In her article “Hard and Heavy Music: Can It Make a Difference in the Young Cancer Patients’ Life?” Fereshteh Ahmadi shares from her personal experience and research on using an unusual genre of music to treat cancer patients. Through being open to using the often stigmatized genre of hard and heavy music, she shows how this genre can ironically help patients cope with the pain and suffering of cancer. She includes heavy metal, hard rock, hard rap, punk rock and aggressive pop music as examples of hard and heavy music. Two case studies are used, and although she makes no attempt to generalize what was discovered, Ahmadi challenges negative assumptions about the therapeutic appropriateness of this genre.
Before reading this article, I'm not sure that I would have considered using heavy music in this way. My inclination would be to use relaxing, soft music to treat a patient’s pain, anxiety, and stress. Ahmadi effectively shows the necessity for therapists to recognize each patient’s needs on an individual basis, especially in terms of coping with cancer. Both clients interviewed expressed how aggressive music allowed for a kind of self-expression and coping that didn’t exist elsewhere. They needed to express their sense of anger, hopelessness, and dark worldview that healthy people didn’t have.
Although I have not the experience of providing music therapy for young people with cancer, Ahmadi’s words resonate. In my brief experience doing student clinical work at an oncology unit, I often observed older patients attempting to hold back the anger, fear, and hostility they felt. I remember one patient saying how he felt “just fine” at the beginning of the session. He stated that he wouldn’t object to music therapy, but that he really didn’t need help with decreasing pain and anxiety or increasing relaxation. After presenting him with some options on what we could do, he requested Louis Armstrong’s song “What a Wonderful World”. About half way through the song, he stopped humming and tapping his foot. He sat and listened for the duration of the song. After the song -- silence. I waited for a response. Then after approximately 30 seconds, he looked up at me and said in a very loud voice, “Well it’s NOT a very ‘wonderful world’, is it?!” He then began to cry and asked me to leave. I respected his request, but said that I would check in on him in a few minutes. After a couple of minutes had passed, he walked out of the room with the aid of his wife, and pulled me aside. When he apologized for his behavior, I assured him that no apology was needed, and that he had responded to the music with honesty and integrity.
In this session, a patient felt anger rather than thankfulness for a “wonderful world.” A common thread connects his experience and Ahmadi’s younger clients who wanted heavy metal music: they need to be given the freedom to express how horrible they feel. Although hard and heavy music may or may not help with this, the typical “uplifting/encouraging” spiritual or secular music therapists often choose doesn’t always speak to a person during an emotional crisis. The two interviewees in Ahmadi's article, as well as the client I referred to, experienced a calmness and acceptance of their situation once allowed to get mad and feel some level of hostility. Once given the space in their minds to not have to be gentle and calm, they found themselves gentle, calm and relaxed.
I remember an odd recommendation a friend gave to me during a difficult time in my life. My friend recommended the movie “No Country for Old Men”. Far from having a light, inspirational message, this movie's themes were heavy and dark. The violence was almost unbearable in certain scenes. Yet my friend knew that this movie would help me cope with my situation. Best of all, the movie had no easy answers or reasons for the suffering and death the characters faced. No answers were given at all. Besides the occasional humor, the only “positive” elements of the movie were subtle, hardly detected by most reviews I've read and friends I've talked to. But the experience of sitting through that movie, then reading the book, then discussing it with friends is exactly what I needed to help me be honest about the uncertainty, sadness, anger, and helplessness I felt. Many viewers seemed to miss the small glimpse of hope offered at the end of the movie. If any hope was felt, it was subjective and seemed to find viewers who weren't necessarily asking for it.
I found similar themes between this movie and aggressive music. When watching a movie like this or listening to aggressive music, one may experience the uncomfortable feelings of anger, weakness, and uncertainty. Hard and heavy music often expresses despair and hopelessness, yet in the cases Ahmadi provides doesn't result in actual despair. Rather it helped them to not feel alienated, find relief from stress, and process the feelings most difficult to communicate.
Hard and heavy music would not be an effective treatment for everyone, as Ahmadi is careful to point out. But allowing for it as one of many diverse mediums for therapy is important. Her words about diversity and openness are true: “Finding this diversity requires being open to the possibility of different ways of coping with a difficult crisis, even if certain ways may seem harmful and undesirable at first glance.”
