Music a balm in a socially distanced coronavirus world

Sara Edgerton knows the impact of her art in an environment seemingly dominated by Zoom calls.

Edgerton is the director of Southeast Missouri State University’s orchestra and professor of applied low strings — the cello and double bass.

“In these uncertain times, the power of art, of music, is always there,” said Edgerton, who has been a member of the Southeast faculty since 1991.

The world-renowned Yo-Yo Ma, a cellist like Edgerton, told CBS this week that on a planet where physical touch or hugging is a potential health hazard thanks to COVID, all people may still be “caressed” by music.

Edgerton is in full agreement.

“We can hear music and be socially distanced,” Edgerton said, “(and) in uncertain times, music’s power to ‘touch’ is always there.”

Communication

Edgerton recalled a trip she and a former Southeast faculty violin colleague, Brandon Christiansen, once made to Shanghai, China.

“Brandon speaks fluent Mandarin, but I don’t, so I couldn’t communicate with our hosts verbally,” she said.

“I started to play Beethoven’s ‘Opus 1’ and from the very first note, I was talking to the audience through an avenue of communication instantly understandable — music,” Edgerton said.

The connection made via musical instrumentation encouraged Edgerton to return with the university’s orchestra to the world’s most populous country in 2009.

“My students and I will never forget playing our instruments along the Great Wall of China,” she said.

“Music has the power to touch us, to reach us, in our spirits and in our souls,” Edgerton added.

Breaking barriers

Anissa Wiant, a 2015 Cape Girardeau Central High School graduate, is a music therapist for the Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center (SMMHC) in Farmington.

Music therapy, she said, is using music to reach non-musical goals.

COVID has limited the kinds of treatment she normally provides, but music is a constant.

“It’s a cliché, but in my work, definitely true, that music is the universal language,” Wiant said.

“The only exception is if you don’t like music, which is very rare in my experience,” she added.

In Wiant’s case, she uses guitar, piano, percussion instruments and her own voice to treat previously incarcerated sexual predators whom the state has deemed highly likely to reoffend.

“I don’t, obviously, have a lot in common with the men who reside here,” said Wiant, a product of the music therapy program of Drury University in Springfield, Missouri.

“I use music as a bridge, as an aid, to getting the residents to talk about complicated emotions, especially trauma,” she added.

Wiant said she and a resident will listen to a piece of music and the two of them will analyze the lyrics.

“If a resident enjoys alternative rock, we may listen to Three Doors Down,” she said, “and just hearing the tune gives that man a way to speak about what he is feeling.”

“I’m in awe sometimes how easy it is for people to relate to songs, to resonate with the words set to music,” Wiant said.

Wiant said it takes a long time to produce noticeable results in moving the troubled men toward healthy coping skills and a positive path forward.

“It’s usually a minimum of five years of treatment,” she said, noting progress is rewarded with a higher level of freedom within the facility and more privileges.

Wiant said it is difficult to overestimate the imprint music has on the brain.

“Research shows, and I agree with it, that music is one of the very last things to depart when someone is losing memory.”

Wiant said she was terrified at first by her assignment but has settled in well at SMMHC, the second largest employer in Farmington with more than 900 people on staff.

“This is what I wanted to do. It’s my dream,” she said.