JACKSON, WY— “Do you want to play some music?”
Those are the magic words for 90-year-old Ken Bradberry. The life-long musician participates in every single Music Therapy program St. John’s Living Center offers. And recently, he’s started writing his own songs.
His songs are reflections of his life and hardships: his upbringing on a ranch in Colorado, his first heartbreak.
“It hurts,” Bradberry said about writing Betty Joe, the song named after the woman who broke his heart when he was 18. But music is how he now processes feelings he can’t shake after almost 70 years. “I wrote it just because I felt it. I felt very much about it.” He explains that the lyric “never loved like that before, never hurt like that again,” is a reflection of how he never let himself get attached to anyone else like he was attached to her.
Youth on the Plains, meanwhile, is a more nostalgic reflection of Bradberry’s upbringing. His family once had close to 1,000 acres in Colorado, and, as his lyrics explained, “happiness was what I was paid.”
Bradberry had to sacrifice ranch life to provide for his family and went to school for electronics instead.
“I hated it,” he said. “But I couldn’t go back.” During that time, music became his creative outlet. He played guitar, bass, harmonica, and keyboard for a band that played every Saturday night. He was good. He still is.
Eventually, an aging Bradberry moved to an assisted living facility over the hill, but he was “alone playing music over there.” St. John’s, meanwhile, had just hired Hilary Camino to pilot a Music Therapy Program at the Living Center. It quickly proved successful, and Bradberry heard about it. He relocated so he could play more music, and he and Camino have been writing and playing music ever since.
Bradberry doesn’t like thinking about the lifetime of hardships he’s faced, even when he’s putting them into song. “I try to put it aside and be happy,” he said. But that’s exactly why Camino asks him to write his music.
“When I’m working with Ken we are using songwriting as an intervention to help him express his thoughts and feelings surrounding memories and current experiences,” Camino said. “He’s building confidence, it motivates him in other areas, and it strengthens his sense of self and what makes him a contributing individual. It also strengthens his memory and cognitive functioning.”
And even if the stories evoke painful memories, music always makes him happy.
Bradberry is perhaps the program’s star student, but music therapy has been a “fundamental part of living” for many Living Center residents, Camino said. It is creative, thoughtful, emotional, even physical. In her drumming circle, for example, Camino asks residents to play big bongo drums with their hands. She teaches them the different sounds different parts of the drum can make, and how to play with different parts of the hand. Then she has them follow along to different rhythms. By the end, residents reported that their hands were tired from all the work they had done.
“Music therapy is an evidence-based healthcare profession that includes referral, assessment, ongoing treatment planning, and evaluation,” Camino said. “I use music as a tool to help people achieve non-musical goals” — like physical fitness, confidence, memory, cognitive function.
Right now, Living Center residents play music in the dining room. But the new Living Center will have a designated art and music room for group sessions and space to store Camino’s instruments. “The new facility will provide a nurturing environment for creative therapeutic space that will make music therapy sessions even more inviting and successful,” Camino said. “I have grand visions for this program, these people; and the new building is facilitating just that.”
When construction on the new Living Center is finished, you’ll likely find Bradberry in the Living Center’s new music room more often than not. “Music just makes me happy,” Bradberry said. “I’m going to play music ’till I die.”
