Community Music Therapy: A Plea For "Fuzzy Recognition" Instead of "Final Definition".

A few months ago when I was in Oslo Even Ruud told me that he'd come up with a good definition of Community Music Therapy. I was intrigued. In his recent Response, "Defining Community Music Therapy" Even remarks that watching the field of CoMT grow in the last few years has been an interesting study in the construction of a new discourse (which may or may not say anything new about practice). He suggests that if it does say anything new it is a revalidation of performance within music therapy, on which grounds he proposes the following new definition of CoMT:

Community Music Therapy, then, may be defined as "the reflexive use of performance based music therapy within a systemic perspective" (Ruud 2004).

I'm happy that Even has got this particular discussion section going again, and as usual, his view is tempered by a wryness about passing fashions within the discipline. But I find myself disappointed that even Even has made as his contribution to the debate an attempt to define CoMT. As such his comments are characteristic of many in the previous year who are trying to get to grips with this Community Music Therapy thing by attempting to arrive at a final definition - rather like the taxidermist pinning the butterfly to secure it in a glass case. Typical definitional strategies are either: (i) If it's x it can't be y, or (ii) Out of w, x, y, z it's 'really' z. I realize that my disappointment is not just with Even's particular definition of CoMT (which I'd like to partially argue against below), but also with this definitional approach per se. These two aspects I'd like to address in this response[1].

Just Add Performance?

Firstly, is not Even's characterization of CoMT as a 'performance-oriented' approach a good one? After all, in a recent research session on CoMT[2] I gave a presentation in which I claimed that 'performance' was indeed a 'core concept' of CoMT. In this I presented some work by a music therapist in London who works with a group called "Musical Minds", made up of people living with chronic mental health problems. They employ the music therapist to help them (musically and socially), but do not define the group as 'music therapy' as such. Musical Minds consists both of the process of meeting weekly to sing together, but also in order to rehearse for occasional performances, which clearly have psychological and social benefit for all. Is this project not 'typical' CoMT? And isn't performance its defining feature?

Yes, and no. Somehow even for this group (which may seem a classic performance-based project) this characterisation feels too simple. Having researched it closely now I rather think that it is in the relationship between the performance and non-performance aspects of the group that its identity (and effect) lies. The therapist also works skillfully with individuals, parts of the group and with the context and surrounding structures of the local community. It's somehow the network of these various interactions that characterises the group. This of course has many parallels to pioneering music therapy - particularly Nordoff and Robbins' work in special education settings[3].

If you look through the recent book Mercedes Pavlicevic and I edited (Community Music Therapy, 2004) you'll find that all the clinical projects documented there do indeed include performances, or at least public or semi-public musicing (and as such stand out from much conventional music therapy in the last 20 years). However, this is not necessarily to say that they are best defined as "just add performance" music therapy, or that ' reflexive performance' is their single 'identity element'. This would be rather like defining GIM as 'reflexive listening to recorded classical music'. Surely exactly the same point applies to both these traditions of music therapy: is it not the relationships between the various aspects of practice (and their accompanying theoretical components) that characterizes them - not extracting one single functional element?

Networks & Matrices: "the Pattern Which Connects"

Even also mentions in his Response that perhaps a more explicit metatheoretical perspective would help CoMT, and that systems theory would clearly be the appropriate option. I agree: we could certainly give more emphasis to this, and connect recent developments more with the pioneering thought of those 'wise colleagues' Even mentions, such as Caroyn Kenny (1985, 1989) - or, I might add, David Aldridge (1996, 2004) - both of who taught us long ago to view music therapy from a systemic perspective. More recently, however, it seems to me that this perspective is also inherent in Bynjulf Stige's 'culture centred' approach to music therapy (Stige 2002, 2003), where he often writes of a social or musical 'ecology'. However, perhaps a more explicitly systemic modeling of CoMT could indeed help clarify its aims, practices and assumptions.

We are of course increasingly immersed in varieties of systems thinking now, through ecological or technological discourses. Recent accessible accounts such as Fritjof Capra's two books, The Web of Life (1997) and The Hidden Connections (2003), clearly reflect this. Capra's latest book, on what he calls a 'systems view of life' is also characteristic of recent trends to emphasise a systemic interpretation of social and cultural life, where traditional thinking - about hierarchies of material objects and structures - shifts towards communications, relationships, contexts, patterns and processes. Instead of just fixed things and structures, we have fluid nodes, networks and links. As Fritjof Capra explains:

The network is one of the basic patterns of organization in all living systems. At all levels of life - from the metabolic networks of cells to the food webs of ecosytems - the components and processes of living systems are interlinked in a network fashion. Extending the systemic understanding of life to the social domain, therefore, means applying our knowledge of life's basic patterns and principles of organization, and specifically our understanding of living networks, to social reality [.] social networks are first and foremost networks of communication involving symbolic language, cultural constraints, relationships or power, and so on. (Capra 2003: 70)

CoMT is I think giving some good examples of socio-cultural networks, where it's the relationships between that matter (what Gregory Bateson called "the pattern which connects"). The relationships between.notes, people, institutions, cultures.,an idea that will probably remind many of you of Christopher Small's argument in Musicking (1998) - an interesting link to systemic or ecological thinking[4]!

