It was the height of COVID-19 when Kenny Kahn started to feel unwell. He was tired and losing weight rapidly. He knew he didn’t have Covid and he didn’t want to risk getting Covid by going to urgent care, so he held off as long as he could. Bloodwork in January 2021 revealed non-Hodgkins lymphoma (a type of blood cancer), that had traveled through his body, settling in his liver. Still reeling from the diagnosis, Kenny was admitted to the Levine Cancer Institute (LCI) at Atrium Health for immediate treatment.

“Learning you have cancer is a real gut punch. All of a sudden you find yourself in the center of a storm,” says Kenny. “It was very scary. The oncologist at Levine told me, ‘You have a very aggressive form of cancer so we need to treat it aggressively. It will save your life, but you are not going to enjoy any of what we have to put you through.’”

Kenny endured one tough year of treatment followed by two years of recovery, but says his Levine doctor kept his word and saved his life. His cancer is now in remission. Of the many things Kenny didn’t like about treatment, one thing really stood out: silence was anything but golden.

“A cancer hospital can be a very quiet place,” explains Kenny. “I didn’t like the silence of it or the waiting. When you’re there you see many other patients of all age ranges and at various stages of their cancer journey. They are sitting in the waiting area, waiting to see their doctor, waiting for their blood work, waiting for someone to come and get them. I always came in with my music playlist on my iPhone because music was a great comfort to me. Music was a great distraction from the subject of cancer. But many people were going through chemotherapy in silence with no iPhone, no headphones, just sitting and waiting.”

That gave Kenny an idea and planted the seed for the creation of MusicLand Gift Foundation (a 501(c)(3), whose mission is to touch the lives and lift the spirits of cancer patients and their caregivers with gifts and experiences that celebrate the emotional power of music.

An entrepreneur who grew up on Long Island, Kenny relocated to Charlotte in 1999 to lead the sales, marketing and rebranding effort at Muzak – now known as Mood Media – an industry pioneer that today creates digital media experiences for brands around the world. Kenny says that work helped him understand the emotional power of music and how beneficial music can be to a person’s experience and quality of life.

“I shared with my wife and my daughter that I didn’t want to spend a lot of that year just curled up in a recliner. It was important to do something that had real purpose, something that would be a source of inspiration and generosity for other cancer patients. I brought together some business partners who I had worked with before to help us. By the end of my treatment, my daughter and I had formed the MusicLand Gift Foundation.”   

MusicLand’s first gift was the donation of music stations at LCI.  The stations included Apple iPads and Bose noise canceling headphones, as well as custom playlists for patients.  The gift and supporting donation afforded LCI’s Supportive Oncology Department the ability to expand a music therapy program already in place. The Supportive Oncology Department specializes in rehabilitation survivorship, integrative oncology, Psycho-oncology, nutritional counseling, Palliative Medicine and other supportive tracks such as physical therapy, massage, acupuncture, art and music therapy, and yoga, the team helps speed healing from diagnosis through survivorship.