Aphasia Choir Connects People Globally
When she was only 21, Stephanie “Stephers” Chatsey, of Lansing, Illinois, suffered a stroke and was in a coma for a month. Doctors weren’t sure if she would wake up or regain any function. But after nearly a year of in-person therapy, she moved back home and continued to improve.
Today, Chatsey is 37 and can walk and talk again, although she still receives occupational, physical and speech therapy. She continues therapy for expressive aphasia, also called Broca’s aphasia, which is when a person knows what they want to say but they have trouble getting the words out.
Aphasia can be frustrating and isolating, so Chatsey is “eternally grateful” that she discovered the online Sing Aphasia choir during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before her stroke, Chatsey was in a choir for five years. Afterward, “complications with my tracheotomy made us believe I would never even talk again,” she said via email. Now, singing regularly has helped improve her ability to talk and express herself. More than that, it’s helped her deal with isolation. “What I absolutely adore about our choir is the camaraderie. It’s really astounding,” she said.
Aphasia is common after a stroke, and some people may never fully recover from it. Music therapy for people with aphasia is encouraged to “retrain” the brain to improve speech. The repetition of singing lyrics helps improve aphasia symptoms, but more research is needed on how and why music can help other aspects of aphasia.
“It’s fascinating how music is processed in different areas of the brain. It can help bridge the connections that may be damaged from a stroke or other brain injury,” said Gillian Velmer, SLPD (speech-language pathology doctorate), a licensed speech-language pathologist in New Jersey and the founder and executive director of Sing Aphasia.
The Power of Music
Dr. Velmer began working with aphasia patients while earning her master’s degree at Kean University in New Jersey. That’s when she first learned that singing can be easier than speaking for some aphasia patients. As an undergraduate music major, she was intrigued and soon launched an in-person aphasia choir as a master’s degree project. She restarted the choir when she returned to Kean to earn her doctorate.
“Aphasia can be so isolating, and once I learned about it and learned about the benefits of music, I felt this strong pull to do more research and try to do something that would really help this population feel less isolated,” she said.
She used the choir as a mini focus group, testing choir members beforehand on their ability to look at a picture and say out loud what the image was. The words were incorporated into the songs they sang in weekly choir rehearsals over the next eight weeks. At the two-month mark, they were retested with the same words.“Our post-test was to look again at those pictures and see if their word-finding ability had improved—by either accuracy of words or the timing of how quickly they were able to retrieve those words. And we found positive results,” she said.
She noticed how some participants would use a song to find a word. For example, if they were trying to get out the word “sun,” they might sing the Beatles lyric “here comes the sun” and emphasize “sun.”
The in-person choir continued after Dr. Velmer earned her SLPD, but no one had any idea of how big its reach would soon become.
Going Global
As part of her doctorate program, Dr. Velmer was required to create a product, so she decided to create a choir website with song ideas and resources about the benefits of music for aphasia. Sing Aphasia was born.
When the pandemic hit, the choir was forced to go online. While Zoom initially offered challenges with syncing the music and multiple voices, they made it work. “The most important thing about our choir is our community and the connections that we make,” Dr. Velmer said. “It wasn’t about singing everything just right. It was about being able to get online, do a fun activity together and connect with each other.”
The collaborations continued to expand, and in summer 2020, Dr. Velmer and Trent Barrick, a neurologic music therapist, co-founded the International Aphasia Choir. Aphasia choirs from around the world gathered online to rehearse, leading up to a November 2020 online performance of Louis Armstrong’s song “What a Wonderful World.” After the concert’s success, Dr. Velmer decided it was time to make Sing Aphasia an official nonprofit organization.
Since 2020, Sing Aphasia has continued online, with members from around the world. The choir has hosted aphasia choir meetups with other aphasia choirs from the United Kingdom, Argentina, Hungary and more. Dr. Velmer said meeting with other choirs across the globe has shown members that people living thousands of miles away and who speak different languages face similar challenges with aphasia and experience similar benefits from a choir.
“I treat the choir as if it is a community choir and not a therapy session,” Dr. Velmer said. “I really want it to be more about that sense of community with everyone. It’s not about getting all the right notes and all the right words. It’s most important to me that we are having fun and supporting each other through a shared love of music.”
Florida choir member Arthur “Butch” R. Goodwill Jr., age 50, listed numerous ways the choir has helped with his aphasia. It has helped him slow down, be patient and say one thing at a time. He began using pen and paper and drawing diagrams and pictures to help get his message out. The choir has helped him relax, be natural and know that he doesn’t have to pretend to understand something, he said via email.
Josh Smith, age 48, who splits his year between New York and Florida, has anomic aphasia caused by a stroke. Before his stroke, he was a professional theater music director. Sing Aphasia “gives me a chance to exercise my love of music in a supportive setting,” he said via email. “Music has helped my rate and flow of speech … and I love the camaraderie of the group!”
How to Join the Choir
The choir holds rehearsals on Zoom every Saturday morning (11 a.m. U.S. Eastern time). Members join from all over the U.S., as well as from Mexico, Canada and Ireland. Some people bring a family member or friend with them, which allows them to participate in an enjoyable activity together. Others prefer to come on their own because it makes them feel more independent and they like the choir to be their “me time,” Dr. Velmer said.
Members may be nervous to sing initially. “I’ve seen some members that were hesitant or a little uncomfortable at first, but I have also seen how the choir has given them confidence. It empowers them that they can do this. I always say to them, ‘We can do hard things. We can challenge ourselves. We are working our brains.’”
The choir chooses songs with uplifting themes, repetitive lyrics, a straightforward melody and easy rhythm. But each semester, they choose a more challenging song too, which might have a faster rhythm. In January, the choir takes a break but hosts a songwriting club, which typically takes well-known songs and rewrites the lyrics. This year, the choir wrote an original song, which they will premiere during the choir’s June performance during Aphasia Awareness Month.
Sing Aphasia also created a Choir Advisory Board, a leadership team made up of members from the choir. The board chooses songs, welcomes new participants and coordinates birthday wishes for choir members.
Watch Sing Aphasia virtual concerts on the Sing Aphasia YouTube channel. For more information on Sing Aphasia and to join the free choir, email Gillian Velmer at SingAphasia@gmail.com.
Using Music to Heal
People with aphasia, dementia or other brain disorders can use music to improve their mood and ability to think. Here are a few ways to Dr. Velmer suggests incorporating music into daily lives:
1. Use the same music every day to start a morning routine. Play an upbeat or favorite song or one that is related to the task or time of day: “Here Comes the Sun” as you wake up or “The Java Jive” as you make your coffee. Sing along to each song.2. Use music throughout the day to reflect your mood. Perhaps play and sing along to “Mr. Sandman” or “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” as you power down at the end of the day.
3. To learn the lyrics to a song, slow down the song speed. In YouTube you can slow down the speed by clicking on the “Settings” icon at the bottom of the YouTube window and clicking “Playback speed.” Spotify doesn’t have this ability, but there is a Chrome plug-in that allows you to control the speed on Spotify online (not on your phone).
4. Create “memory” playlists of songs that illustrate important moments in your life, like wedding or graduation playlists or memorable songs from your childhood or the happiest years in your life.
