Gateshead woman hears music for the first time.

Joanne Milne from Gateshead suffers from Usher Syndrome, a genetic disease which leads to loss of hearing, sight or some combination of the two. In her case, this means she has never heard a single sound since she was born, and lost her sight in her twenties. Now, recently, she went to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for a cochlear implant (the QEHB is one of only 20 hospitals which do the procedure) in February, and, if you didn’t click on the video above, it shows the implant being turned on for the first time, and her getting very emotional at hearing sound for the first time.

Quoth Jo Milne: “The switch-on was the most emotional and overwhelming experience of my life and I’m still in shock now. The first day everybody sounded robotic and I have to learn to recognise what these sounds are as I build a sound library in my brain. Hearing things for the first time is so, so emotional, from the ping of a light switch to running water. I can’t stop crying.”

For those of you who don’t know what cochlear implants are, they’re a surgically implanted device which essentially restores a deaf person’s sense of hearing. Granted, the sound quality isn’t as good as most people take for granted, but sounds and speech are still understandable. Recently, due to new technology, even the complexities of music can be enjoyed; some even have the ability to hear full stereophonic sound. And here’s the part that explains why I, Anglotopia’s resident music columnist, am covering this story: One of her friends is sufficiently well-connected to let her appear on Lauren Laverne’s BBC 6music show Memory Tape and create a playlist to introduce her to the world of music, which was played in full.

The Introduction to Music playist:Ken Boothe – ‘Everything I Own’
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – ‘She’s the One’ – Live at Hammersmith Odeon
Paul McCartney – ‘Silly Love Songs’
Joni Mitchell – ‘Black Crow’
Steely Dan – ‘Peg’
Electric Light Orchestra – ‘Mr. Blue Sky’
Gary Numan – ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’
The Specials – ‘Do Nothing’
Soft Cell – ‘Tainted Love’
The Jam – ‘Town Called Malice’
Eurythmics – ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’
Prince – ‘When Doves Cry’
Kate Bush – ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’
The Smiths – ‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’
Fleetwood Mac – ‘Big Love’ (Lindsey Buckingham solo acoustic version)
Tracy Chapman – ‘Fast Car’
The The – ‘August & September’
Deee-Lite – ‘Groove Is In The Heart’
Ozric Tentacles – ‘Sploosh!’
INXS – ‘Baby Don’t Cry’
Nirvana – ‘All Apologies’
Richard Thompson – ‘King Of Bohemia’
Pulp – ‘Common People’
Everything But The Girl – ‘Missing’
Foo Fighters – ‘Everlong’
Massive Attack – ‘Teardrop’
Jimmy Eat World – ‘For Me This Is Heaven’
The Avalanches – ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’
Daft Punk – ‘Digital Love’
The Streets – ‘Turn The Page’
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Maps’
Beastie Boys – ‘An Open Letter To NYC’
Nine Inch Nails – ‘The Hand That Feeds’
Arctic Monkeys – ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’
Radiohead – ‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place’
Elbow – ‘One Day Like This’
Maximo Park – ‘Tanned’
Gruff Rhys – ‘Shark Ridden Waters’
The Joy Formidable – ‘Whirring’
Bat For Lashes – ‘Laura’
Haim – ‘Don’t Save Me’

Of course, the playlist is not perfect. As much as I enjoy the Beastie Boys, I seriously question the definitiveness of any “Introduction to music” playlist that features them before the Beatles (And, no, I’m not counting Wings here). And, given how much Michael Chorost’s “Bionic Quest for Bolero” affected me, I’d definitely include that in there. Come to think of it, as I look at the playlist, only 30% of the songs are immediately familiar to me.

What would you include in an “Introduction to music” playlist? Write your picks in the comments section.