music, therapy, and me

I was scrolling around Instagram this morning and found a FREE world music summit opportunity, so I signed up! As you may know, I do a "Country of the Month" theme in my music therapy sessions. Each month, I feature the music and some of the cultural elements of a different country. We learn about the instruments, we watch videos about the traditional and current music played in the country, and we learn a bit about what life is like in different countries. It is an interesting process to introduce the world to my clients who often do not understand the concept of language, cultural differences, and other aspects of culture and community. West music (I love them!) is sponsoring this summit, and I am hoping that I can get tomorrow off so I can attend most of the presentations. This is not something that is preapproved for Continuing Music Therapy Education (CMTE) credits, but it will not be difficult to make a case for myself and for CBMT about why this is important to learn. ...

When I was an undergraduate, one of my favorite courses of all times was Sociology of Music. It was taught by my favorite professor in the department, Dr. George Heller, and the topic really tickled my fancy. During the course. we had the chance to select a term paper topic that included discussion about culture and music, and I loved looking for information that showed correlations between societal events and musical themes and elements. I started thinking about this course yesterday when I was working in my office.  To keep myself company during non-group hours, I watch downloaded television shows. Currently, I am enjoying vintage television. I am watching the first ever season of Columbo. It came out in 1972 and is just chock full of 70's kitsch. I am loving it. Now, the thing that made me think about Sociology of Music was listening to the soundtrack of this old television show and linking it to other soundtracks of the same era. This will take too long to explain in one post, ...

I have to admit that I am enjoying these glimpses into what past me was thinking about in various times of my blog. Today's post, #2137, is from March 10, 2019 . You can find that post here . In 2019, I was thinking about how we experience each other and how we are perceived by others. This was really spurred on by several events that happened in the music therapy and bigger worlds. In 2019, my country was run by a person who I feel is not interested at all in anyone other than himself. We were splitting into "us" and "them" factions, spurred on by a megalomaniac who found that he could do things to hurt everyone but himself when we were distracted by the "others." We were in that sort of situation in the music therapy world as well - well, not the megalomaniac leader bit but definitely the "us" and "them" factions. The ramifications of things that happened in 2018 at our conference are still with us. I still do not understand every...

NOTE: This post is very opinionated and full of my current challenges, frustrations, and sparks of understanding. If I offend you in any way, please do not hesitate to send an anonymous comment to this blog. I do not automatically publish comments because most of the comments that I get are spam. If you want to engage me in more of a conversation about any and all of these topics, please do. While I have strong and possibly strange opinions, I am able to change those opinions when I can see the logic behind them, but I will never change if I cannot see that logic. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK... My brain is currently spinning around and around through all sorts of topics and situations. If you have ever been on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland, you may know what I am feeling as I go twisting and turning through all sorts of thoughts, situations, and emotions. I am thinking deeply about situations that do not directly affect me but that I have opinions about as well as all sorts of ot...

I spent some time this week actually reading something for my professional enrichment and to move me forward on one of my quests for this year. I have been taking some random, colorful, and sentence notes all over my bullet journal to keep me going and to remember important things about this book. I know that I said that I wasn't going to take notes, but there was so much information in this book that I just couldn't help it. I am reading Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. As I understand it, Ibram X. Kendi wrote the meat of the book and Jason Reynolds made is read more like a novel than a textbook. At least, that was the implication of the introduction by Ibram X. Kendi. I am about halfway through the book now.  One of my quests for this year has been to seek understanding of some of the movements that are happening in our world these days, one of those being the Black Lives Matter movement. This is my first step onto this quest. I am a...

A while back, I decided that it was time to start reading for music therapy enrichment again. Now, I have done this particular thing many times over my career - with varying levels of success, but I feel that this is one way that I can continue to grow as a music therapist even while conferences are being canceled and things are a bit uncertain in the American music therapy world. There are always books - that is one of my personal mantras as well - there are always books. I tend to fall back into books when I need to do so. Right now, family matters are taking over most of my emotional bandwidth, so reading is something that I can do while still engaging in fretful worrying and hypothetical planning. I have decided that I do not have to take notes when I am reading. Before, I insisted on taking notes because "that's what you do when you are reading for research." Then, I realized that I am no longer required to do research. I can just read. So, notes are no longer requir...

A couple of days ago, I was struck by a thought. My intern was using familiar folk songs and changing up the words to accommodate specific goal areas.  I was listening to the familiar melodies with different words and wondered if this was a form of cultural appropriation. Just for the record, I use piggy back songs all the time, but I've never really thought about it from this view before. Is taking a folk song and changing it something good or something not so good? Does it matter how you are using the song? Is it part of the life of a folk song? Is it negating a part of cultural heritage to change a song into a music therapy tool? Do I owe it to those who created the song and who then passed the song through generations to know about the origin and intent of the original song before changing it to make it something that I use for convenience? Should I honor the traditional aspect of the song at all times? Or, is music a tool that can be used at any time by anyone? Does anyone els...

