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NewsAug 9, 2016

Alumna’s music career aimed at healing and helping

In Cheryl Melody Baskin’s work as a teacher, performer and author, she’s reached schoolchildren, nuns and Oklahoma City bombing survivors.

The name Melody perhaps preordains one for some sort of career in music.

For more than several decades, Cheryl Melody Baskin has been using her musical gifts to help others, initially as a teacher of music to young children, and now as a composer and performer of what she describes as “adult lullabies.”

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Alumna Cheryl Melody Baskin

“My open heart seems to open other people’s hearts,” says Melody, who takes a moment to explain the many facets of her name: Cheryl Melody is what she uses when teaching or performing for children, though her birth name is Cheryl Melody Baskin, the name she uses when writing, or performing for or teaching adults. Otherwise, she uses Cheryl Melody Baskin Rosenbloom (her husband’s surname).

But friends often just call her Melody.

Whatever one calls her, the Lesley alumna (’89, M.A., Interdisciplinary Studies) is striking a chord with her work as a “sound healer.” This year she released her eighth CD of original music (her third CD geared toward adults), “Lullabies of Love — Nurturing the Heart of the Inner Child.”

She has also written a book coming out in late fall called “Shift of Heart — Paths to Healing and Love.”

“I had a book that needed to be written, probably since I was 15 years old … when (family friend and artist) Dr. Morris Hyman took me under his wing as a mentor, validating and honoring the unique qualities I had within me of listening to the whispers of life, and of introspection, reflection, insight and intuition.”

The book, she continues, “plants seeds towards inner peace, and is filled with encouragement, creativity ideas, wisdoms for living, and offers solid everyday tools towards balance and inner growth.”

Baskin says she never expected to become an author. She wrote a three-act musical for children years ago, but never imagined working on a book.

“You never know what wants to come out from inside of you at any given moment,” she says.

Baskin grew up in Burlington, Vt., a creative household environment of classical music. Her mother was an opera singer and Baskin attended the prestigious Hartt School of Music.

“I used to play the cello, which got me into college,” she says, “but then I dropped it.”

Although she loved the cello, she says. “My soul really wanted to sing.”

At a workshop after college, people told Baskin her voice sounded like angels.

“After that workshop, I continued to sing with joy, and along the way gave birth to a relaxation CD, ‘Voice of the Angels — A Healing Journey.’”

Music as salve

Sometime after college, Baskin believed that her music could be used to heal the kind of psychological wounds she carried. As a Jewish child in a predominantly non-Jewish city, she was often bullied and made to feel like an outsider. However, a positive and healing outcome of her past traumas is that most of her original songs are about anti-bullying, inclusion, respect, oneness, unity, conflict resolution, compassion and love.

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Alumna Cheryl Melody Baskin performs an original work.

In the late ’80s, Baskin decided to maximize her creative and musical talents, so she came to Lesley University. She studied with Dr. Marion Nesbit, adjunct faculty member Stan Strickland, Nancy and John Langstaff, and others. She even picked up the cello again and began composing, eventually performing an original work as part of her final master’s presentation.

“I didn’t really know that I could compose until about the time I went to Lesley,” Baskin says.

During this time, she also took courses at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, studied composing with Minuetta Kessler, and continued to teach at The Children’s Music Workshop in Weston, a school Baskin founded.

But, to Baskin, the greatest chance of realizing her musical talent’s potential was to write and record songs that heal, though she is careful to point out that she does not have training or a background in music therapy. The healing music and words she creates are birthed intuitively, from her inner wisdom and insights.

“For children or the inner child within adults, I wanted to write songs with lyrics that fostered self-esteem, love, healing, nurturing and positive values,” she said. “I never want a child or an adult to feel completely alone, like I did at times.”

Her children’s music CDs have won Kidlutions Awards and a Parents Choice National Award, and her healing songs for adults have garnered invitations to perform in a variety of venues, from coffeehouses to churches, synagogues, schools around the country, the Boston schools (at the request of the Sisters of St. Joseph), and even Oklahoma City.

Baskin explains that in the wake of the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, she sent out copies of her “Voice of the Angels” CD to random addresses on a list she purchased. One of those discs ended up in the hands of Dr. Norma Leslie, a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, who invited her to the school to perform a concert. On her website, Baskin recounts her experience:

“Earlier that day, I visited the area that had been bombed and saw hundreds of teddy bears lined up on fences and words of ‘We’ll remember you forever,’” she writes. “It was disturbing beyond all words. As I stepped on the stage that same day, I was filled with emotions of anger, overwhelm, sadness, self-doubt and confusion: ‘What do I have to offer that can make a difference? Why am I here, and who am I to be doing this? I am not a famous name.’”

But then something remarkable happened.
“As I stood on the stage, a butterfly flew on my microphone and then on my shoulder. I looked at that butterfly as ‘life’s whisper,’ a message that I was meant to be there as me, a perfectly imperfect human being — a person who has been blessed to have meaningful lyrics and music flow through me and into the hearts of all ages.”

Once she began singing her song “One Planet, Together We Can Live,” she was moved as people accepted her invitation to get off the bleachers and meet one another, heart to heart, hugging, crying and singing — a mirror reflecting one community of love.

“She was an inspiration to all of us at such a difficult time,” Dr. Leslie says.

Lullabies for adults

Today, Baskin stitches together a living teaching music at preschools, selling her CDs and three-act school musical, receiving royalties for individual song downloads on iTunes, and performing, teaching workshops and keynote speaking. She also hopes that her book will generate income.

“But I don’t do any of this for the money,” she says. “I do it because it is my passion, my soul, my mission, my inner whispers and messages, and it is my purpose — why I am here on earth.”

Baskin sees her career as a means of implanting loving messages, guidance and healing.

“I’m in the cracks right now between still loving to work with young children, and yet also realizing that adults need ‘opening the heart’ messages, too,” Baskin says. “The reaction of adults to what I do was so open and so validating, I started doing it more and more and more.”

Recently at the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, for example, Baskin performed her original music, poetry and a theatrical interpretation of stories from 45 Magazine. She performed at the Festival with two other talented peers, and beginning in October, this newly formed trio, The Shadow and Light Storytellers, will be performing together in colleges throughout the country.

Her website describes the songs on “Lullabies of Love,” partly inspired by self-help pioneers like authors Louise Hay (“You Can Heal Your Life,” 1984) and Susan Jeffers (“Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway,” 1987) as “soothing lullabies for adults, with words that help to nurture self-love, compassion, healing, re-parenting, stillness, relaxation and deep inner peace.”

She adds: “The primary common thread in everything that I have done is to plant seeds for self-love, tolerance, compassion and forgiveness, bringing that inner love outward to each human being along the way. For me, that’s the true meaning of ‘peace.’”