On the afternoon of Jan. 12, 2010, Dr. Patrice Severe, a physician at the GHESKIO clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, found himself dodging falling rubble as he crawled onto a nearby soccer field. The GHESKIO clinic where Dr. Severe worked was just 16 miles from the epicenter of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that shook Haiti that afternoon, and the soccer field on which Dr. Severe found himself would quickly become a refugee camp for roughly 7,000 Haitians who lost their homes in the quake.
"Life, as we had known it, will never be the same," he recalled.
Dr. Severe was recounting those haunting moments during "A Tribute to Haiti," an event held Wednesday, Nov. 3, at The Juilliard School to celebrate Haitian culture and honor the efforts of Weill Cornell Medical College's GHESKIO clinic.
The event was sponsored by the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Initiative, a partnership between The Juilliard School and Weill Cornell Medical College that explores the relationship between music and medicine and provides opportunities for collaboration between each school's students.
Featuring musical performances from Juilliard and Weill Cornell students, the evening served as both a tribute to Haitian culture as well as a fundraiser for the GHESKIO clinic, and recalled the catastrophic tragedy of Jan. 12 while also pointing toward a better future.
A performance of Michael Tilson Thomas' "Street Song Movements I & II" featured a brass quintet playing in complete darkness against the backdrop of a montage of photos from Haiti. The images illustrated not only a society devastated by natural disaster — collapsed houses, disfigured survivors, orphaned children — but also signs that Haitians will quite literally rise from the rubble and rebuild their country, with photos of children attending school, supplies being delivered to refugee camps, and perhaps most poignantly, medical services being provided to patients in need.
The tribute included performances from Weill Cornell students Jenna Devare, Paul Dossous, Lee Kiang, Curtis O'Neal and Ankit Patel, as well as performances highlighting Haitian culture, including a reading from Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat's "Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work" and a performance by Kongo, a traditional Haitian music group based in New York City.
Though the Music and Medicine Initiative was spearheaded by Dr. David A. Shapiro, a member of the Weill Cornell Medical College Board of Overseers, the Haitian tribute concert was entirely student-organized, he said.
"The reason this program happened was because there was a grassroots movement from the students," Dr. Shapiro said. "We introduced the students [from each institution] and these two groups of students are so exceptional that they can go off and do something like this on their own."
The idea of a music and medicine program took hold at Weill Cornell immediately, students said.
"It didn't take much effort to generate enthusiasm," said Jeff Russ, an MD-PhD student at Weill Cornell who is a student representative on the Board of Overseers and has been involved in furthering the program. "Once we mentioned that there was a music and medicine program beginning, there was tons of student support for it — a lot of interested musicians who wanted an excuse to keep their musical interests up while they're in med school."
Students first began with a series of salons, in which Weill Cornell students selected a topic from the medical literature to discuss, and Juilliard students selected and played music to accompany the theme. After the success of the series, students from Juilliard and Weill Cornell met to plan a public performance — meetings which happened to coincide with the Haitian earthquake last January.
Because of the role the GHESKIO clinic plays in the lives of Weill Cornell students and faculty, the earthquake "impacted the Cornell community quite significantly," said MD-PhD student Curtis O'Neal, an 18-year violinist who has taken a leadership role in the Music and Medicine Initiative and helped plan "A Tribute to Haiti." "We thought, 'Wow, this is something that we can contribute to.'"
Though the program at The Juilliard School and Weill Cornell is barely a year old, music and medicine have a shared history that dates back thousands of years. Apollo is both the god of music and medicine, and in traditional depictions he carries a lyre by his side; more literally, in traditional tribal cultures the role of healer and musician is often shared by one leader, said Dr. Richard Kogan, a psychiatrist at Weill Cornell and an internationally known concert pianist.
"I feel that music is an enormously underutilized modality in healing. Intuitively we know that music can lift spirits, improve mood, reduce pain and lower anxiety," said Dr. Kogan. "And I think there is the potential for an explosion of the use of music as a force of healing. A lot of this program's intent is to bring back these two fields that were originally together."
Dr. Kogan, who serves as the program's vice chairman and artistic director, in a way embodies the traditional mix of music and medicine.
"He's the kind of person that this program is built around," said Dr. Shapiro, who serves as program director of the Music and Medicine Initiative.
Though the program was originally started as a way to provide Weill Cornell student-musicians with the opportunity to continue their musical training, there is no set limit on what students in the program may do, Dr. Shapiro said. In addition to salons and performances like "A Tribute to Haiti," the program may also in the future develop partnerships to contribute to research on the role of music in medicine, as well as offer music performances as a therapy for patients.