How Can Music Therapy Help? Response to Yoshie Sasaguri
Yoshie Sasaguri raises questions to do with helping children in dire situations - such as those with HIV/AIDS - in South Africa. She reflects on the dilemma facing any young music therapists whose souls are quickened and alarmed by profound human suffering: in other words, shall we first be a human being or a music therapist in such situations? What is the greater need?
One of the difficulties in considering situations in cultures so very different from our own, is that often we don't have the images or the social knowledge to help us begin to formulate questions (and answers!). This, in spite of access to the internet, television documentaries, and other sources of information that give an illusion that we 'know' about such places - if not in person then by 'informing' ourselves about them.
I offer here a few reflections for helping Yoshie and her peers to 'imagine,' since without this we can't begin thinking about 'helping.'
The first things that Yoshie considers for the desperate children are money, food, medicines - the basics in terms of 'helping.' This would make any of us feel that we have 'done something,' and hopefully, we would feel the better for it. A larger issue emerges here: that disease has a tangible link to poverty and hunger. As human beings, our initial impulse may be to address these, and by doing so, acknowledge that the tangible territory of music therapy is the tip of some unhappy icebergs. Medicines and Money - we all know - are short term solutions. Possibly, where there is social fragmentation, they may create other problems which are not to do with the intentions of the 'donor,' but rather with roots deep in the complexities of Southern African social norms.
Then we come to music - our tool as music therapists. A wonderful idea. I start to think, well, what music might we sing with this child (as in Yoshie's reflections); how might we find out what music is his favourite? And before asking this, how would this child make sense of the idea of 'favourite' music? Favourite music implies a choice between several musics .... here we come face to face with the Sub-Saharan notion of music which is that music is not this 'thing,' this 'object' that you can 'use' when you think you need it, but rather, music is part of being together when you are in a place with your family, friends, your siblings, your clan. And the music that you 'do' is music that belongs to that very collection of people in that very situation. So to think of 'music' as transferable or transportable - something that we might use in therapy ...... doesn't quite work. How, then, shall we do 'music' in order to 'help' this child dying of HIV/AIDS?
Lest all of this begins to sound dissuasive of the impulse to 'do something' - which is, after all, the remit of most caring professions - I now want to switch tracks.
What I have learnt, living in South Africa, is that the overwhelming issue, in terms of 'helping,' is to find a territory for 'helping' by mutual consent. In other words, to find a position where what I think of in terms of helping coincides with what you need, and with what you understand by 'being helped.' Usually as music therapists we make use of social institutions to create mutual territories. For instance, schools define what it means to learn, and hospitals and clinics what it means to be ill - and to be cured. Within these contexts, we practice music therapy. Remove these contexts and the territory becomes complicated.
In South Africa, (and incidentally, in other parts of the world) the institutions themselves are not homogenous in their understandings of 'illness' and 'curing.' There are complex social and cultural issues to disentangle. For example, a child in the middle of chemotherapy is suddenly whisked off because the traditional healer in her village (100s of miles away) needs to see the child with her family. Doctors and nurses explain to the family that this is not the time to take the child away from the hospital - in any case chemotherapy will only last another 6 days. The family is adamant: the traditional healer says that he needs to see the child tomorrow at the latest - else the spirits will not speak. The child leaves hospital and goes home. The child dies.
Is the child cured? Is the child healed? And from what premise do we ask these questions?
So - how helpful is 'music therapy' (or medicine for that matter) in instances such as these? How much energy shall we, as music therapists, spend in considering where and how our work 'fits' with traditionally embedded norms and beliefs - knowing full well that traditional medicine and 'modern' (or Western) medicine themselves are uncomfortable neighbours?
All of these deliberations begin to sound - and feel - overwhelming, and perhaps here we give up. We lose heart, forget it all, for the problems are too vast, too complicated, and simply too far away. We'll just get on with doing music therapy. (And feel better for doing so.)
At this point I am reminded of a story which goes like this. The young novice asks the old wise monk, 'tell me, most knowledgeable sir, the mountains, the rivers, the moon - where do they all come from?' To which the old wise monk replies, 'your questions, young man, where do they all come from?'
Perhaps by answering too specifically the questions raised by Yoshie and her student peers, I prevent her from continuing to seek and ask more questions. More important, perhaps, is that trainee music therapists continue to ask: how can we help; how can we make sense of this or that; in such and such a situation, what might be the way to think; - as music therapists, what is our task; what is our role. And critically, as music therapists, how are we needed.