(I have NO idea why this font changes when it does...frustrating.) I FINALLY finished chapter three of my current music therapy enrichment book - Emotional Processes in Music Therapy by John Pellitteri. This has not been a difficult read, but it has been difficult to get back into the routine of reading again. I shall strive to do more, but I am making absolutely zero promises these days. I finished reading the last part of the third chapter last night before bed, and it was an interesting view on emotion and how emotion is linked inexorably with culture. This was a concept that I have never considered before - that culture shapes how we feel about things. As I look over emotional times in my own life, I can see some of this cultural influence coming into play. As an introvert, I have had times when my behaviors were considered "less than desirable" and "weird." I didn't want to go to church youth group if all we were going to do was talk about going skiing. I ...

I'm not going to lie to you - this was not an easy week to get to reading, but I did a bit of it and here's what I have to report... This week's chapter is the last of the first section of the book, and it covers how we have developed ideas of culture, language, and music in ways that are both unfamiliar and givens, at least in my knowledge base. Chapter three dives a bit into sociology, anthropology, and emotional psychology to discuss how we use music. There is a bit about whether animals use sounds as communication/language and some debate about whether those sounds are also musical in nature. I did not get through the chapter yesterday. There will be a much better review and report next Sunday (I hope). I find Pellitteri's writing style very readable and the concept makes sense to me. I haven't had to write down many vocabulary words to check (which tends to happen when I read music therapy texts), and I know what we are discussing most of the time. I like that ...

These are not happy times in my country. There are riots happening in various parts of the territory and people are engaged in a pissing contest about who is right and who is wrong and who has what power and who will bend first. I am sinking under the weight of it all. I strive to be a good person. I strive to be inclusive and I strive to focus on each person as a unique and special person who offers so much to the world. I am a person of privilege, and I acknowledge that fact whenever I write about situations where biases are prevalent and that cause friction. I cannot and will never understand the situations that others live in and through every day. I know this, and I find a bit of shame in the fact that anyone in this world is treated with less than compassion in every single interaction with every single person. I tend to internalize this shame and it is fed by constant triggers from social media and the outrage of others. I feel powerless when it comes to speaking out about gende...

Today's post is brought to you - you guessed it - courtesy of social media. Oh boy. The current debate is about the use of a specific term, "microaggression." Isn't it interesting how easy it is to pull language from one context to another and then appropriate that language for our own purposes? We are all guilty of this one time or another - it is how language develops - but there are often problems when language is used in ways that does not line up with the intents of the original users.  The folks who initiated this discussion did so through the use of a blog post written by a music educator who experiences specific attitudes from other educators for being "different." The original author (not a music therapist) termed these attitudes as "microaggressions." A quick search for this term (yep, I used Wikipedia - see the link below) reveals that the term itself was first used in 1970 and is based in interactions between people that demeaned ...

I had some thoughts this week about culture in institutional terms. I've always been interested in small cultures - you know the ones, they happen when you join a club. There are specific rules and expectations that are part of being a club member (some even have fancy handshakes!). If you join another club, those rules and expectations from club #1 may be part of membership in club #2, but there will probably be differences as well. That's the type of thing that I think of as small cultures. There are some folks who use the term "microculture" which I also like. This is something that I see demonstrated in the school where I work. Each classroom has a completely different cultural climate. This is partly due to the nature of the teacher, partly due to the nature of the Behavioral Health Technicians that support students and the teacher, and partly due to the students in each classroom. There are remarkable and apparent differences when you walk from room to roo...

My thinking has led me into a corner this week - a place where I can't really move forward, only a bit backward once I've fully explored this space. I think that this corner is an important one, so I've been content to just stay here and think and think and think. I realize that my title states "all" the different ways to define culture - that is my ultimate goal, but right now, I have started to define all the ways... My current corner is full of the different ways that we define culture and how many different types of cultural experiences we all have in our lives. When I start to think about the cultural experiences that make up the "me" that participates in this world, I find that I have lots of influences, expectations, biases, and exposures to different things that make up the culture of "me." This started me thinking about how far do we go when we consider "culture" when interacting with other people. First step in this ...

As I keep investigating this idea of culture and what it means to me as a music therapist in my midwestern town with my clients from all over the country, I find myself going in circles. There are so many different things to consider when you start to look at culture, that I think I may need a course in sociology to help me figure things out. Hmm. I may look into a MOOC to see if I can find such a course. I bet I could, and I could get CMTEs because this has a definite application to my work as a board-certified music therapist. I digress. As I am thinking and experiencing cultural awareness, I am finding that I really don't know that much about it. I mean, sure, I understand the basic concepts that our culture is shaped by many influences. I know that my experiences are not the same as others who have not had the same influences in their lives as me, but there is so much to consider outside of the idea of basic cultural influences. Here are some of the terms that I am starti...