I’ve been a bass player ever since. Music has always been a spiritual, emotional, physical, and metaphysical experience for me.
During our inaugural convening, you talked about your experience with music during isolation. Can you share how music was a sound intervention for you or had a therapeutic affect?
While working on this film, we traveled extensively between Philadelphia, NYC, and the West Coast, visiting different music therapy programs and groups and ultimately filming some for the documentary. [We] saw people playing “tongue drums,” which are simple, steel acoustic instruments, usually with 8-12 notes all in one key, so there are no “wrong notes.” I bought one before the pandemic and dabbled, but it became an essential tool for me during the isolation of Covid. Being a single parent was extremely tough during this time, and music is always a way to change or set a mood, be creative together, be in the moment, and get to that “flow state.” When you are playing music and really in it, nothing else is on your mind, it's freeing. I’ve seen it in both myself and my daughter.
What was your personal association to music as therapy? Did it inspire an impetus to make this film?
The majority of our film work over the last 10+ years has focused on trauma, cycles of incarceration, poverty, and the real, unfiltered experiences of people living within these systems and the external forces that created and maintains these spaces.
In 2017, A mutual friend introduced us to Rodd Berro, who served as the board chair at the Music Conservatory of Westchester in White Plains, NY, which had recently started a music therapy program specifically for Veterans. After a brief conversation, we realized a parallel between people returning home from prison and people returning to civilian life post-military service. In both cases, people return home from complex and often traumatic experiences to unforgiving environments that often involve ill-equipped and overwhelmed systems to support them.
Rodd then offered to executive produce the film with us to amplify the message of music therapy's power and bring awareness to the challenges service men/women and their families face due to the lack of a human approach to care.
In the film, there are specific instances where we see music being used in a therapeutic setting by board-certified music therapists and there is also the distinction of music’s use for the sake of sound intervention. As a cinematographer, how did you show this difference, between the work that music therapists do and other types of music-based interventions?
We learned early in the process about the importance of differentiating the differences between music therapy, the therapeutic use of music, sound healing, drum circles, and more. This is a very sensitive subject around language and classification, and rightfully so. Music Therapists are board-certified and undergo years of careful study and training as therapists. There are countless programs and initiatives that advocate for bringing music and musicians who are not music therapists into spaces and places that could benefit from it, but it's important that we not label these as music therapy.
Throughout the film, some scenes show music therapy practices and techniques. Still, because of privacy and HIPAA laws, we did not include any actual private music therapy sessions in the film. At the same time, you will see in the film that creating music in many ways, shapes, and forms can itself be therapeutic and lead to personal, emotional changes and evolutions. We felt several intimate, emotional, and powerful moments needed to be communicated in a more cerebral, engaging way and used animation to show this.
What were the challenges to doing so – defining the difference between the two through your choice of scenes or in conveying a particular veteran’s story without compromising privacy and maintaining authenticity to the client process?
We always felt [that] what was missing from this larger conversation was deep personal stories that showcase the intimate and delicate networks of family, care, providers, and cultural elements that cannot be communicated with data or reports. Neither one of us are veterans; our approach to this film was to employ an abundance of respect and humility in that we could never truly know or feel what those who served have gone through. At the same time, as non-veterans, when we stepped into this space, we did a lot of listening and learning and just got to know vets before any filming took place. There is a large empathy gap between those served and those who haven’t. As outsiders, we feel film is one of the best ways to close this gap and show humanity through music that connects us all.
Was there a view you had of music therapy before making the film, that has since changed? How do you think this film can be an ambassador for future advocacy of the power of music as sound intervention and/or therapy.
Going into this project, we knew nothing about music therapy… or the depth of the world we were entering.
Modern music therapy as we know it began in WWII, so the focus on Veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries as subjects for us, helped to connect a lot of dots. Still, the application and takeaways of the film should be for everyone in these spaces of mental health, creative arts therapy, brain science, and so-called “alternative therapies.”
| 