How Can Music Therapy Help? Response to Yoshie Sasaguri
Yoshie Sasaguri raises questions to do with helping children in dire situations - such as those with HIV/AIDS - in South Africa. She reflects on the dilemma facing any young music therapists whose souls are quickened and alarmed by profound human suffering: in other words, shall we first be a human being or a music therapist in such situations? What is the greater need?
One of the difficulties in considering situations in cultures so very different from our own, is that often we don't have the images or the social knowledge to help us begin to formulate questions (and answers!). This, in spite of access to the internet, television documentaries, and other sources of information that give an illusion that we 'know' about such places - if not in person then by 'informing' ourselves about them.
I offer here a few reflections for helping Yoshie and her peers to 'imagine,' since without this we can't begin thinking about 'helping.'
The first things that Yoshie considers for the desperate children are money, food, medicines - the basics in terms of 'helping.' This would make any of us feel that we have 'done something,' and hopefully, we would feel the better for it. A larger issue emerges here: that disease has a tangible link to poverty and hunger. As human beings, our initial impulse may be to address these, and by doing so, acknowledge that the tangible territory of music therapy is the tip of some unhappy icebergs. Medicines and Money - we all know - are short term solutions. Possibly, where there is social fragmentation, they may create other problems which are not to do with the intentions of the 'donor,' but rather with roots deep in the complexities of Southern African social norms.
Then we come to music - our tool as music therapists. A wonderful idea. I start to think, well, what music might we sing with this child (as in Yoshie's reflections); how might we find out what music is his favourite? And before asking this, how would this child make sense of the idea of 'favourite' music? Favourite music implies a choice between several musics .... here we come face to face with the Sub-Saharan notion of music which is that music is not this 'thing,' this 'object' that you can 'use' when you think you need it, but rather, music is part of being together when you are in a place with your family, friends, your siblings, your clan. And the music that you 'do' is music that belongs to that very collection of people in that very situation. So to think of 'music' as transferable or transportable - something that we might use in therapy ...... doesn't quite work. How, then, shall we do 'music' in order to 'help' this child dying of HIV/AIDS?
Lest all of this begins to sound dissuasive of the impulse to 'do something' - which is, after all, the remit of most caring professions - I now want to switch tracks.
What I have learnt, living in South Africa, is that the overwhelming issue, in terms of 'helping,' is to find a territory for 'helping' by mutual consent. In other words, to find a position where what I think of in terms of helping coincides with what you need, and with what you understand by 'being helped.' Usually as music therapists we make use of social institutions to create mutual territories. For instance, schools define what it means to learn, and hospitals and clinics what it means to be ill - and to be cured. Within these contexts, we practice music therapy. Remove these contexts and the territory becomes complicated.
In South Africa, (and incidentally, in other parts of the world) the institutions themselves are not homogenous in their understandings of 'illness' and 'curing.' There are complex social and cultural issues to disentangle. For example, a child in the middle of chemotherapy is suddenly whisked off because the traditional healer in her village (100s of miles away) needs to see the child with her family. Doctors and nurses explain to the family that this is not the time to take the child away from the hospital - in any case chemotherapy will only last another 6 days. The family is adamant: the traditional healer says that he needs to see the child tomorrow at the latest - else the spirits will not speak. The child leaves hospital and goes home. The child dies.
Is the child cured? Is the child healed? And from what premise do we ask these questions?
So - how helpful is 'music therapy' (or medicine for that matter) in instances such as these? How much energy shall we, as music therapists, spend in considering where and how our work 'fits' with traditionally embedded norms and beliefs - knowing full well that traditional medicine and 'modern' (or Western) medicine themselves are uncomfortable neighbours?
All of these deliberations begin to sound - and feel - overwhelming, and perhaps here we give up. We lose heart, forget it all, for the problems are too vast, too complicated, and simply too far away. We'll just get on with doing music therapy. (And feel better for doing so.)
At this point I am reminded of a story which goes like this. The young novice asks the old wise monk, 'tell me, most knowledgeable sir, the mountains, the rivers, the moon - where do they all come from?' To which the old wise monk replies, 'your questions, young man, where do they all come from?'
Perhaps by answering too specifically the questions raised by Yoshie and her student peers, I prevent her from continuing to seek and ask more questions. More important, perhaps, is that trainee music therapists continue to ask: how can we help; how can we make sense of this or that; in such and such a situation, what might be the way to think; - as music therapists, what is our task; what is our role. And critically, as music therapists, how are we needed.