On a practice level music therapist Stuart Wood's pioneering project reflected these ideas beautifully (see Chapter 2 in Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004). He developed a CoMT project for patients rehabilitating from neurological damage, which was characterized by a matrix[5] of different musical opportunities (or what Tia DeNora would call musical affordances) tailored to the stage and needs of their rehabilitation, but also of participants' musical interests and abilities. These possibilities included traditional 1:1 music therapy, group music therapy, instrumental learning, music workshops (eg jazz piano, African drumming), and included not only patients but also staff and carers [see Fig 1].

Figure 1: 'Woods' Matrix'

There are consequently multiple potential pathways between these nodes, that any individual or various subgroups of people can follow, appropriating various musical/social experiences as they travel. One of the nodes is performance, and it is indeed an important node. But the 'matrix model' makes it clear that performance is not central, but related to all the other nodes in a fluid way (i.e. the role or presence of performance may shift, wax or wane at different times). It is the multiple relationships between which are modeled by the matrix that characterizes this music therapy (and its effectiveness).

A systemic analysis of this project would emphasise these aspects of connectedness, relationships and context, and the nature of the connection between parts and whole. It would show in particular, as Capra suggests, how:

.none of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental; they all follow from the properties of the other parts, and the overall consistency of their interrelations determines the structure of the entire web. (Capra 1997:39)

So any definition of such a CoMT project, or perhaps of CoMT as a whole, will probably need to take this axiom of systemic thinking into account: the whole is prior to the parts. The traditional way of establishing the identity of something through describing a hierarchy of the parts of a system ('this is more fundamental than that') is challenged by systems thinking. Instead we may have to look at the whole system and say: this pattern is what connects.

So I'm not sure Even can both eat his systemic cake, and also satisfy his definitional hunger!

Does Defining Clarify?

But anyway. why define? Does the 'craving for clarity' really help as much as we think? I remembered that Wittgenstein had some useful things to say on the subject.[6] In his later work (in the Blue & Brown Books, and in the Philosophical Investigations) there are a number of nice passages tackling the question: Does defining clarify? Wittgenstein is arguing here against the positivist tradition of analytic philosophy:

Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it. But is it useless to say: "Stand roughly there"? (Wittgenstein 1953, §71)

Wittgenstein shows how, in normal everyday language (rather than in 'analytic' philosophical language) we often use vague, 'fuzzy' definitions - but that these actually work quite nicely if seen as indicators of what you might do, rather than precise analytical descriptions that have been taken out of a specific context or use. We do not necessarily improve communication by keep sharpening boundaries and definitions separately from contextual use. Wittgenstein gives the example of St Augustine asking "What is time?". The saint famously tripped himself up when he abstracted the phenomenon of time from its normal place - say the instruction he gave his cook as to when he wanted dinner! Wittgenstein summarises the problem with these definitional 'what-is?' questions:

This question makes is appear that what we want is a definition. We mistakenly think that a definition is what will remove the trouble (as in certain states of indigestion we feel a kind of hunger which cannot be removed by eating). (Wittgenstein 1958/69: 27)

A reason why definition doesn't necessarily clarify is that defining one term in a 'language game' leads to having to (re)define another, and you realize that separately from the whole communication there are many 'fuzzy' terms. Seen from an analytical or positivist perspective this is a bad state of affairs! But again Wittgenstein makes an interesting point:

Many words in this sense then don't have a strict meaning. But this is not a defect. To think it is would be like saying that the light of my reading lamp is no real light at all because it has no sharp boundary. (Wittgenstein 1958/69: 27)

What, then, are the implications of all of this for the matter in hand: whether it helps to try to define CoMT more, and whether some of us are being disingenuous in our reluctance to do just this. Two key aspects here are:

