Music Therapy in Uruguay: A Long and Winding Road
Historical Perspective
Uruguay is a very small country in South America. It is located right between Brazil and Argentina and has a population of approximately 3 million people. The capital city is Montevideo, a coastal city in which half of the population of the country lives. Most of the activity held around Music Therapy takes place in Montevideo.
With most of the issues that have to do with Uruguay's history one could say that whatever happens with our neighbors sooner or later has repercussion in our life. This is so with Music Therapy too. Music Therapy appeared in Uruguay at the late 1960s - almost by the same time as it appeared in Brazil and Argentina - thanks to the enormous interest and vocation of a teacher who worked with disabled children, Ms. Lyda Florez. She started studying by herself and was looking for people with similar interests in the region. In 1969 she started the Uruguayan Music Therapy Association (ASUM), an organization that since then has been doing a very important spreading work in the community. Florez traveled, exchanged experiences in different countries, and caught the interest of other professionals with whom she started, in 1982, the first and only training program in the country. This training program was offered at a private institution, the "Center for the Arts." Around 15 music therapists graduated from this institution, which had at first a 3 years program that soon became a 4 years program.
In 1992 the Music Therapy department looks for its independence, and so the "First Uruguayan Music Therapy School" (PEMU) was started, with a training program that offered a 2 years course for people who had already another profession related to education or health. This school had to close its doors in 1995, due to financial problems. It never had any subventions or financial support of any kind.
A Place in the Region
During all this years, ASUM has done a very good job organizing workshops, permanent training short courses, and symposiums for graduates. The "Foro Rioplatense de Musicoterapia" is an important event, which involves and is attended by professionals of Brazil and Argentina, besides Uruguay. Renown Music Therapists from the region as Lía Rejane Mendes Barcellos, Cecilia Conde, Cléo Correia , Ronaldo Milleco (Brazil), Dr. Rolando Benenzon, Gabriela Wagner, Diego Schapira, Patricia Pellizari, Marcos Vidret, and Ofelia Herrendorf (Argentina) have been invited to present their work. With this Conference, which is held almost every year since 1995, ASUM has invited the Music Therapy professional community of the region to think about Music Therapy and Music Therapists, from different angles. That is why each Conference's name and theme has been very relevant.
Foros Rioplatenses* de Musicoterapia
(*Rioplatense: from the "Río de la Plata" (the Silver River), which separates Argentina from Uruguay.)
- 1995 Does music heal?
- 1996 Sound, psyche, roots
- 1997 Music Therapy and interdisciplinary team work
- 1998 Music Therapy and the community
- 1999 The Music therapist and his sensitive self: a matter of identity
- 2001 Music And Health: Music Therapy contribution
The Latin-American Music Therapy Committee
Uruguay is part of the Latin-American Music Therapy Committee (CLAM), since its very beginning. In the last Latin-American Congress held in Buenos Aires last April, Uruguay was named as the host country for the next Congress which will be held in Montevideo, August 2004. There is already a Commission from ASUM working with its organization.
Where and With Whom do Music Therapists Work?
The fact that there is no training program functioning right now makes it hard for the professional music therapists to insert in the community. They don't have official recognition, which makes the discipline not very well known, and therefore not very demanded. In spite of this situation, most of the Music Therapists that graduated from PEMU work as such, in private or public institutions. Some Music Therapists have been working lately in institutions, being part of interdisciplinary teams. This fact has allowed them to make very important contributions to the integral assistance of some client populations.
Working Areas
- Oncology patients
- Elderly patients
- Disabled people
- Autistic children
- Neurotic persons
- Families
- Psychotic persons
- Pregnant couples
- Patients with Alzheimer's disease
- Mother-newborn area
Working Groups
In the last few years, the activity around Music Therapy in Uruguay has been enriched by the appearance of working groups and institutions chaired by Music Therapists.
- CITAC (Center for the Research and Treatment of the Body Area) is an institution chaired by Amparo Alonso, MT, a professional who has integrated Music Therapy as another approach in working with the body. She works with a preventive and therapeutic focus, with people with emotional disorders, in sexology and psychosomatics.
