Music Therapy in Ghana
Music therapy in Ghana is in its embryonic stage at the moment. I am the only one currently engaged in some kind of activity in this area. I visit the local psychiatric hospital occasionally to handle some cases. A few medical practitioners who know what music therapy is, are very supportive of my endeavours, but others (of the old school) are down right indifferent.
I have chalked up a few successes but my biggest challenge now is educating the public about music therapy. I have been to a few Regional Hospitals (there are ten administrative regions in Ghana) where I am sensitising the Directors and some physiotherapists and occupational therapists about the possibility of taking music therapy "on board"
I am not a music therapist by profession but a musicologist. I studied Systematic Musicology in Germany, and took a few rudimentary courses related to music therapy, but I have a very strong conviction that music therapy has a lot to offer music theory and music education and that is why I am championing the cause of music therapy in my country.
I presented a paper at an international conference on Music and Healing held here a few years ago. My paper was titled "Music As Ego-Booster: Two Case Studies in Music Therapy", and it was a success and has therefore given me a ray of hope that sooner than later, music therapy may become a household term in this country. I have also delivered lectures at the Annual General Meetings of the Ghana Music Teachers' Association (GMTA), at which I introduced a few concepts in music therapy to my audiences.
My endeavours as a pioneer are fraught with problems. The major one at the moment is transportation to the many District hospitals I would like to visit. The public transport system is not the best for the purpose and my current car is not the most ideal. I need a four-wheel drive cross-country vehicle. This is what pertains in Ghana at the moment by way of music therapy. This country report may well be an "SOS" call to any philanthropist(s) who can provide a small four-wheel-drive vehicle (KIA or Suzuki or Toyota Spottage or Niva) to facilitate my endeavours. I shall forever be grateful for any such support.
Music and Traditional Healing
Music (therapy) has been part of the Ghanaian traditional healer's stock-in-trade. Music accompanies the priest's suite (of dances) and increases in intensity up to the point when the priest/priestess enters the semi-conscious trance state and starts to communicate with the ancestral spirits. That is how far music is used by the would-be therapist as a stimulus.
The dance suite and its rhythms as well as the varying tempi play a vital role in the whole enterprise although it is not as yet known how the sequel of the various dances enhances the ecstasy since alongside the dances the priest/priestess is offered concoctions that may include alcoholic beverages. I intend investigating this phenomenon more empirically at a later time.
There are also those situations in which music is used to heal an emotionally disturbed (neurotic) member of the community. Although the traditional healer is the overseer of the healing process, he may require the whole community to participate at a particular stage of the process. This means that the whole community is involved in the music-making (and dancing) and the patient is encouraged at a particular stage to participate in the "ritual" by either singing and dancing with the participants, or in some cases, the patient is the recipient of (musical) pleasantries from the community.
This form of psychotherapy is effective if the patient believes (as s/he often does) that his/her ailment is the result of a misdemeanour towards a member of the community for which reason the ancestral spirits or gods are angry with him/her resulting in his/her ailment.
A Case Example of Current Practice
The following case study is a "modern" form of music therapy in Ghana that I conducted at the psychiatric hospital here to introduce a group of enthusiastic music students to an aspect of music therapy.
A twenty-five-year-old mental patient is on admission for the second time. He was previously diagnosed as an acute psychotic patient but was discharged after five months. Treatment was purely by drugs. The second admission was based on a diagnosed condition described in the hospital records as catatonic schizophrenia with auditory hallucination. The patient also re-acted negatively to whatever he was told by staff. The patient's background was as follows:
Education: Middle School (i.e. Basic School) graduate.
Religion: Christian; member of Church of Pentecost.
Marital Status: Single.
Occupation: Peasant farmer.
The patient was the fourth son of a family made up of a sibling of five males and one female.
Our regular weekly visits and interactions with our patient-friend revealed certain facts which were otherwise unknown to the hospital authorities: His mother was the most sympathetic and trusted member of his nuclear family; he was baptised in the Catholic faith but had left the Catholic Church because his social status as a "mere" farmer and a "mere" Middle school graduate did not earn him any recognition in a church with a tall hierarchy of bishops, priests, rich men learned men, and what have you? However, according to him, in the Pentecostal church, he is able to interact with any member of the church, because the church teaches its members to see and accept one another as being equal in the sight of God. He also added that he loved the Pentecostal songs of praise because they were simple to learn and sing, unlike the sophisticated hymns and/or anthems sung in the Catholic church, especially when some of such hymns and anthems were (occasionally) in Latin which he did not understand and therefore could not participate in.
He was even aware of what made him ill — an awareness which the hospital authorities had not been able to extract directly from him, or indirectly from his family members: His greatest ambition was to get married and possibly raise a family, but that ambition could only materialise if he had a good and reliable means of livelihood to support a family. He therefore decided to go into farming. Fortunately he worked hard and his farm yielded good returns, but just when he would have harvested his crops (grains), his elder brother who was already married and also had his own farm (adjacent to his), harvested — in fact stole more than half the yield from our patient-friend's farm.
He naturally protested and sought redress at a family tribunal, but the ruling was that since it was his own brother who had harvested his crops, he should not complain. This judgement gave his elder brother the right to continue robbing him of the fruits of his labour, season after season.
Therapy
After we had got these facts, we concentrated our efforts on religious (i.e. Pentecostal) music-making with him. He sang, and we sang with him and we accompanied him with different musical instruments on different occasions. The instruments we used were the guitar, the trumpet and simple percussion instruments. After some time we asked him whether he would like to play any of our instruments and he expressed the desire to learn to play the guitar. We therefore "appointed" a guitar teacher — a female student to teach him. The student was told why she had been given that assignment — as a surrogate mother — and she played the role very effectively. Our client learned to play a few chords for purposes of accompanying himself and was very happy with his achievement.
Unknown to us, the hospital authorities had noticed a positive change in his behaviour. He was now sociable; he now dressed properly and arranged the chairs and the venue for our weekly meetings even before we arrived. We paid him our usual Tuesday afternoon visit on one occasion and we were told the good news that there was no need to keep our client any longer at the hospital and so he would be discharged in due course. We then asked him how he was going to face the situation back home and his answer was as follows: "Since I can play an instrument which my brother can never play, I will always feel more confident in dealing with him. I have also decided to relocate in order to start farming afresh, but I will go to our church to play the guitar where I will be admired."
On the eve of our client's discharge, we got a few workers and nurses together and we sang the popular Pentecostal songs of praise together and he accompanied us on guitar. Our client has since not returned to the hospital and information has it that he is doing well.
Current Training Possibilities in Ghana
I teach at the Music Department of the University of Cape Coast. We do not have any programme in Music Therapy at the moment but students are introduced to music therapy in our courses in aesthetics and also the social backgrounds of the performing arts.
We welcome any book donations on music therapy that are in English. These will be useful both in the departmental library, and also in the selected hospitals where I am sensitising staff about the prospects of using music in healing. [Please use the Post Office address at the top of the column].
More information about us is available on the web at http://www.scientific-african.org/start.htm
How to cite this page
Kofie, Nicholas N. (2004). Music Therapy in Ghana. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=country/monthghana_september2004
