Healing power of music

A fundraising event for Bosham House spiritual centre will focus on the healing power of music.

The venue is Hamblin Hall, Bosham House, on September 8 from 7.30-9.30pm (tickets £10 to include refreshments on 01243 572109) with the promise of an informal concert of music-making, singing and playing.

Varianne Cowan and Christina Wellbeloved will be performing in a devotional gathering hosted by Russell Stone, one half of the duo R&J Stone who had a worldwide hit with We Do It in 1976.

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Tragically, the J of the duo, Russell’s wife Joanne died of a brain tumour in 1979.

Russell now talks about wholeness, about attuning yourself to yourself – and he speaks from sad experience.

“I became alienated from myself through what happened in my life. There was a time when music did not make any sense for me. I left the business in 95. It was then through my research that I came back to singing. I hadn’t got tired of music. But I had got tired of all the (rubbish) that I had created around it. It just broke a long time ago for me. I was like one of those big liners that take five miles to turn around. I thought I was keeping going, but I was actually broken… and that’s when I started the healing process.”

And in a sense, it was a process which brought him full circle – back to the joy of We Do It.

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“I am still getting emails on a regular basis from people just saying thank you for that song. I had one the other day from a man saying ‘I am just a regular bloke, but whenever I hear that song, I always cry because I remember the joy that I had back then when it was a hit.’

“It was a love song to Joanne and it was the finest song I wrote at the period. It contained all the emotion, all the love. That song helped me – even in my darkest times.

“The spirit is always there. But as humans we can create circumstances that cover and cloud the spirit.”

The Healing and Joy Concert is all about letting that spirit shine through.

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“The healing is through the music. It’s that intention of bringing joy to people’s lives. When music is made, especially music that is joyful and has a depth to it, then it begins to attune people to themselves and brings them closer to themselves. The western culture has led to an inner fragmentation. That’s just part of the human race and its evolution, but once there has been this fragmentation, you need to bring things together to be holistic and to be whole again. Music has that effect, of bringing the separate parts together.

“Just look around at what is happening in the world. The fragmentation leads to war between nations, between people that believe that they have a right to grab as many resources as they can. If somebody has got all the money, then there are lots of people that haven’t got any. That fragmentation leads to a great deal of distress. That’s why we need beacons that people can be drawn to. The work at Bosham House is extremely important.

“The healing process is to heal that separation that exists within. The sense of alienation is very very deep in our culture. You can see with the riots and the fact that children are being medicated for psychological reasons. That’s not a good thing for our culture. Medication has got a function, but when it is just being used for symptomatic reasons, you are not addressing the roots of the problem.”