In Music Therapy, she works with the Benenzon Model. She is part of the staff of interdisciplinary teams and also holds on an important task in diffusion and training through seminars and workshops and through a weekly radio program in a local broadcasting. - The ADIM Program (Assistance, Development and Research in Music Therapy) is an institution chaired by Diego Schapira (Argentina), and who subscribes, Mayra Hugo, both Music Therapists. It was born from the uninterrupted exchange held with some professionals from Argentina since the beginning of Music Therapy in the country. It works in Buenos Aires and in Montevideo, and besides offering Music Therapeutic assistance, it holds on developmental activities and research. The activity in ADIM involves Experiential Groups for Music Therapists, Study Groups about Theoretical Models in Music Therapy, in which the work of authors as Kenneth Bruscia, Mary Priestley, Edith Lecourt, Clive Robbins and Paul Nordoff, Mercédès Pavlicevic, and Henk Smeijsters, among others, is being studied. These authors were almost unknown in this area and have no material published in Spanish. In the developmental area, and with the help of Marisel Lodeiro, Psychologist and Music Therapist, (also part of ADIM's staff) an activity called "Approach to Music Therapy Labs" is held weekly. This activity is thought for people who are curious about Music Therapy and want to get acquainted with Music Therapy's theoretical and practical foundations.
ADIM develops its own Method, the Plurimodal Method in Music Therapy. As an institution, it is interested in establishing contact and agreements with other similar institutions, from Uruguay and from other countries. Translations, publications, seminars, press, are some of the activities that are held there, with the intention of helping in the diffusion, the growth and development of Music Therapy in the country and in the region.
Dominant Theoretical Models
Uruguayan Music Therapists studied the Benenzon Model, and it was the only one we knew until a few years ago. Thanks to the exchange with Argentina and Brazil, the development of communications, our presence at World Congresses, regional and international events, and the existence of the Theoretical Models Study Group started by Diego Schapira almost 4 years ago, our landscape has been enlarged. As I mentioned before, The Plurimodal Method, which is inscribed within the Analytical Method, is being developed and practiced by a few Uruguayan Music Therapists.
The Urgent Need of a University Training Program
Uruguay is actually "trapped" in the fact of having more than 30 years or history around Music Therapy in a country where there is not a training program, where the discipline is not very well known, and where there are just a few professionals working who graduated from PEMU.
This leads us to the need of growing internally as a professional community - that is, being up to date, specialized and knowing very well what happens in the rest of the world - while at the same time having to start almost from the beginning in what has to do with spreading information of what Music Therapy is.
Low budgets for educational programs, a quite traditional cultural profile, disregard of the discipline in academical environments, are some of the reasons that have made the development of Music Therapy in Uruguay a long and winding road. We are living through a very important regional economical crisis, which does not make things easier.
Our commitment and challenge today is to generate in our country, with the work we are doing in different places to improve the quality of life of the people we work with, the demand of Music Therapy professionals. This task will be essential to awaken and lead a lot of people's interest in music and health.
Our big goal today has to be to forge the appearance of a Music Therapy training program within a University. A training place is a natural place for academical encounters, for exchanges, for confrontations, for growing. We find that there is an increasing interest in the community around Music Therapy, and the chance that we can have our dream come true depends exclusively upon us.
Uruguayan Music Therapy E-Mail Addresses
ASUM - Asociación Uruguaya de Musicoterapia:asum@montevideo.com.uy
CITAC - Centro de Investigación y tratamiento del área corporal:mbrujos@1410amlibre.com
Programa ADIM - Asistencia, Desarrollo en Investigación en Musicoterapia:adim@montevideo.com.uy
How to cite this page
Hugo, Mayra (2002) Music Therapy in Uruguay: A Long and Winding Road. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=country/monthuruguay_july2002.html
About Mayra Hugo
Biography
Mayra Hugo, has her Degree in Music Therapy from PEMU (First School of Music Therapy in Uruguay). Music therapist at the Pediatric Hemato Oncology Service of the Pereira Rossell Hospital Center. (Pelluffo Giguens Foundation). Current President of the Uruguayan Music therapy Association (ASUM). She is a Music therapist at the Pediatric Hemato Oncology Service of the Pereira Rossell Hospital Center (Pelluffo Giguens Foundation), and she works with disabled children at the CENI School. Hugo has also worked with psychotic clients at the National Psychic Rehabilitation Center. Further she is a Music teacher at the Crandon Institute, an Institution that belongs to the Methodist Church. In her private practice, she works with disabled children and with aphasic patients. Hugo is founder and co-coordinator, with Diego Schapira, of the ADIM program (Assistance, Development, and Research in Music therapy), where they work specially with groups of people with other professions that want to get into to Music therapy. She has presented papers at Music therapy Conferences and events in several countries ( Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brasil and USA), and has actively worked in the organization of several Music therapy events in Uruguay. (Regional Forums and II Latin American Music Therapy Congress). She is the Uruguayan delegate to the Latin-American Music therapy Committee (CLAM) and a former member of the Education, Accreditation and Training Commission of the World Federation Of Music Therapy (from 1998 to 2002).