Moment: Music as medicine

Bob Stagner, Southeast facilitator for The Rhythmic Arts Project, teaches 11-year-old Michael Wiren how to play the djembe while his parents Chris and Andrea Wiren look on at Erlanger Hospital on Jan. 27, 2015. Stagner plays drums with kids at the hospital every Tuesday.
Bob Stagner, Southeast facilitator for The Rhythmic Arts Project, teaches 11-year-old Michael Wiren how to play the djembe while his parents Chris and Andrea Wiren look on at Erlanger Hospital on Jan. 27, 2015. Stagner plays drums with kids at the hospital every Tuesday.

In each hospital room Bob Stagner visits, he begins his performance with the same opening number.

"How old are you?"

"Eleven."

"Hmm, let me think back to what it was like to be eleven."

That's the whole idea of Stagner's drum therapy -- to make kids feel their age again.

The children's floor at Erlanger is about as warm as a hospital can be. Hand-painted murals depict fantasy scenes, colorful wallpaper borders light up rooms and a playroom sits filled with books and toys. But it's still a hospital, full of scary tubes, machines that beep and a lot of uncertainty for a kid to face.

"I think this brings something else to the table," Stagner says. "It's just the very simple activity of being connected and included."

Stagner, a professional musician who facilitates The Rhythmic Arts Project in the Southeast and directs the Shaking Ray Levi Society, has been coming to the hospital for about nine years.

His own drum career began when he turned over his guitar at the age of 10 and "started playing like a fiend."

"Percussion is accessible," Stagner said.

And so he visits every Tuesday.

"This is a djembe. Say it with me, jim-bay," Stagner says, sitting on the hospital bed and holding out a goblet-shaped hand drum. "It means 'come together.'"

The second an instrument comes out, Stagner tells the child to play it. Go ahead, you can touch it. Hit it like this. With a little direction, soon he and the child are playing in sync with complementary rhythms.

The mood of the room shifts once the child catches on.

"It's really nice to watch the parents' reaction," Stagner said. "When you see your child smiling and having a great time and hearing some of the wonderful things that they're thinking and feeling in a time of stress it's quite rewarding."

Tensions ease and laughter rises. It feels almost normal.

"It made him cheer up a little bit and smile, which we haven't seen for a few days," said Andrea Wiren, the mother of Michael, an 11-year-old patient.

Stagner says drums are more than a distraction, they're something for sick kids to have control over in a world of doctor's orders and medication schedules.

"It was just really fun," said Braylon Beason, a 13-year-old patient. "You're cooped up in here, and you don't really get to do much."

Stagner's finale in each room is to involve everyone in the band, passing maracas and small bells to family and any nurses who have wandered in to check on the patient's chart.

A janitor dances past, waving her hands to the beat.

"He just brought a lot of joy to me," Braylon said.

Contact staff writer Maura Friedman at 423-757-6309 or mfriedman@timesfreepress.com.

photo Bob Stagner, Southeast facilitator for The Rhythmic Arts Project, teaches 11-year-old Michael Wiren how to play the djembe while his parents Chris and Andrea Wiren look on at Erlanger Hospital on Jan. 27, 2015. Stagner plays drums with kids at the hospital every Tuesday.

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