What matters is music
Posted on 7th February 2025 at 14:00
This month we welcome back award-winning music teacher, Nat Dye MBE.
Nat's very personal exploration of what music can bring to us, especially in the face of a terminal diagnosis, is an important reminder of music's ability to be a vehicle for self-expression as well as a way of connecting with one another.
He discusses some the amazing experiences he has had since his diagnosis including running the London Marathon playing his trombone and being made an MBE in the New Years Honours List.
"I haven’t always possessed the self-esteem to be able to put my hand on my heart and call myself a musician. But for as long as I can remember, music has been fundamental to my happiness, wellbeing, spirit - whatever we want to call that need for music in one’s life. Without it, there’s just something missing. Trust me - I’ve occasionally tried to go without it and it’s like a piece has been taken out of my very soul.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many people reading this might feel similarly. A bond exists between musicians that is very difficult to describe to anyone else. A love of music and music-making bridges the most profound cultural differences, crosses language barriers and unites people who otherwise have nothing in common. For me, this shared human connection is the real beauty behind the music we make.
However, I sincerely hope that a shared love of music is all we have in common. Because I find myself suffering from terminal bowel cancer and though I’ve done well to make it over two years since diagnosis (with spread to my liver, lungs and brain) I’m not expected to survive more than a few years.
So many of the cliches are true. When faced with the very real prospect of one’s own demise, there comes a real sense of what’s truly important in life. Family, friends, love and laughter. Cherishing those moments of sheer joy in the midst of inevitable decline.
But also music… always music. Around the Autumn of 2022, just as it was gradually becoming clear how sick I really was, it was also becoming clear just how far I’d come as a musician and music teacher. I was working full time in an inner London state primary school, having built a flourishing music department with instrumental programme, five choirs and a 50 piece orchestra. As I recovered from my first major round of chemo and surgery, we were awarded ‘Outstanding Music Department’ at the Music and Drama Education Awards. I’d made ensemble leading my main hobby too, finding myself conducting a community Brass Band as well as a local music hub jazz band. Though I couldn’t quite find the time for regular playing, I could be found depping in local big bands, orchestras or anyone who needed a trombone.
Oh well… now I found myself riddled with cancer, was it time to hang up my baton and ‘focus on my health’? That’s what everyone seemed to be suggesting and expecting - surely I had more important things to worry about than holding down a teaching job and turning up to rehearsals?
Absolutely not.
If anything, my passion for music-making - both for myself and for the kids - only intensified. I insisted on turning up to rehearsals whenever I could make it out of bed and though the full-time teaching job was harder to commit to, I made it back for an entire term in between cycles of treatment. Cancer has robbed me of reliability and consistency but not creativity, intensity or passion. On the understanding that I wouldn’t necessarily turn up, all sorts of opportunities have presented themselves to me post-diagnosis and in directions I would have previously considered unfathomable. Turning up to music school whenever I could led my student jazz band to the Music for Youth Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. Not just for the kids - this was one of the biggest gigs of my short life! I found myself taking on a summer of festivals with a ska-punk band. So far so familiar… But it really has been extraordinary what else has come up. With time on my hands and a few newfound political contacts, a handful of articles in Music Teacher Magazine and ‘advocacy’ for music education (e.g. lobbying ministers at the DFE and DCMS) led to another MDA award. Even more unusual was running the 2024 London Marathon whilst playing the trombone, and raising enough money and awareness for charity in the process to be considered worthy of an MBE in the recent New Year’s Honours List. It’s been quite a musical journey all told!
But what has really, deep down, finally made me feel like a musician?
Well - it turns out that with a load of life experience and something profound to communicate, I always had the potential to proudly express myself through music. This has come in the form of my cancer concept album Matters of Life and Death. Ten songs - mostly tearjerker piano ballads - about cancer and death, with the odd bit of light relief in the form of the dark humour that comes from being a dying man.
Songs about cancer and death hardly have mass appeal and the results of an intensive day’s recording are from perfect but, to quote Tim Minchin, they’re mine.
I wish it hadn’t taken cancer to properly come to terms with a lesson I’ve tried to teach the kids but never really believed in myself. That what really matters in music is not any innate natural talent. It doesn’t matter exactly how many people we ‘impress’ or which notional technical standards we achieve - they’re just a means to an end after all.
I’m more certain than ever what we create, communicate, share and teach is what’s really important to us as musicians. Absolutely everyone asks me what’s next on my bowel cancer bucket list. By this point, I really don’t know - let’s see what’s left of me after another three months of chemo.
But this much I know - music will always be there no matter what - and not even cancer can take that away from me."
Tagged as: MUSIC, MUSIC EDUCATION
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