The first person to tell me her story began coming to Sheffield Flourish when she was on her way home from counselling and, by chance, heard music coming from the building. She came to investigate and found out about the music sessions they run, and since then has been coming to both of the sessions that run on a Friday. She is the first person who offers to talk to me about what it is like to come and play music here, and shares generously about her personal experience and struggles. She had a very difficult 2025 that involved both personal tragedy and a series of health issues, and coming here to sing with other people is part of the support system she has built up for herself.
She begins her story by telling me about the loss of her sister: she was at work when she received a call informing her that she had been admitted to urgent care, then was told over the phone later that day that she had passed away. In retrospect, she sees her initial reaction to grief as strange and inexplicable: not knowing what else to do, she carried on working. The responsibility for breaking the news to other people fell to her, and I find her open-ness when talking about such a painful experience to be really admirable. That same year, she also began to experience a number of physical symptoms due to the perimenopause, as well as a serious knee injury. As a consequence of her struggles with mental ill health, she has been hospitalised twice.
While grieving and dealing with her health problems, she tells me she has found solace in music. She has agreed with her occupational therapist that she can play the radio at work, which she finds helpful in distracting her from runaway negative thoughts. Her tastes are eclectic and she will happily listen to anything, though she is particularly fond of Oasis: we have sung ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ together on more than one occasion, which has renewed my appreciation for a song that is, to my Mancunian ears, a tad overplayed. She finds the song’s title to be a helpful mantra, a reminder not to dwell on the past. One of her earliest memories of music is listening to ‘Do the Bartman’ on vinyl with her Dad, and feeling safe. Having now inherited her Dad’s vinyl collection, from which Bart Simpson is conspicuously absent, she is hoping to find another pressing of his seminal hit. Talking to her about her life and her relationship to music has made me think about how music can be a form of rest, a temporary escape from the relentlessness of intense pain. There have been days in my life, and I imagine in hers too, when nothing else has worked, but a song has provided me with two or three minutes of relief.
After this first interview, I also get to talk to Jemimah, another regular at the Friday jam sessions who loves to sing. Jemimah is looking for work as a professional singer, and does a killer rendition of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Valerie’. As well as singing here, she is lead vocalist in her band ‘The All-Sorts’, a group made up of musicians with learning disabilities who write songs with comedic and surprising lyrics. They have recently played a gig at a bar called the Lug Hole, which Jemimah explains is Yorkshire slang for ear. I have never heard this phrase before, but will definitely be using it in future. Like so many of the people who come here, Jemimah finds music therapeutic: she tells me about how music has helped guide her through anxiety attacks, and describes vividly her memories of going to see Olly Murs as an eighteen-year old at Lytham festival. Lytham was once a fishing town, and Jemimah’s account of a fish-themed festival makes a strong impression on me. She remembers it as being “utopian”, which certainly resonates with my experience of festival-going. Her description conjures up a field in Lytham transformed by music, filled with pearl-encrusted DJ decks and stages made of sea-shells. I think the euphoria Jemimah is remembering is probably not accessible to everyone all the time, but I suspect that a lot of the people who come to the Open Music Group hear music as a reminder that, even when it feels far away, joy is possible.
