A healing of souls using rock ‘n’ roll

Seventeen-year-old Tony Bacon sat at the parlor window seat, his eyes glued to the driveway. He settles into the same spot every Wednesday afternoon.

“What are you waiting for?” asked his mother, Susan Williams.

“Music therapy,” he said, his words fast and slurred.

For the next 45 minutes, Tony, who has autism, and Krystal Demaine sit face to face in the sunroom. She plays guitar as he beats on a drum.

Demaine, a graduate of the music therapy program at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, has been going to Tony’s house for four years, using the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” for exercises in enunciation, volume and breath control. Beating along to “Blackbird” tests the teen’s coordination and motor control.

It’s part of a session known as music therapy, which is used to help people with various medical conditions develop everything from language skills to motor coordination. It can provide a drug-free way to regulate moods in people with depression or foster socialization in those with limited communication skills.

The first music therapy program in the country started at Michigan State University in 1944, according to Alan Solomon, former historian for the American Music Therapy Assn. and current dean at the Potsdam State University of New York’s Crane School of Music.

He said it gained popularity in veterans’ hospitals in World War II as doctors became interested in music’s ability to heal soldiers with both physical and mental problems.

These days, Berklee’s program is one of the largest among the 70 that have sprouted up around the country. In the next school year, Berklee will have 100 students in the program.

Music therapists take advantage of the ways mind and body are stimulated when people listen to and make music to hone motor and brain functions, said AMTA spokesman Al Bumanis.

“Music impacts a person viscerally, physically, immediately and directly,” said Suzanne Hanser, chairwoman of Berklee’s music therapy program.

Demaine, who graduated from the program in 2000, said a patient in music therapy works on many senses at once.

“I’m using my hands, I’m using my eyes, I’m using my ears -- I’m using all these different senses and I’m receiving something that makes me feel good,” said Demaine, who has a certificate in neurologic music therapy and a master’s in education.

Tony’s mother said she enrolled him in music therapy because she thought it could help his communication skills.

The therapy “forces language” when he and Demaine sing, Williams said, making it easier for Tony to communicate.

“I think there’s something so basic but so complicated about rhythm,” she said. “I think it really helps organize the brain.”

Students in the Berklee program spend most of their time in hospitals and schools, where they work with patients under the supervision of professional music therapists.