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. ...

I took some time this week to think. Not all that unusual, but something that I need to do every so often to make my process a bit more clear. I did not read any more from my feminist theory book or look towards other resources. (I received a thesis from a reader, and I am getting ready to start that particular resource - thank you, you know who you are!!) I simply paid attention to things happening around me. I've been watching some Australian suspense television shows lately. This is something really interesting to me since Australian television has a completely different viewpoint of us here in America than we often hold of ourselves. That different viewpoint is prevalent in the shows I've been watching. (If you are interested, my current watchlist includes Pine Gap and Secret City.) I am enjoying the opportunity to view my government from the viewpoint of the writers and performers of a different continent. Now, I know that these shows are not completely based in re...

...and then you see it EVERYWHERE?? That's happening to me in my developing thoughts about culture and how we use elements of culture in music therapy. All of a sudden, I'm finding situations where I could see others reacting or responding to music or comments or information given. I am having to spend some time sorting through these feelings and the expanded vision, and I haven't even really been all that deep in the topic...yet. This happens quite often. I hear a song that I like, and all of a sudden, it is everywhere - in the Dollar Tree store when I go shopping, on the radio, my clients ask for it over and over again, it is incidental music. You name it. It becomes pervasive. This type of thing is happening to me right now. I have always been interested in culture, especially how it influences musical performance and engagement. I try to be culturally aware - I try not to be someone who tries to take cultural aspects as my own, but I also see a great benefit in ...

The last time I selected a song, I found it on my iTunes account, and that worked really well for me, so I think I'll do that again. I set my music to shuffle and press play. Here goes - let's see what song comes up... Zen Buddha Indian Meditation Music for Awakening, by the Sea Tranquility Academy, on the 111 Ambient Nature Sounds album. I really like it when fate takes me on paths of exploration and learning. I know very little about Buddhism or meditation, so I will be trying to find out as much information as possible about this particular piece of music as well as why it is titled what it is titled. I don't know that I will be able to do this music any justice whatsoever, but I will make an effort to learn what I can about this piece and the people who present it to the world. A Google search for "Sea Tranquility Academy" reveals that this type of music seems to be what this group does. There is little information about who is behind the music under th...

This post was actually ready last week, but I had a migraine so working on the computer was completely out! I am getting myself back into the habit of reading research and making clinical inferences for my own clinical practice. For this week, I chose an article from the Music Therapy Perspectives , volume 34, number 2, published in 2016. Michael Viega wrote an account describing Hip Hop as a musical genre as well as a culture and a way of thinking about the world. (The full citation is at the beginning of the R-I Worksheet contained in this post.) The article gave me a glimpse into parts of Hip Hop that I have never really considered or even been aware of during my time working with adolescents. There are significant differences between the terms, hip-hop, Hip Hop, and Hiphop. Read these definitions on page 138. Here is my worksheet model. Article Reference: Viega, M. (2016). Exploring the discourse in Hip Hop and implications for music therapy practice. Music Therapy P...

This week, I am going to take some time to put together the thoughts that I've had during my reading of Music Therapy in Context: Music, Meaning and Relationship by Mercedes Pavlicevic. This is partially because I didn't get any reading done yesterday and I woke up late this morning, but it is partially because I've had lots of information come at me from this reading, and it is time to put it all together. One of the biggest thoughts that I am processing through is that of cultural influence being always present - even if I am trying to engage in the music of another culture, my cultural experience will always be my primary filter. That makes sense to me, but I've never really thought it through completely, especially when it comes to how I process music.  Now, I've known for many years that my experience of music is different from how my siblings process music. This is due to my way of interacting (translation - many years of music history, theory, and stud...

It is time for Chapter Three of Music Therapy in Context: Music, Meaning and Relationship by Mercedes Pavlicevic. Before we get started, however, a cautionary tale about a music therapist who did not carefully check her resources and now is apologizing to her readers.  You know how people are always telling you to double check your sources? I know I've told people that a time or two, myself, but I was a poor example of this a couple of weeks ago. Over the past two weeks, I've been using some notes that I took about this text several years ago. At that time, I must not have looked all that carefully at the text, because I wrongly attributed the publisher as Barcelona. When I went back to the text for Chapter three, I happened to look at the copyright information and found that the book was not published by Barcelona but by Jessica Kingsley Publishers . I didn't check my sources carefully enough, but I have now. I have gone back and changed the posts and also admitte...

Don't you hate it when you are all settled on not thinking for a time and then someone posts something that you just can't stop thinking about? I do. Recently, a post on Facebook started me thinking. The post was about cultural appropriation - you know, when people from one culture take over the cultural characteristics of another culture, and in doing so, negate the purpose and traditions behind that culture. I admit that I did not respond to the original post, specifically because I am not sure how I feel about all of this. I am one of the privileged. I am a highly educated, American woman who has a good job and more than enough. I fit into all the categories of "privileged" in this world. I have instruments and objects from other cultures in my home. I don't adopt the ideas of other cultures, but I probably appropriate those ideas as others have before me. I would never state that I was playing my angklung the way that the persons of Indonesia would, but ...

Way back when I was getting my Master's degree, I became VERY interested in cultural literacy, specifically in using music to assist folks in learning information. I bought two books edited by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. that listed "core knowledge" for specific age groups. I recently saw these books on my shelf and decided to crack them again. I love these books. I love how they are compendia (please excuse my possible misspelling of the plural of compendium) of general knowledge. In the book for second graders (the grade my sister teachers), the folks who contributed to this idea of core knowledge decided that students should know lots of things. There are stories and poems, myths from Greece and Rome, and some parts of speech. The next section includes world geography, world civilization, and American civilization. Then we come to fine arts. Second graders are supposed to know about musical instruments, melodies, scales, octaves, volume, and different forms of music - patrioti...