In the Ted Talk “Between Music and Medicine” Robert Gupta goes into depth how music can significantly and positively impact people. Gupta uses examples of people who are in a very distressed time and how music helped them in those times. He even uses the example of a patient who was shot and couldn’t speak but was able to when they began to sing with their therapist. Gupta also mentions how he started an organization called “Street Symphony” that was supposed to help those in dark times, by the use music. This organization performed at shelters and clinics for the homeless and mentally ill on Skid Row, performed for veterans with PTSD, for the incarcerated and the criminally insane. Another example of healing with music that Gupta mentioned was after one of these performances where a lady with some type of palsy had finally stopped shaking when she heard classical music of the first time. Gupta emphasizes the power of music and why it is so important to society and to him.
Robert Gupta is a violinist, he attended Yale University and Marist College. He started the “Street Symphony” organization in 2010, where various musicians traveled to homeless shelters, jails, clinics and probably more places where people don’t have easy access to the music and art. Gupta is very passionate about music and seems to have a positive attitude towards the world, art and music they way that he is trying to make the world a better place with the use of music. The primary audience are probably people who are also passionate about music like he is. However, the way he was speaking he wasn’t using language that only people who know about music would understand and Gupta wants to spread his message, so his secondary audience can be anyone who wants to listen. He started the “Street Symphony” organization in 2010 and the Ted Talk was made in 2012, so his experiences in the last couple years with less fortunate people and music could’ve pushed him to make this Ted Talk and finally be able to share his experiences on a larger stage. The purpose of this Ted Talk is to inform people on how powerful music can be and how it can actually change lives. I would call this genre an informative speech and maybe even a demonstrative speech for his use of the violin in the beginning and end of the video. Even though it is motivational in some ways informative is the best way to categorize his speech because the speaker was mainly telling the audience experiences, explaining them, elaborating on them and using facts and research throughout the speech. The tone is passionate and serious. Gupta makes one joke throughout the video but also doesn’t make the tone depressing, he speaks with passion about his experiences and uses many gestures and changes his pitch and volume when he wants to emphasize a word or words. This video helps me answer my question significantly because it answers my question with real life experiences and it also gives me extra information on the topic as well. Gupta cites various mentors and people he learned from in the past.
“And after a few moments, her therapist tries a new tack, and they start singing together, and Gabby starts to sing through her tears, and you can hear her clearly able to enunciate the words to a song that describe the way she feels, and she sings, in one descending scale, she sings, “Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” And it’s a very powerful and poignant reminder of how the beauty of music has the ability to speak where words fail, in this case literally speak.”
“ a woman walked up to us and she had tears streaming down her face, and she had a palsy, she was shaking, and she had this gorgeous smile, and she said that she had never heard classical music before, she didn’t think she was going to like it, she had never heard a violin before, but that hearing this music was like hearing the sunshine, and that nobody ever came to visit them, and that for the first time in six years, when she heard us play, she stopped shaking without medication.”
“and for those living in the most dehumanizing conditions of mental illness within homelessness and incarceration, the music and the beauty of music offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them, to remember that they still have the capacity to experiencesomething beautiful and that humanity has not forgotten them.”
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