Community Service Through Music

I've been a volunteer and a drummer since I was twelve. There are many opportunities that I've taken to combine the roles, and perform (no pun intended) community service through music. AMPED has been one of the coolest and most rewarding thus far. Prior to volunteering as a mentor at the Cook County JTDC, my inspiration for musical community service came from an ASB Spring Break trip where I spent one week volunteering as a musical therapist's teaching assistant at The Pace School in Pittsburgh, PA. After observing autistic children communicate through music (when words were too difficult), I began to better understand power of music beyond entertainment.

After that trip, I was looking for a way to keep up with music therapy. I checked out academic opportunities through Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Lab. While the research was intriguing, I wanted to be leveraging my own musicality as well (instead of just conducting controlled studies and analyzing data). Luckily I stumbled into a really cool guest lecture by Florida State University Professor Alice-Ann Darrow. She presented compelling case studies that showed the positive impact of music (and music therapy) on diverse populations that are usually removed from music (the elderly, the incarcerated, the homeless, etc.).

Immediately after, I got involved with the development of AMPED and try to spend most of my Saturday mornings volunteering through the program. The experience has been tremendously rewarding and I look forward to our students final products!