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Christopher Bailey’s personalised playlist
Christopher Bailey, Arts and Health Lead for the World Health Organisation
The World Health Organisation's Arts and Health Lead, Christopher Bailey, spoke to Playlist for Life about the power of meaningful music for dementia.
The inaugural Healing Arts Scotland festival took place during August in recognition of the impact of the arts on the nation’s physical, mental and social health. In attendance was Christopher Bailey, who, in 2019 took on the role of Arts and Health Lead with World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2019. This coincided with WHO’s major review to address the question of evidence supporting the positive impact of the arts for health and wellbeing.
Within this report, a section on dementia detailed strong evidence for the benefits of music for people living with the condition including cognition support, speech, reduced agitation and anxiety and a decrease in the need for pharmaceutical drugs.
While participating in Healing Arts Scotland we were fortunate to meet with Christopher to ask for his thoughts on using meaningful music for people living with dementia, and of course the all-important question regarding what’s his on own personal playlist.
Christopher named the La bohème score and Once in a Lifetime by Scottish band Talking Heads as important songs in his life soundtrack while realistically describing the impact of meaningful music for people living with dementia.
Christopher said that music cannot heal dementia, but it can help people reconnect with their environment.
Music is an ‘all brain’ experience, it has the ability for the listener [living with dementia] to take a detour around the damaged areas and for a short period of time, allow a reconnection with memory, relationships, and the world around, offering the person a respite from the storm of dementia, and offering the caregiver, a precious glimpse of the person they thought they had lost.
Christopher’s personal playlist
You Are My Sunshine
The song my father sang to me to help me go to sleep at night.
Hey Bulldog by The Beatles
Yellow Submarine was the first LP I actually owned. And we had a bulldog growing up. Today I appreciate that it is the last real Lennon McCartney collaboration and one of the most under-appreciated songs in the Beatles cannon. Wonderful in all respects.
Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads
This is a song that led me to consciously think about the difficulty of changing paths in your life, and the possibility for music to bring the potential for self realisation and direction change.
La bohème by Giacomo Puccini
I made my professional stage debut as a street urchin in act two of this opera. Its score spans the range of all human emotions and is intensely beautiful and moving no matter how overplayed.
Ode to Joy by Beethoven.
As a blind man still finding my own expression, this masterwork of composition from a deaf composer has deep layers of resonance for me. The title says it all.
Create a playlist for yourself or a loved one living with dementia. Try our playlist maker for ideas on songs to include.
