Thoughts of Ruth Bright (now retired but previously involved in many area of music therapy - both with and without upper case letters!
The UK Philosopher C. E. M. Joad used to say "Ït depends what you mean by"......", and Descartes said: "I will not argue with you unless you define your terms".
When we speak of our work in the community, the definition of terms is fraught with difficulty and we need to decide before we have any major discussion what we mean by Community Music Therapy -
I have been involved in home visits from a hospital since the early 1970's when I spent some time with Susan Munro in a Palliative Care unit in Montreal, where patients alternated between being in and out of hospital but the music therapy continued unchanged and families (the community?) were involved in both instances. I continued to make home visits for elderly patients and their families (clients? consumers?) in Sydney for many years.
A few weeks ago I attended a special Foundation Day service at my erstwhile hospital, where a group of nurses and patients (who meet for shared music one evening each week) sang solos and led the singing of the vast group of patients, staff, visitors and 'notables' who attended the Service. Community Music Therapy? Not labelled as such but it arose from the staff observations of my work at that hospital, it nourishes a sense of community, it had a therapeutic spin-off (which could probably have been given statistical value if someone wanted to do the research) and could well have been called m/Music t/Therapy - or at least 'therapeutic music'!
So - what does it all mean, and how important is it to get our definitions absolutely precise? I don't have an answer to that, but maybe answers will emerge over the years.
Responding to the comments about Australian terms 'mateship' and 'dinkum' - sadly these words are not in common use today, we tend to put them in quote marks, but the underlying truths are still there. We do work together with a sense of community (that word again!,) not without controversy - you may hear some 'dinkum barneys" when you are here for the World Congress (barney has been used since 1861 to mean an argument and 'dinkum' = genuine) but despite having ideas which may differ, we have a sense of belonging, of working together for the good of society rather than for personal glory.
See you all here in 2005!
Ruth Bright.
An Oslo Community Dinkum Experience
Response to Katrina McFerrin-Skewes: "A Brisbane Community Dinkum Experience"
It was nice to read Katrina's column a few weeks ago, and to learn that she felt "a wave of relief" when she first read about Community Music Therapy. From talking about this to many music therapists in different countries and contexts over the last 18 months, I recognize Katrina's reactions as quite characteristic (though she puts her thoughts with an appealing honesty and clarity in her column). It's characteristic that her first response is: "But does it need a title? We've been doing this for years!" If I got money for every time someone said that to me I'd be a rich man now! And of course it's true to an extent. But the interesting thing is what Katrina goes on to say:
I also find it useful. It has encouraged me to communicate about my work in a way that I was hesitant to do previously, simply because I can reference a shared concept of community music therapy. It has provided me with a vocabulary with which to discuss this community based work, whether I agree with all the tenets proposed under the concept of Culture Centered Music Therapy (Stige 2002) or not. And I was one of the many who made reference to it at the recent conference in beautiful Brisbane, because it felt good to do so.
I like that last comment - "because it felt good to do so". So why did it feel good - why does it feel good for the many others who've told me something rather similar? I think the answer is rather simple: because (to mix my images hopelessly) the concept 'community music therapy' raises a flag for the whole of what many music therapists do, or would like to do; it also sketches a conceptual map to help them think about this; and it provides a large golfing umbrella for music therapists of very different backgrounds to stand under and talk about it all. Rachel Verney suggested the last of these images when she said that community music therapy simply allowed music therapists to talk about everything they do, not just what they feel (from their training) they should do (ie 'proper therapy' as legitimated by the Consensus Model). Because the fact is that when you talk to music therapists they often use music in a variety of ways within their hospital, school or social setting - they enjoy being musicians as well as therapists in the service of the life of their circumstantial communities, and they enjoy finding creative links between private and public, between psychological and social aspects of their work. But they often only talk openly about only the 'approved' practices - leaving the other aspects unconfessed, unexplored and undervalued.
