OUR MISSION
The Beat of Life is a Nashville-based non-profit
with the mission to bring therapeutic songwriting and music programs
to our most vulnerable and marginalized
including the incarcerated, those battling mental illness, addiction, and suicide, and our most at-risk youth
To create both individual and collective healing, unity, and transformation through the power of music
We do this through the merging of the music and human service worlds,
bringing together the professional songwriting community
with those experiencing some of the most critical social issues of our times......
to re-process trauma and adversities through song
The Power of Music: The Proof
“Redemption Songs”
Our program designed to serve the inmate populations in jails and prisons.
“Beautiful Minds”
Our program designed to serve adults and teens battling mental illness, depression, and suicide in residential treatment centers or psychiatric hospitals.
“Anthems of Change”
Our youth-based program designed to address the most critical issues our children and teens are facing today: hate/prejudice, anger, division, racial injustice, fractured family units, bullying/cruelty, anger, depression, anxiety, mental illness, self-harm, addiction, and suicide.
Music is one of the most extraordinary healing tools that exists, and possesses the ability to touch the human spirit and transform lives perhaps more profoundly than anything else in the world. We all understand this on at least some basic level. Most of us use music every day as a personal therapy for the body, mind, spirit, and soul - likely without even realizing we are using it as such. No matter what challenge we may face, we have used it to motivate, lift up, encourage, comfort, inspire, remind, and teach us. Music has brought us energy, enthusiasm, laughter, exhilaration, much-needed tears, and the courage and strength to fight our battles. It has helped us to access emotions that may have been dormant, to change our behaviors, and to overcome often horrific circumstances, or aspire to dreams of greatness. Music has the universal power to bring new life to any person or group of people, anywhere, at any time, transcending all human boundaries, all human circumstances, and all human hearts.
But throughout history and for generations, music has also served to unite us as mankind, as a fellowship of brother-and-sisterhood. Songs that have brought the world together in times of great turmoil and in climates of social unrest have served as a rallying cry to remind us of what we ALL value and believe in, and what we have in common no matter our color, race, age, religion, politics or worldview
And so, the “why” for our existence at The Beat of Life matters more now than ever before. Because perhaps now, too… we can harness the same potential and might that music has always carried to restore not only LIFE, but also our HUMANITY.
An Unlikely Social Hero
Taken a step further, we decided it was critical to not just produce passive programs fostering only the listening to music, but the creating of it. Through being engaged in that creative process, individuals involve and activate much more of their own minds, hearts, and souls.
Enter the Songwriter. It’s no secret that Nashville is not just “Music City”, but that we are known for being an intimate town flooded with the most masterful tunesmiths on earth: Songwriters. We could just as easily be called “Songwriter City”. And so… we decided to leverage not only the abundance of music in Nashville… but the abundance of songwriters.
But it’s not just because we have that rich supply of them that we are harnessing them. It’s because of their tremendous value.
Experts in Heartbreak
And we immediately realized exactly why it works and makes such a profound impact.
Songwriters are, quite simply, experts in heartbreak. Many – if not most – first enter the vocation at least in part because it is an outlet for their own life struggles, battles, or demons.
Songwriters bleed and heal through music themselves – so they are the perfect match to bring together with those who can use their empathy most. Though their darkness may be a different shade… their humanity, vulnerability, and “Me, too” sentiment carries extraordinary credibility for individuals experiencing great suffering. Songwriters become just one of them… and this has the power to open, soften, disarm, and inspire the hurting heart.
The Human Connection
Although we live in a world with greater “connection” than any generation, we’ve traded a global virtual connectivity for a loss of the real, live human touch. The impact of this loss of social capital is so profound that isolation and loneliness have become an entirely new developing crisis in the past decade.
And so, another critical role the songwriters play is that social bond – human connection. The songwriters walk in as a “stranger” to our program participants, but songwriters are used to forming quick bonds with new co-writers. And so, these vulnerable individuals are given the gift of a caring soul who wants to listen and help them create something of worth out of their embattled lives.
Music Can Save A Life
In order for music to be truly transformative, it must create new feelings within the human body and mind. So an integral part of our programming involves participants becoming a co-writer with their songwriters – to create music that will help them to see their lives, experiences, traumas, and battles in a new light.
At the same time, through this re-processing and telling of their stories creatively, they feel inspired to use their adversity or brokenness for transforming not only themselves… but perhaps even for others who will hear their song and find meaning, hope, or redemption in their own struggles as well. Lastly, through musically bringing into existence something of value to themselves and potentially others in similar battles, they also find enhanced self worth and maybe even… purpose.