Will Sheff — the lead singer of rock band Okkervil River — performed at Brown on Sept. 14 as part of ‘Music and Medicine,’ an event hosted by scholarly clinician group Politics of the Prescription Pad.
Sheff was introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page and joined on a panel by Associate Professor of Medicine Julio Defillo, Professor of Medicine Fred Schiffman and Assistant Professor of Medicine William Page, as well as medical anthropologist Sarah Williams. The panel was moderated by Kimberly Adams, an organizer of Politics of the Prescription Pad.
Sheff performed four of his songs and introduced each by explaining its origin. Many of the songs described personal stories or experiences of pain. After each performance, the panel discussed how the song related to their experiences with patient care.
In an interview with The Herald, Williams explained that ‘Music and Medicine’ was the capstone event for Politics of the Prescription Pad. The clinician-scholar group, according to its website, is a “working group and event series at Brown University, supported by the Pembroke Center Faculty Seed Grants and the Paul Kazarian Arts Special Purpose Fund.”
Williams, who has been involved with the group since its founding, said that their work has focused “on the combinations of social and clinical dimensions of pain and pain management.”
For their final event, they wanted to bring in a musician whose “body of work focuses on pain and the experience of pain” and explore the relationship between music and medicine by including him in conversations with physicians and scholars, Williams said.
Sheff explained, in an interview with The Herald, that his experiences of being in and out of the hospital from a young age informed much of his songwriting. One such example of this is displayed in a song that he performed at the event, entitled “Famous Tracheotomies.” As a child, Sheff had a tracheotomy to open up his airway.
At the event, Sheff spoke about how his fans have used music as a way to get through hardships.
“The healing quality of music,” he said, “could be something really profound, like a musical therapist who comes to a hospital or hospice to try to soothe people. Or, it could be something as simple as (when) you’re in a bad mood and you put on a song that you like and you perk up.”
In his introduction at the panel, Page explained that after suffering a brain injury, he listened to some of Okkervil River’s records as part of his recovery process. “I don’t know what I would have done without music,” he said.
Page referred to Sheff as one of the great songwriters of our time.
After the songs and panel discussions, audience members asked questions and shared experiences about the intersection of music and medicine. The audience had a diverse range of participants, including students, faculty and music therapists.
Francesca Grossberg is a Staff Writer covering Science and Research. She is a first-year from New York City planning to concentrate in Health and Human Biology.
