“This is my assistant Ivy,” Matt Petty tells me as he massages the leaves of his pothos plant. Ivy is connected to a Bluetooth speaker that hums an ethereal tune, producing an otherworldly atmosphere, ripe for Petty’s practice of sound therapy. “The Bluetooth transmitter turns the energy of the plant into sound,” Petty explains. “It works with the electricity that’s moving through the water in the plant.”
Ivy is just one of the instruments in the room with us, along with quartz crystal singing bowls, a rain stick, gongs, and chimes. “All of these instruments are very resonant,” Petty says. “So when you play them, it sort of amplifies what’s already in the atmosphere. These are all sound healing instruments.”
Before learning these instruments, Petty was classically trained on the trombone. “When I was in college, one thing that I would do that would help my musicianship as a trombone player was yoga. Maybe that was kind of how I started deepening into that kind of [meditative] practice.” After his schooling, he taught music theory and ear training, where musicians learn to identify pitches, chords, and melodies solely by hearing.
“I really had to find a way to teach people how to listen,” he adds. “There was a TED Talk video I saw from this deaf percussionist, Evelyn Glennie. And she just talks about being a deaf musician, and how everybody thinks music just goes in through your ears. And that’s sort of how we are trained to be musicians, but actually, the way that she learned how to be the musician that she is, is through how to feel the instrument through using your body. I always felt really inspired by that. It helped me understand how people were thinking about sound and how they were psychologically processing it.”
But it wouldn’t be until after the pandemic when he would find sound therapy. “When the pandemic started, it was sort of like all of the gigs just kind of ended,” he says. “It really felt like my music career, like, ended at that point, at least for a long time. And so, one day I found out about this New Year’s Eve meditation, and I ended up going. And it was the first time I’d ever experienced a sound healing kind of meditation. It shifted everything for me. My life changed after that.” At last, Petty knew how transformative listening to music with one’s whole body in a meditative state could be, and the relief it could offer.
Now, Petty leads weekly sound baths at The Broom Closet, so others can feel that kind of peace that very first sound bath offered him. “It’s like a group meditation that’s guided by sound,” he says. “The way I usually do them is I just play the instruments, and I sort of guide people in a meditation. … Your mind may go into a dreamlike state, but the music is sort of nudging you along. And the body just innately knows what to do and can move into these really deep places of healing and transformation.”
In addition to the weekly sound baths, Petty also offers a monthly “Vibes from the Vines: The Sentient Sound of Plants in Memphis,” where attendees can try their own hand at playing the various instruments in a unique sound therapy session. Space is limited for each session, so keep up with Petty’s offerings on The Broom Closet’s Facebook.
Celestial Sound Bath, The Broom Closet, Mondays, 6:30 p.m., $20.
Vibes from the Vines: The Sentient Sound of Plants in Memphis, The Broom Closet, Monday, July 31, 7 p.m., $20.