Brynjulf Stige says much of this in a more developed way in his recently completed doctoral thesis Elaborations toward a Notion of Community Music Therapy (Faculty of Arts, University of Oslo, 2003) - to my knowledge the first doctoral level piece of scholarship on the history, philosophy and practice of Community Music Therapy. As you would expect of Brynjulf's work, here is a 500-page study that gives an elaborate and subtle argument for why we suddenly seem to have arrived at Community Music Therapy's moment within the ever-changing story of modern music therapy. His thinking in this thesis bears a strong family likeness to the arguments in his recent highly-acclaimed book Culture Centered Music Therapy (Stige 2002). But it also goes further in showing how Community Music Therapy is the logical practice of music therapy for which Culture Centred Music Therapy is the theory and metatheory. After reading Stige's thesis I think nobody could think 'Community Music Therapy' an opportunistic political move to re-brand music therapy - to give a 'new name for an old game'. Rather Stige makes a convincing case for believing just the opposite of this - that Community Music Therapy is a new game for a new age:
What already seems clear is that the emergence of Community Music Therapy fuels a process that stimulates reflections about the identity of music therapists, as well as the prospects of music therapy in late modern societies [.] Community Music Therapy therefore has the prospect of facilitating the modernization of modern music therapy: it may be part of a process where implications of cultural changes in late modernity interact with developments of the discipline and profession of music therapy. (Stige 2003, p. 464)
Whilst I don't want to oversimplify Stige's subtle arguments, one of his points that I think will be influential for music therapists is that a 'modernisation' of music therapy will involve broader roles (as well as broader arenas) for music therapists, along with a broadening of theory to accompany this. Doing 'therapy' as currently defined and understood by many music therapists will likely be only be one of the possible music/therapeutic roles and activities . Stige suggests 'health musicking' as a broader encompassing category, with music therapists re-defining their territory as an interface between so-called 'clinical practices' and the everyday musical practices which people use for identity and community building.
In this sense, Community Music Therapy is a conceptual flag being waived in promotion of what many music therapists already do, or could do, or would like to do. As Stige writes in the current Editorial to VOICES (vol. 3, no. 3) our discipline's question is moving from 'What is music therapy?' to the far more interesting 'What could music therapy be?'. Clearly the flag is catching people's eye and acting as a rallying-point. The Oxford and Brisbane conference clearly had it in mind, as perhaps does the forthcoming Canadian conference. A few publications are around the corner. Community Music Therapy does seem to be the talk of the town at the moment. This itself is interesting.
Last weekend I had the privilege of being at an Oslo Community Music Therapy Dinkum. (of a sort!) - in the shape of Brynjulf's defence of his thesis. In the formal surrounding of a lecture theatre in one of the old Oslo University buildings we heard his elaborations on the thesis during the disputation session. The evening before Brynjulf gave his 'trial lecture' on the subject of the 'pleasure' in music therapy. As he pointed out it's (incredibly) an almost uncharted area in the literature, or usual debate in the discipline. It seems that problems always trump pleasures for music therapists. These various events showed me how the concept of Community Music Therapy could function as a site for some rather comprehensive re-thinking of the practices, theories and metatheoretical foundations of music therapy - as a vehicle for asking 'What could music therapy be?'
Which is of course not to say that everyone needs to follow this particular flag; talk the same language; stand under the same umbrella; mean exactly the same thing. Just that there is perhaps a new umbrella to stand under; that the emerging vocabulary might be useful to many - that a new conversation may feel good to have.
Mercedes Pavlicevic and I have just edited a book for Jessica Kingsley Publishers, called Community Music Therapy (in press). Many diverse music therapists, from many parts of the world, found it comfortable and interesting to stand under our umbrella for a while: to agree and disagree; put forward similar and dissimilar ideas; describe varied practices with a family resemblance. All seemed to find the concept of Community Music Therapy useful in some way - to work with, against or alongside. The main metaphor that came out of all the chapters we've called the "ripple effect". Community Music Therapy is like a pebble dropped into the music therapy pond - creating concentric ripples in a perhaps rather too-calm surface. The ripple-effect also describes the central fact most writers on Community Music Therapy want to convey: that music radiates naturally; that it involves people and spreads out, but also includes within; that it works within and amongst the nested domains of socio-cultural life.
I had a surprise (if somewhat tangential) conversation the other day with a usually very withdrawn and taciturn patient - on "string theory". We'd both seen the same television documentary on this imaginative attempt by physicists to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics. It seemingly goes back to the good old Pythagorean metaphor of the cosmic symphony, which led my patient to comment, "our music's really cosmic after all". It all made me think of how on the television programme all the experts had agreed and disagreed, had thought this rather speculative theory either the answer to everything, or, alternatively, rather daft. But interestingly, even (especially?) the experts who found it daft seemed to be drawn to talking about it. It was useful, that is, as a heuristic if nothing else. Any parallels here with Community Music Therapy?
References
Pavlicevic. M. & Ansdell, G. (Ed.)(in press) Community Music Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Stige, B. (2002) Culture-Centered Music Therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.
Stige, B. (2003) 'Elaborations towards a Notion of Community Music Therapy'. Unpublished Phd thesis. Faculty of Arts, University of Oslo.
