September 3, 2019

‘Wonder phone’ plays music for dementia sufferers

Filed under: Health,Music by Orangemaster @ 12:09 pm

Eighteen-year-old Dutchman Niek van Weeghel together with collaborators Herbert van Til and Peter Fidder have modified some 55 old fashioned dial telephone to play songs for the elderly suffering from dementia.

“It’s nice to see how the elderly react when they pick up the ‘wonder phone’, Van Weeghel explains. “First, they are quiet and then you see that they recognised the song. Then they sing their hearts out along to it.”

A person picks up the phone, dials a number (something, if we believe YouTube, kids don’t even understand because they’ve only seen mobile phone) and then hears a song they would recognise from their younger days.

The team is also collecting old phones to make more wonder phones, which now costs about 30 euro each to make. And since it hit the media, many homes have asked to get their hands on some.

There are about 280,000 people suffering from some type of dementia in the Netherlands. In 25 years this figure is expected to reach more than 500,000.

Maybe they can also make phones that play music from other cultures for specific people.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo: Photo by Macinate, some rights reserved)

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July 2, 2015

Senior citizens to DJ at a dance event

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:43 am

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At this year’s edition of the dance festival Mysteryland in Noord-Holland in August, a volunteer-run organisation called 10,000 hours will let ‘grandfathers and grandmothers with DJ aspirations’ take a turn at the CD players, and no, not at the turntables like Parool would like us to believe.

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Parool: ‘Seniors with DJ aspirations can cut loose at the turntables during Mysteryland’
Me: ‘No turntables, it’s CD players or USB sticks. No vinyl.’
Parool: ‘Maybe some of the seniors still have records at home :-)’

Seniors, if you have records at home you don’t want, get in touch with me and I’ll totally visit you.

Festival-goers have been asked to help senior citizens this July at retirement homes. DJ and ambassador of 10,000 hours Nicky Romero will go and shake non-alcoholic cocktails at a retirement home to do his part, so I say let senior citizens take a crack at putting a USB stick into a CD player in front of the kids.

Although the idea of seniors spinning dance music is amusing and maybe some of them can actually do a good job, the heat, volume and crowds don’t seem like the coolest thing to be subjecting seniors to for any reason. I do hope someone proves me wrong.

And remember, get in touch with me for those old records.

(Link: www.parool.nl)

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