1. Boundary & definition: Both Ruud and Wittgenstein (as well as Bruscia's Defining Music Therapy) relate definition to boundaries. Defining x as 'not y' draws a boundary, is said to prevent things getting confused. Wittgenstein counters this tradition of thinking from logical positivism with his example that his desk lamp is no less functional for not having a boundary to its light. Could it be that in music therapy we're too quick, too keen, to draw boundaries between this and that practice, this and that theory? Another problem, deriving from positivist analysis, is to define CoMT by assembling definitions of 'community', 'music' and 'therapy' and then trying to add them together. What if, instead, we started looking from a systems or network perspective: towards the relationships between areas? Not just the nodes, but the links.So CoMT might function to motivate re-thinking of the possible network relationships between 'community', 'music' and 'therapy' - not just as defined, but as experienced in practice (perhaps "fuzzily").
2. Practice, discipline & profession: Bryjulf Stige (2002,2003) has cautioned us to be disciplined in separating out whether we're talking about the level of practice, discipline or profession. On a practice level it may be important to define safe or unsafe practices, or the boundary between safe professional practice and similar work by others less trained. The same definitional process on a disciplinary level may, however, have a more stifling effect on music therapy - leading practitioners to believe that defined disciplinary boundaries are indisputable, for all time and place. On a professional level definitions can be clarifying for employers, but can also aid the construction of self-serving restrictive practices.

Beyond 'Definition Anxiety'?

VOICES itself is a fascinating example of the network metaphor in relation to these questions. What can we learn from how the CoMT construct has been variously and rather rapidly appropriated by many different individuals and groups around the world? What does this tell us? Partly I think something interesting about disciplinary movements within our time - based as they are on globalising forces such as the web[7]. But perhaps this is just a speeded up process of conceptual affordance and appropriation: local uses of global discourses. This surely argues against attempts to find a central definition, to draw boundaries for everyone, everywhere.

Do I have any alternative to 'definition anxiety'? Well, Wittgenstein had an interesting suggestion: that instead of abstract synoptic definition of a phenomenon (achieved by hovering above it), we instead make a horizontal, 'on-the-ground' characterization: in terms seeing the pattern of it in everyday use, within its local contexts (which themselves shift constantly). This is a form of understanding by seeing what everyone actually already sees, but then emphasising its key elements so the pattern really stands out. So instead of saying 'the central defining element of CoMT is either x, y or z' we instead look at how the pattern of its elements is rearranged in new relationships within any given context. So CoMT is not defined by anything new, or anything 'particular' - but by a new arrangement of known elements: in short, a new pattern (or, perhaps to avoid this also sounding too fixed, new patterning within a specific context, or need, or use).

What such a new pattern requires is not then definition but pattern recognition. We might call this fuzzy recognition. Whether there "is" any such thing as 'Community Music Therapy' is then largely beside the point! The idea is not to reify some object called 'CoMT' (just as the idea of the term musicing is not to turn a process into an object). Rather, 'fuzzy recognition' can perhaps serve well enough as a guide to action, reflection, comparison, elaboration, recontextualisation, transformation, improvisation. in short, as recognition of what Gregory Bateson called the pattern which connects.

Notes

[1] Aspects of my response here also relate to the more recent responses to Even's piece by Brynjulf Stige (December 20, 2004) & Even's counter-response (December 30, 2004).

[2] This was the November 2004 London meeting of the Sandane/Pretoria/London International Music Therapy Research Collaboration, "Music Therapy in Late Modernity", led by Brynjulf Stige & funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Partial Project 2 is an exploratory study of Community Music Therapy in Norway, Israel, South Africa & the UK.

[3] In both Therapy in Music for Handicapped Children (1971) and Music Therapy in Special Education (1975) Nordoff & Robbins give descriptions of musical performances and 'plays with music'. These were usually public, and very much in the 'theatrical' convention: they talk about rehearsals, 'the cast', costumes, programmes for the audience, and the psychosocial benefits of these occasions for the children.

[4] Another interesting link is the recent uses of ecological psychology by music psychologists identifying a musical phenomenology which is reciprocally constituted in relation to both the ecology of the environmental affordances and by the projects (appropriations) of actors (see Ansdell, in Pavlicevic & Ansdell 2004).

[5] A matrix being a totally connected form of a network, which could be more informally organized.

[6] Brynjulf Stige mentions some of the following argument too in Culture Centred Music Therapy (2002).

[7] Again, See Stige's thesis (2003) for a nuanced version of this argument.

References

Aldridge, D. (1996). Music Therapy Research & Practice in Medicine. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Aldridge, D. (2004). Health, the Individual, and Integrated Medicine. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Capra, F. (1997). The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter. London: Flamingo.

Capra, F. (2003). The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. London: HarperCollins.

Kenny, C. (1985). 'Music: A Whole Systems Approach'. Music Therapy, Vol.5, No.1, 3-11.

Kenny, C. (1989). The Field of Play: A Guide for the Theory & Practice of Music Therapy. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.

Small, C. (1998) Musicking: The Meanings of Performing & Listening. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.

Pavlicevic. M. & Ansdell, G. (eds) (2004). Community Music Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Ruud, E. (2004). Defining Community Music Therapy [online]. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, Moderated Discussion. Retrieved December 15 from http://www.voices.no/discussions/discm4_04.html

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.

Wittgenstein, L. (1958/69) The Blue & Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell.