The Philanthropist

Leora Friedman ’14 is one of the founders and the current CEO of Music is Medicine. Featured on MTV and in Seventeen Magazine, among other media outlets, this music philanthropy group is enlisting the help of celebrities and ordinary teens to inspire and support ill children. Leora is a prospective politics major from Baltimore who also loves singing and writing songs.

Q: How did you get started with Music is Medicine?

A: I was 15 — it was the summer after my sophomore year of high school. My sister, who was 19 at the time, and I are both musicians — we play guitar and sing and love writing songs. We loved music, but we also wanted to find a way to make an impact. We were both just teenagers, and we had this idea to combine our passion for music with our desire to give back to the community. The idea was using music as medicine in our local community to uplift kids and give them something to believe in.

It wasn’t even an organization when we started — it was really just me and my sister wanting to volunteer locally. So we took our guitars, and we went to the local hospital. We performed and designed these things called Music is Medicine workshops, which were songwriting workshops. It was an outlet for emotional expression for [the patients]. That was my first summer with it.

Q: How has the organization evolved since then?

A: Well, I was really in love with the idea. So I applied for a grant through the GRAMMY Foundation and dosomething.org, and I won a prize ... but I think the most important thing I got out of that was having these people who believed in what I was doing. They seemed like these powerful adults who were telling me that what I was doing mattered. That’s when the wheels in my head really starting turning. Then I started getting emails from teens saying they wanted to start chapters, everyone from middle schoolers to med school students, from all over the U.S. and Canada.

Q: What role has Princeton played in shaping the organization?

A: I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to continue this organization. I was a college student. It was a new beginning — and then I think it was in the first few months of school when my friends learned what I had been doing in high school. It was really them who made me realize: Maybe this is what I’m supposed to do here. Maybe I’m not supposed to write for the school newspaper or join the running club ... I can change [the organization], take it to a larger scale. Since then I’ve recruited a lot of my friends to work as staff members. We’re trying to make a national impact, but we do hope to have some campus events in the future ... to create a model we can imitate in different communities and schools across the states and in Canada.

Q: What’s your favorite story relating to Music is Medicine?

A: Well, there’s this project that we recently started called the Donate a Song project. The idea is to take a celebrity artist and pair them with a child in the hospital with a serious illness who’s a fan. So we looked around, and we got Drew Seeley — he’s the sweetest person and so talented. He met this girl who’s now 14 years old. Her name is Brooke, and she has a form of bone cancer. We set up a Skype date ... I was really shocked he wrote a song only a few hours later. When you have that emotion, inspiration, you just need to put it on paper. All the proceeds from the song — it’s called “Fly” — go to combating bone cancer at Johns Hopkins.

Q: Where do you expect the organization to go in the future?

A: I don’t have any expectations for it. I mean, it’s already impacted Brooke so much. That’s good enough for me. Even if no one but her saw it and heard it ... it has already given her strength. But I would like to start a revolution in the music industry — to have artists not only make music for themselves but for those who really need it.

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Q: What is one thing that you didn’t expect on this journey?

A: The response from Brooke and her family — I just didn’t expect the reaction to be as strong as it was. I will never forget hearing her say that [her Skype date with Drew Seeley] was the best nine minutes and 44 seconds of her life.

Q: Who’s your favorite artist?

A: Taylor Swift. A lot of people relate to her music, and it’s really personal. So I guess she would be my dream artist for Donate a Song too.

Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Lakshmi Davey.