When I first read Gary Ansdell's (2002) contribution, Community Music Therapy: The Winds of Change, I felt a wave of relief, or perhaps it was a breath of fresh English air. As earlier discussion has indicated (Bright, 2003; Edwards, 2002), Australian music therapists have been practicing in community settings and employing community orientations for many years. However, on the international front there appeared to be no recognition of this form of therapy. Where Australian music therapists were using songs with groups of clients in the community, the literature seemed resolutely focused on individual improvisation-based work in 'safe and contained' therapeutic spaces. Where we battled with well-intentioned helpers who grasped client's wrists and helped them to shake their cabassa, the literature described potent melodic and harmonic sequences that the client felt represented their inner experience. So in many ways I agreed with Gary that this had been a secretive practice, a way of making music therapy that was not revered in the theoretical discussions. It felt good to talk about it.
Some months later, when I was lucky enough to attend the Symposium on Standards in Qualitative Research in Bergen, it became evident to me that Brynjulf Stige had been exploring this very topic for many years (Stige, 2003). In listening to his presentations and the discussion of a model of Community Music Therapy, I also felt obliged to say "but does it need a title? We've been doing this for years!". To which Brynjulf replied, in his characteristically humble way, that he found it useful.
I also find it useful. It has encouraged me to communicate about my work in a way that I was hesitant to do previously, simply because I can reference a shared concept of community music therapy. It has provided me with a vocabulary with which to discuss this community based work, whether I agree with all the tenets proposed under the concept of Culture Centered Music Therapy (Stige, 2002) or not. And I was one of the many who made reference to it at the recent conference in beautiful Brisbane, because it felt good to do so.
In addition, it has led me to a new way of investigating my work through empowering approaches that I would not previously have considered feasible for music therapy research. As Cathy Durham (2002) has pointed out, the values of action research suit community based work as both attempt to contribute to the flourishing of the community. For example, one of my experiences in applying action research methodologies is that they help to maintain a focus on the people participating in the inquiry rather than being driven by the researcher's desires. The articulation of these ideals have in turn led to dialogue with music therapists in Australia, such as Barb Daveson and Catherine Threlfall, who are overtly committed to human emancipation in their community based work. It seems that this title of Community Music Therapy has achieved its goals. It has freed the perception of music therapy from restraint of any kind, especially the inhibitions of tradition (as proposed by Reason & Bradbury, 2001) and perhaps even from itself.
From Ansdell's debate to Stige's theory to Durham's research application and finally to my own local community of music therapists. A liberating journey indeed. And more broadly, this freedom has led to a stimulating global debate about the need for a theoretical framework titled Community Music Therapy. After all, is community actually the context or is it the method (Grocke, personal communications)?
We Aussies do love a good debate. And by the way, we still believe in mateship in Australia. Good on ya mate! Keep up the awesome work!
References
Ansdell, Gary (2002). Community Music Therapy & The Winds of Change. [online] Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy Vol.2(2), 2002. Available at: http://www.voices.no/mainissues/Voices2(2)ansdell.html
Bright, R. (2003). A Brisbane Community Dinkum Experience. [online] Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, Vol. 3. Available at: http://www.voices.no/discussions/discm25_01.html
Delbridge, A., Bernard, J., Blair, D., Butler, S., Peters, P. & Yallop, C. (Eds.) (1997). The Macquarie Dictionary: Australia's National Dictionary (3rd ed.). Sydney, Australia: The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd.
Durham, C. (2002). Music Therapy and Adults With Learning Difficulties: An Inquiry Into The Benefits of Group Work in a Community Home. Presentation at The 10th World Congress of Music Therapy, Oxford, 27th July.
Edwards, J. (2002). Debating the Winds of Change in Community Music Therapy. [online] Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy Vol.2(2), 2002. Available at http://www.voices.no/discussions/discm4_02.html
Reason, P & Bradbury, H. (Eds.) (2001). Handbook of Action Research London: SAGE Publications.
Stige, B. (2002). Culture-Centered Music Therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.
Stige, Brynjulf (2003). Elaborations toward a Notion of Community Music Therapy. Oslo: Unpublished Dissertation for the Degree of Dr. art, Faculty of Arts, Department of Music and Theatre, University of Oslo.
.or environmental music therapy, or music milieu therapy, or Social Music Therapy, or . Community Music Therapy?
