A Letter from André: Music is Medicine.

It always starts with a seed. For me it was a bright orange ukulele.

It was plastic, cheap, with a cartoon dog printed right there on the soundboard. I got hit with an advert for it on Instagram, popping into my feed one day during my afternoon scroll. The thing that stopped my thumb in its tracks was that this was a "smart" ukulele. It connected with an App. It had a light up fretboard that would tell you where to place your fingers. It was like Guitar Hero with real strings.

Something that day made me tap on the link. A one click checkout on Amazon and just like that, the next day it was in my hands. To be honest, I'm still not really sure how it got there.

I've had a challenging relationship with music, or more specifically musical instruments since I was a child. I was "encouraged" by my parents to learn an instrument, and so from a young age I learned the violin. My childhood memories about this are wrapped up in a kind of duty; seeking to fulfil expectations, filling my resume rather than my soul.

Still, I progressed quickly, racing up the grades, always ahead of my peers, always ensuring that I was a couple of age groups ahead when it came to group music activities like the school orchestra. And thus music for me became a very isolated experience, mixed in with my social anxiety, alone even when I was with others.

By the time I left school to go to university I felt like a musical fraud. I would see the other kids, basking in their musical expression, their fluency. I saw how music was an integrated part of their personality. And although I could play the pieces, evoke emotion in others with my skill, I felt empty inside. A skilled technician of the violin. A tin man, a robot who played with strings.

When I left school I packed up my violin in its case and put it away in my bedroom cupboard, promising my parents that I would be back for it once I'd settled into university. But of course I never came back for it. It sat there gathering dust. As far as I was concerned that part of my life was over. I wasn't truly musical. I was no musician.

So you can imagine my confusion over 20 years later, to find myself sitting with a bright orange ukulele, playing deep into the night. Playing until my fingers ached. Singing until my voice became hoarse. Feeling all kinds of emotions surge through my chest. It was an entirely new experience for me. It became a nightly ritual. My wife and I together making music. Me playing, us both singing. Always one more tune, one more tune. It felt like the music was water poured onto parched earth. I couldn't get enough. It sparked a fire in me that I thought extinguished long ago. It made me feel whole.

From this seed sprouted my musical resurrection. Today at home we have a ukulele, guitar and piano sitting there waiting to be played whenever the mood strikes (which is often). When I feel low, I play. When I feel high, I play. When friends come over, we play together. I've learned the incredible healing power of music, its ability to help me process my feelings, to help me connect with myself and others. I've re-membered that music is in fact medicine.

This seed gave us the confidence and the drive to create the Music as Medicine programme alongside community musician Matt Laurie. Now on a regular basis I get to experience the power of music in community. I feel it when I see the peaceful expressions on faces around the circle after an ecstatic dance. I feel it in the pin-drop silence of a collective held breath as we all wait for the cellist to hit us with her next sonorous note. I feel it in the synchronous sigh from around the room as the folk singer lowers her fiddle. I feel it as the whole room starts dancing in unison as the band picks up the beat. And I feel it when I watch transfixed, as brave soul after brave soul steps up to bare their hearts to us at an Open Mic night, knowing that they will be held gently by the crowd.

It's incredible to me how such a small seed can bear so much fruit. I hope that through this program, we are helping others plant their own seeds, start their own journeys, rediscover parts of themselves they once thought lost. It's all part of becoming whole again.

For me the seed was a bright orange ukulele. What will yours be?