This jazz musician helped improve his mental health in a unique way.
A psychiatric take on the daily news
For a hard copy of the August 2022 issue, go to Saiki Times™, I wrote my third annual article on tackling racism and psychiatry.personal and psychiatric jazz riffs on racismThe Death of Black American Jazz Great Pharoah Sanders on Saturday is the follow-up riff.
I don’t usually compliment non-psychiatrists. I think the last one was Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, and before that it was actor Robin Williams. But since, as his colleague Albert Ayler’s recording title claims, “Music is the healing power of the universe,” how can psychiatry ignore another contribution to spiritual healing? do you want?
Born on October 13, 1940, his birth name was Farrell. Jazz iconoclast Sun Ra gave him his nickname Pharoah. He played the saxophone, and ranged from gentle caressing ballads with a rolling rhythm to long screams of protest. The screams seemed somewhat similar to the sound of the shofar currently being blown out for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to wake us up and set us on a better course for the coming year.
Even if you haven’t heard his music, these album titles might give you an idea of his importance.
1967: Tauhid. The word tawheed refers to the union of an individual soul with God. The first side consists of “Upper and Lower Egypt”. I was his first year in medical school at Yale, and it was like being in a foreign country.
1969: Karma. This was released the year after his wife Rusty and I were married, and there was one cut that covered almost the entire album called “The Creator Has a Master Plan.” The plan, sung by Leon Thomas, was “Peace and Happiness for All”. We named our cat Karma after that.
1973: Black Unity. The title track was the album as a whole, a call to unity for black people as the civil rights era came to an end and I was about to start a psychiatric residency at the University of Chicago. It was here that I decided to become a community psychiatrist after seeing poverty, racism and other social determinants of mental illness on the boardwalk.
1978: Love Finds a Way. Sanders had a sharp and fierce gaze, but here he showed a loving and soft side.
1982: Pharoah Sanders: Live. A powerful, almost desperate call on the track “You’ve Got to Have Freedom.” I thought that included mental health freedom, perhaps an intrinsic freedom for everyone.
2021: Promise. Recording There has been a long gap in recording over the last 40 years, partly due to conflicts with his label owner. A collaboration between white electronic musician Sam Shepard and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
At concerts, his audience was often multicultural. From the days of the civil rights movement to the current schism, he’s been anti-racist and didn’t need to say a word. His healing music keeps him alive.
Dr. Mofik An award-winning psychiatrist specializing in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry. A prolific author and speaker, in 2002 he received the title of Hero of Public Psychiatry from the General Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association for the first time. for a better world.he serves on the editorial board of Psychiatric Times™.
