Music and Medicine on Monday (M+M+M) at the University of Iowa - Schedule of Events and Disclaimer
Tips for the Aging Guitarist to Continue Playing (2 minutes 50 seconds)
Jazz Guitar - "My Favorite Things" with Commentary (Lesson - 3 minutes)
video of full interview and performance:
Definitions
Aging (Ageing): "the biological process of decline in physical and mental capacity, risk of diease and death over time"(WHO 2021) - resulting from the 'impact of a wide variety of molecular and cellular damage over time" - 'changes are neither linear nor consistent, and they are only loosely associated with a person's age in years".
Background:
Longevity was reviewed for 8,775 musicians identifying that women harp players (80.9 years), clavesin players (79.9 years) and conductors (79.6 years) lived the longest compared to compared to women guitarists excluding 'rock music' (54.4 years) and least among women 'rock-musicians' (37.7 years) (Zharinov 2014)
A more recent report by Zharinov (2020) identified "the frequency of suicides, deaths by misadventure, murders, and malignant tumors was maximal in rock musicians and minimal in classical musicians"
Les Paul (born Lester Polsfuss in Waukesha Wisconsin in 1915) continued to play into his 90's despite being in a car accident in 1948 with right arm amputation considered but instead fixated the elbow in 90 degrees of flexion using a bone graft from the fibula and a fixation plate with screws - 'spending months in a long arm spica cast reinforeced with a broomstick as he waited for feeling to return to his fingers' (Nakayam 2024)
Andre Segovia was still giving concerts on classical guitar at 91 years of age (Astrand 1987)
Management:
fMRI (functional MRI) analysis neurospecificity of speech representations in sensorimotor areas compared older musicians, older non-musicians, and young non-musicians (Zhang 2023). Audiovisual speech-in-noise processing (intrepeting speech in a noisy invironment) was found to be preserved in the older musicians similar in a way that was lost for older nonmusicians. These findings were interpreted to support the proposal that long-term musical training may contribute to neural resource inrichment to mitigate the negative impacts of aging.
References:
Zharinov GM, Anisimov VN. [Musics and longevity]. Adv Gerontol. 2014;27(2):284-90. Russian. PMID: 25306660.
Zharinov, G.M., Mikhalsky, A.I., Neklasova, N.Y. et al. Longevity and Some Causes of Death in Musicians of the 20th Century. Adv Gerontol 10, 193ā203 (2020). https://doi-org.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/10.1134/S2079057020020150
Nakayama DK. Jazz Musicians and Their Disabilities: Django Reinhardt, Les Paul, and Michel Petrucciani. Am Surg. 2024 Jun 13:31348241259307. doi: 10.1177/00031348241259307. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38869229.
citing: Port IS. The birth of loud. Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the guitar-pioneering rivalry that shaped rock ānā roll. New York: Schribner. 2019.
Astrand PO. Exercise physiology and its role in disease prevention and in rehabilitation. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 1987 May;68(5 Pt 1):305-9. PMID: 3555405.
Zhang L, Wang X, Alain C, Du Y. Successful aging of musicians: Preservation of sensorimotor regions aids audiovisual speech-in-noise perception. Sci Adv. 2023 Apr 28;9(17):eadg7056. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg7056. Epub 2023 Apr 26. PMID: 37126550; PMCID: PMC10132752.
Reynolds CF 3rd. Images on Aging: Picasso's "The Old Guitarist". Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2018 Apr;26(4):504. doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2018.01.205. Epub 2018 Feb 7. PMID: 29501413.
WHO (World Health Organization) Ageing and Health October 1, 2022 (<accessed https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health September 2, 2024>)