Global Courant 2023-04-16 02:23:08
“The sun will rise again, the storms will die down again, this is not the end,” sings Celine Dion in her new single “Love Again”.
The Quebec-born artist is making a comeback with a ballad for an upcoming movie, also titled “Love Again”, in which she plays.
The single “Love Again” is one of five songs sung by Dion that will appear in the film, marking the singer’s first time releasing music since her diagnosis of stiff person syndrome (SPS) last year, a rare neurological condition for which no cure is possible. .
The film, due out in May, follows the story of a grieving fiancé who falls in love after losing her partner. Dion, in her acting debut, plays a matchmaker who helps the two main characters get together.
In an emotional video posted to Instagram on Dec. 8, Dion explained to fans why she had to postpone her world tour and how difficult it is for her to sing like she used to.
SPS is a neurological condition that affects a person’s muscles, and in Dion’s case, it hinders her ability to perform.
People with SPS have described the condition as “excruciating” and say it causes “debilitating” pain due to increased sensitivity to sound and touch. So says the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke SPS has “characteristics” of an autoimmune disease.
THE SINGING VOICE OF CELINE DION
Fans may notice that Dion’s powerful voice sounds different in her new songs, which is partly due to SPS affecting the muscles near her vocal cords.
“The spasms affect every aspect of my daily life, sometimes causing me difficulty walking and preventing me from using my vocal cords to sing like I used to,” Dion said in the Instagram video.
“Voice is a general indicator of health,” Merrill Tanner, a singer and speech-language pathologist from Edmonton, told CTVNews.ca.
“When I’m working with someone, I can hear if they have a cold, I can often kind of judge if something has happened emotionally, or (if they’re) fatigued,” Tanner said.
For Tanner, Dion’s voice in her new song was still just as “beautiful.”
“It sounds different to me, it might sound a little outdated I’d say, but it’s just so gorgeous,” she said. “Who cares if she has stiff person syndrome? She can still make a beautiful sound.”
When you use your voice to sing, not only the muscles in the throat area are involved, but also the muscles used for breathing. Tanner says voice is highly impressionable and can change from day to day depending on one’s lifestyle.
Tension on muscles, cigarette smoking, stomach reflux or a cold can determine how the vocal cords function, she said.
“(During) the aging process, your muscles become less resilient, less forgiving,” Tanner said. “They don’t recover that quickly… So you can hear that as people get older, sometimes their voices sound a little different.”
Like all muscles that are conditioned to perform an activity, Tanner says if people stop exercising, it can affect their voice.
The symptoms of SPS come in waves for some people, with spasms that exhaust muscles from repeated contractions. Other ways a voice can be affected include Parkinson’s disease, surgery around the vocal cord area, and dystonia.a condition that causes muscle spasms and contractions of the vocal muscles.
HOW SPS AFFECTS THE VOICE
Dr. Marinos Dalakas, a professor of neurology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, says several of his patients with SPS have persistent muscle stiffness.
“When this affects the diaphragm or affects the laryngeal muscles or the vocal cord muscles, the voice becomes very thin, it doesn’t come out strong, it’s fragmented,” he told CTVNews.ca.
Individually, these spasms can be caused by a variety of things, including external factors such as loud noises, stress, and bright lights, but Dalakas says they can also affect specific muscles and not the entire body.
“The singers might get more stiffness and because the voice is so important to them, the spasms are more focused there,” he said. “(It can be) anxiety-driven, but also what’s more important to you in your day-to-day activities.”
Dalakas says when some of his patients are battling spasms, their voices are weak, but for Tara Zier, the founder of the Stiff Person Syndrom Research Foundation, her voice sounds different when muscle stiffness takes over.
“It’s kind of hoarseness,” Zier, who was diagnosed with SPS in 2017, told CTVNews.ca. “It’s a little bit different from a cold, where it almost feels restricted, like tight, kind of a restricted airway.”
When Zier experiences this change in her voice, it can be difficult to “tease” where the spasm is occurring or what is causing her voice to change.
Emotional and physical stress exacerbate Zier’s SPS, and to her it feels like everything is “stuck”.
SPS affects about one to two million people worldwidebut it often goes undiagnosed because of its invisibility, Zier said.
Despite her SPS diagnosis, it’s clear that Dion won’t let the disease get in her way.
“Because you don’t have to move a mountain, just keep moving, every movement is a new emotion, and you don’t have to find the answers, just keep trying,” sings Dion.
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With files from CTV’s Megan DeLaire.
