Column – The power of music to move body and soul

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Column – The power of music to move body and soul

By Mary Batten Contributing writer   It makes you dance. It makes you sing. It lifts the spirit and soothes the soul when life’s stresses seem too much to bear. It transports listeners beyond ethnic, linguistic, and national boundaries. “Music kept me sane in an insane world,” my late husband, composer Ed Bland said about growing up in Chicago in the 1930s. As a young black boy, he had to know the streets: which streets he could walk down safely…