“The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication." Oliver Sacks, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Columbia University
Today, on BBC Music Day 2018, we are launching BBC Music Memories, a website designed to use music to help people with dementia reconnect with their most powerful memories. We are also launching a survey - integrated into the website - which aims to help discover the nation’s favourite music memories. The survey data will help researchers suggest tunes that could bring back memories for people who have developed dementia or other brain conditions.
BBC Music Memories is incredibly simple to use on PC, tablet or smartphone. It has a simple guide along with helpful links to further dementia resources. We worked with experts from music and dementia charities, including Playlist For Life, on the design and shape of the service.
Music and Memory
Evidence shows that music can help people with dementia to feel and live better, and we wanted to build on the success of the award-winning BBC Reminiscence Archive, using content from the BBC’s archives, to help improve the lives of people with dementia.
The thinking behind BBC Music Memories is quite simple, and is based on the principle of the ‘reminiscence bump’ - people tend to recall more from their adolescence and early adulthood - and the phenomenon that ‘whilst verbal communication and associated thought processes deteriorate in dementia, the brain structures involved in the processing of musical information often remain intact’.
Musical Reminiscence
Reminiscence work - the recalling and sharing of life events - is increasing being used to help people with dementia have meaningful conversations with family and carers, and increase their wellbeing and quality of life. Such conversations can be beneficial for both the person with dementia and the families and carers around them.
BBC Music Memories helps people with dementia to find personally meaningful music - perhaps the tracks they listened to as a teenager or in early adulthood - and create a ‘playlist’ of their favourites, to be used as a starting point for reminiscence. We hope that BBC Music Memories will be also be used in a family setting, perhaps with grandparent and grandchild taking it in turns to find their own personally memorable music, and talking about the tracks and the memories that accompany them.
The Music
Working with the BBC Music Library, we researched the most popular music from the last 100 years, and produced a list of around 120 tracks for each decade from 1920 up to the present day. Many of the earlier tracks, despite being hugely popular at the time, were pretty difficult to find, but the Music Library team did a fantastic job of tracking them down and digitising them. The BBC Photo Library also managed to find many unique images of the performers from the archives, and we have added these evocative images to the website.
We also selected the 23 most popular classical composers, and for each composer, selected their 20 most played pieces. And finally, we selected the theme tunes from 100 BBC TV and Radio shows.
In total, these add up to around 1800 clips of music that can be listened to for free, and added to a playlist. The playlist can also be printed off, and has a box where people can note down their memories related to each track.
Give it a try and share your playlist with the nation
Why not give it a try? To begin, select whether you want to browse through classical, popular music or theme tunes. Then, choose a composer or decade. When in the ‘popular’ category, within each decade you can also filter by musical genre. Add some favourites, and then share your favourites via our anonymous survey, helping researchers in to music and dementia help others to create their own playlists of personally memorable music.
BBC Music Memories is launching on September 28th as part of BBC Music Day - an annual celebration of the power of music to change lives. We hope that BBC Music Memories, in some small way, will do exactly that.