A Response to Ruth Bright
I appreciate very much Ruth Bright's thoughts on my column "A Brisbane Community Dinkum Experience." With reference to a statement by Descartes ("I will not argue with you unless you define your terms.") she argues that: "When we speak of our work in the community, the definition of terms is fraught with difficulty and we need to decide before we have any major discussion what we mean by Community Music Therapy." Some possible meanings are implied already in the title of her comment ("Community Music Therapy," community music therapy, or music therapy in the community?).
To some degree I agree with the request for definition, and in a recent text I spent more than 400 pages in an attempt to define Community Music Therapy (Stige, 2003). I hope this helps me if I should meet anyone with a Cartesian attitude... At the same time I think definitions in this case also run the risk of hindering communication instead of improving it. While music therapy models, which have originators, sometimes may be defined relatively clearly, this is not necessarily the case with Community Music Therapy. I do not think it is something that anybody made up; it is rather an evolving area of practice, that is, it is a diverse "family" of approaches and practices that grow out certain needs and possibilities in modern and late modern culture. If I - or any other music therapist interested in this area - start all conversations about this with an exact definition, we run the risk of disagreeing about specific trees instead of sharing a view of the forest, if you understand what I mean. Most probably we would encounter reactions such as "Hey! I've been doing this for the last 20 years, how dare you come here and define it in a way that I don't exactly agree with?"
If Community Music Therapy is no model and has no originators, why then not write "community music therapy"? Well, my expectation is that in the future this is how it will be written by many; if/when the term is more established. My own reason for using the spelling Community Music Therapy has been linked to the fact that it is a relatively new notion (even though the practice is not new!). For comparison, consider the following note from the fifth edition of APA's Publication Manual: "Dictionaries are not a good guide to the rapidly proliferating vocabulary of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The 10th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, for example, lists E-mail as the preferred spelling, but the term is now so common that it is usually spelled e-mail or even email." (American Psychological Association, 2001, p. 89). In my own writings I have used a similar logic, and therefore have operated with the seemingly inconsistent spellings "Community Music Therapy" and "music therapy." I explore Community Music Therapy as a relatively new notion and discuss it in relation to the broader and more established term music therapy.
Why then not simply speak about music therapy in the community? I think the term "music therapy in the community" is perfectly legitimate in many cases, but it does not necessarily cover what some (including me) seem to mean by Community Music Therapy. With Community Music Therapy we do not only refer to community as a context to work in, but also as a context to work with. In other words; the community may at times achieve the status as (co)client. Through use of some notions that I developed in an earlier publication (Stige, 2002), I argue that Community Music Therapy may be characterized as a value based practice with agendas expanded (the inclusion of a focus upon communal change), arenas unlocked (more open and inclusive settings), agents involved in new ways (participatory processes), and activities and artifacts applied with a broader range of functions (music as an ecology of performed relationships) (Stige, 2003, pp. 450-451). This way of working has a long history in music therapy. Possibly it is the oldest form of music therapy that ever existed. Terms such as "expanded" and "unlocked" are used, then, in relation only to some specific conventions that have become common in modern, individual therapy.
Ruth Bright closes her thoughts with some comments about my comments on the Australian terms "mateship" and "dinkum," and she states that "these words are not in common use today." I want to thank her for stating this, because it helped me to reflect upon the possibility that I have written the column in a way that could be perceived differently from what I intended. I started my column by describing a night when I was rambling around in Brisbane city, taking photographs of banyan tress, eating kangaroo meat, and drinking pink billabong. In this way I did not try to say: "This is Australia." Rather, I was trying to say something in the direction of "I'm a tourist, and I know it, hope I don't blow it." In Brisbane I was of course also a tourist in relation to Australian music therapy. From literature searches in various databases and from discussions with friends and colleagues, I already knew that Australia has a strong and long tradition for music therapy in the community. I assume that Ruth Bright's pioneering efforts have been part of what brought this about. What surprised me at the Australian conference, then, was not that I heard several interesting papers about this. The surprising thing was that so many chose to label their work Community Music Therapy (or community music therapy). I think it is striking that the term has established itself so strongly in such a short time.
My interpretation of this is that it reflects a long felt need among many music therapists of finding a term that could "coordinate" the discussion of practices that could be distinguished from say medical music therapy or music psychotherapy. Probably not everybody would agree, and I hope to be able to discuss this with you and others in Brisbane in 2005.
References
American Psychological Association (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Fifth Edition). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Stige, Brynjulf (2002). Culture-Centered Music Therapy. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.
Stige, Brynjulf (2003). Elaborations toward a Notion of Community Music Therapy. Oslo: Unpublished Dissertation for the Degree of Dr. art, Faculty of Arts, Department of Music and Theatre, University of Oslo