I saw the title of this article and was immediately drawn to it. My favorite genre of music is rock and some of the groups I listen to tend to be in the “heavy or hard” category. I have been wondering if any music therapists would use these genres of music or if they had any potential for help. Fereshteh Amandi explains in this article how this music has the potential to provide the opposite response that the majority of people would think it would. Instead of creating anger or hostility in someone the clients in her study find meaning in their lives, a source of inner peace, and a better “sense of self”.
Most people that I know that listen to heavy metal or hard rock say that they identify with the message of certain songs and that the music in a way defines them. They mention that they feel like they don’t fit in with any other social groups but once they heard this music for the first time they immediately felt there was a group of people that had the same outlook as they did. I have asked them if the music tends to make them more angry or prone to stay that way and most them tell me no, and that is not really ever the point of listening to it. If anything, it calms them down, as stated in the article, and gives them a chance to purge their anger in a way that is their own. I know that when I listen to heavy metal, hard rock, rap, punk, or any other heavy music that I do not generally feel more aggressive or antagonized. It helps me release certain feelings while listening to someone else sing about the same types of feelings or problem I am facing.
Of course this would not work for everyone, and also not all songs are necessarily appropriate for therapeutic use. Analysis of a song and its lyrics would need to be done before bringing it to a client. If a client were to bring it to a session themselves then the analysis would be a good activity to do with them. I know that some heavy metal songs have some pretty disturbing themes in their lyrics but until we try to understand them we will not know if they are appropriate for therapy.
It’s great to see someone bringing attention to these genres of music and their potential use in the field of music therapy. More study if of course needed and maybe one day I will conduct a study of my own. I love these styles of music and have always advocated their worth in the musical society. As a classically trained musician I have always tried to be open to all genres and respect each of them. Young people as well as old all have songs they identify with and love and it is important for us as music therapist to always explore any musical avenue that could help anyone of any age.
In this article, Fereshteh Ahmadi analyzes the use of hard and heavy music as a coping mechanism in the lives of two young cancer patients. The two women she interviewed had used genres of music such as punk and heavy metal to deal with the many psychological issues that spurred from their cancer ordeal. Ahmadi delved into prior research to understand how these genres could actually help while their musical and lyrical nature is so abrasive. She encountered two modes of thinking: hard and heavy music can soothe the anger and frustration of being stricken with cancer, and these genres can inspire meaning in the listener’s life through connection with the lyrics (Arnett, 1996). During her interviews, though, Ahmadi found a new use for hard and heavy music. Both of her interviewees had used the music to create an alternative world where they were not sickly, cancer patients but strong, defiant women who were capable of anything.
This article is very interesting in that it shows how two women used music that many people find to be wholly negative to inspire confidence and positivity toward their situation, but they did it on their own. No music therapist was present to conduct sessions that used this music within the confines of a goal, objective, and techniques. Listening and lyric analysis done by these women were the only discernible therapy methods used. If this music can generate this much psychological healing in the lives of these women when it is the only the music itself doing the work, it is fascinating to know that there are therapists in the world who are taking these genres and placing them within therapy sessions. As a student starting out in music therapy, I have used genres such as country, gospel, blues, and jazz. Excluding some of the blues, the other genres are generally referred to as positive forms of music. The uses for these genres are innumerable and completely justifiable, but then again I haven’t dealt with cancer patients or even patients suffering from psychological disorders. That being said, it’s nice to see that hard and heavy music does have a relevant place in music therapy. Sometimes to get clients/patients to express themselves, this music must be the catalyst no matter how unsavory you believe the lyrics to be. It is important for me to remember that admission of fear, anger, and isolation must be present before real healing can begin. This article represents a very visceral side of music therapy that not many people outside of the field really know about. I must admit that it is this side that interests me the most. Being a young man, the majority of the music I listen to would fall into the category of hard and heavy music. However, I am listening to it with a mind of music theory that analyzes the melody and chord changes, not to cope with any certain problem.
Eye-opening research such as this only further sheds light on the versatility that exists in the world of music therapy. I am becoming more aware that all types of music from all types of cultures and points in history have their place in my profession, and that they all represent useful options for any population that I might encounter in my career as a music therapist.