Musicorps: Helping Soldiers Cope With Trauma
Published in The Wall Street Journal on July 22, 2010
Arthur Bloom is the founder of Musicorps for combat vets in Washington DC. Photo: Nina Roberts
Washington, D.C.—The seed for today's Musicorps was planted inside Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007. Arthur Bloom, an accomplished musician and composer, was asked if he could talk with a veteran who was receiving medical care at Walter Reed. When Mr. Bloom learned the veteran had been a drummer, he suggested the man resume playing, despite having lost one leg due to an injury sustained in Iraq. Over the course of setting up electronic drums for the veteran, and as they experimented together with different prosthetics, Mr. Bloom realized there was a dire need for a revolutionary music program at the medical center.
"There is a lot of depression at Walter Reed, including suicide attempts," says Mr. Bloom, a tall, affable man in jeans and T-shirt who sports a military-like haircut despite being trained by the Juilliard School and Yale School of Music, not the armed forces. "They are facing the worst period in their lives," he says of Walter Reed's veterans, "adjusting to life with an amputation, sometimes multiple. Some suffer from PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder], TBI [Traumatic Brain Injury]. They've gone from constant action to staring at the ceiling of their rooms." Most of the medical appointments for these veterans take place in the mornings, and their afternoons are "filled with a whole lot of nothing," says Mr. Bloom, adding that stays at Walter Reed for two to three years are not uncommon.
Musicorps' unconventional approach is to engage veterans in high-level musical creation, assisted by working musicians. Goals vary from veteran to veteran. One wants to be professional musician, while another wants to learn the National Anthem on the guitar to play at a baseball game. Any kind of music is welcome, from rock to classical. Genres have included rap, death metal and once even Italian opera.
"Sessions," as they're called, can last from 45 minutes to seven hours. At times there is a teacher-student relationship, but other sessions feel more like meetings of musical buddies or collaborators. The Musicorps musician might be the engineer on a veteran's project or just someone with whom the veteran can listen to music in his room if he isn't up to playing. Since Musicorps' inception, 7 musicians have worked with more than 60 veterans.
Combat veterans Dan Kelly and Will Cook after a Musicorps session. Photo: Nina Roberts
On a recent afternoon, two veterans, Dan Kelly, 24, and Will Cook, 21, set up electric and acoustic guitars at Musicorps' offsite office, which sports recording equipment and a variety of musical instruments. It's a bright, airy space, and the fireplace, pink velvet sofa and worn oriental rug give it a homey feel. Despite the soldiers' similar appearance—baggy jeans, black concert T-shirts and tattoo- decorated arms—Mr. Kelly has a mischievous face and demeanor while Mr. Cook is more taciturn. They look little older than teenagers.
As the pair excitedly plug in red cords connecting the sound system to guitars and microphones, they laugh, tease each other and tell Mr. Bloom about their new guitar. A tangle of cord-loops gets caught on Mr. Cook's right foot as they set up. "Just take it off," jokes Mr. Kelly. "Wrong one," Mr. Cook shoots back dryly, as they both know it's his left leg that was amputated after a roadside-bomb incident in Iraq when he was 18 years old. Mr. Kelly broke his back in three places when falling through a roof while on a countersniper mission in Baghdad at the age of 22.
"We sat down and wrote some dark s---," says Mr. Kelly to Mr. Bloom and Dominic Frasca, a guitar virtuoso who has been visiting regularly from New York. "We don't know if it's any good," adds Mr. Cook, who walks with a barely noticeable sway. Mr. Cook launches into deafening electric guitar and Mr. Kelly's voice morphs from gorgeous singing into an indecipherable death-metal growl, a song for their band, Blindfire. When they finish, they look toward Messrs. Bloom and Frasca with anticipation, eager for musical feedback.
The camaraderie is palpable throughout the afternoon's session. Messrs. Kelly and Cook take turns playing guitar as Mr. Bloom improvises on the piano, sometimes so wildly that he bounces up and down in his chair. He plays a track by Bobby McFerrin as an example of contrapuntal singing. Examples of Bach and Alberto Ginastera are also played to illuminate musical concepts. As the session winds down, Mr. Cook, who has been playing music for only 20 months, sits at the piano and quietly plays Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," one of the first pieces he learned at Walter Reed.
"The older generations might dismiss the idea of a music program," says Mr. Bloom after the session, one of hundreds he's had with the veterans. "They might think music is effete, or trivial, or just a nice thing on the side. But this generation is saturated with music like never before—it's integral to their lives. And, we know as musicians, music uses all these things like discipline and rigor. It involves so much geography of the brain, and it's joyful."
Every detail of Musicorps is deliberate, despite the freewheeling nature of the sessions—from musician and veteran pairings, to ensuring that one-armed veterans can access the two specially assembled computer workstations' on-off buttons.
One of Musicorps' advisers is Allen Brown, the director of brain rehabilitation and research at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. "The nice thing about music performance is there are so many systems [in the brain] that need to interact. If one's a little weak, it's possible the stronger will come to bat," says Dr. Brown, who studied piano performance at Berklee College of Music before going to medical school.
Musicorps' veterans report to Mr. Bloom that playing music makes them sleep better, need less pain medication and feel less depressed, and that their prosthetics start to feel more like a part of their bodies.
"Will [Cook] was one of the guys that convinced me this works," says local guitarist Greg Loman, who has been working with Musicorps for two years. He marvels at Mr. Cook's positive transformation, both in terms of health and as a musician. "Sometimes when people walk by us, we're all really focused," says Mr. Loman, who has a friendly, gentle face and fiery hair past his shoulders. "Other times, we're all going ballistic—you never know where the musical conversation is going to go."
"Honored," "humbled," "privileged" are words Musicorps musicians use to describe their experience working with veterans; they receive a small stipend and volunteer their time. There's been no funding from Walter Reed or the U.S. government. Instead, Musicorps' seed money has come from modest grants from foundations such as the Augustine Foundation and the Center for Health Transformation, and generous individuals such as country-music star John Rich. Even school groups have mailed checks, funds raised from bake sales and car washes. Deep discounts and freebies from local music stores and bigger companies also help. Although Mr. Bloom concedes they are "running on fumes," he intends to expand Musicorps. "The more I do this, the more I want to do it."