Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

I was working in my office at the University of Pretoria recently, when I became aware of a growing noise outside the window. It got louder and bigger and more intrusive, like thousands of voices all talking, cheering, singing, whooping at the same time, and when the telephone rang I could not hear the person talking to me.

I then remembered that is was Thursday, and almost time for the weekly University lunch-hour concert. Since in any case I could not work with the din outside, this seemed a good time to leave for the concert.

I walked directly into the noise. It was so vast that my other senses became diffused: I could not see properly or make sense of what was around me. I was aware of feeling that I did not exist: I could barely process what I was seeing -as though this noise was the only existence. In the open-air amphitheatre were about two thousand school children. One group of children stood (and became identifiable as belonging to a school), and began a song - actually a song-and-dance - and very soon the entire amphitheatre erupted into whistling, cheering, dancing. This was the 'noise' that I had been hearing. After a particular song-and-dance ended, there was a gradual stillness, during which I noticed three adults standing in the middle of the theatre, facing the children. The adults seemed to be saying something to which the children listened attentively. There was applause and cheering, and a different group then stood up and began to sing, with a further eruption of cheering, whistling, dancing. I suddenly remembered the lunchtime concert and ran across the lawn to the concert hall. A sign on the closed door said: concert in progress: please do not enter until there is a break in performance.

The sign felt like an assault. I had been so excited by the children's singing and dancing out in the open air, and this felt a cruel, cold rejection. I walked back to my office, somewhat despondent, thinking about what I had experienced.

There was music-making that was electrifying in its dynamism, vibrancy, and overwhelming in its collective human energy. This was inviting and inclusive, and as a passer-by (and there were others), I could have joined in the cheering whistling and dancing had I wished to. I could leave when I had had enough, and nobody would have thought me musically or socially insensitive. At the same time, there was music inside the concert hall. Here, I was expected to be 'on time', and to be a part of 'the audience', with no middle ground - it was either this or a closed door with a sign that said 'keep out'. I could not have joined the music-making, and in any case, it was happening inside the hall, beyond the closed door. These two events were happening within one hundred meters of one another. One event was predominantly 'black', and the other 'white'. No surprises there.

It has left me wondering about 'closing doors': about optimal silence in the concert hall, before which the music can begin. I love that arrival of the silence - its collective attentiveness, and the delicious moment when the music emerges from it. But that day, I was excluded from all of this, because I was late - I would have 'disturbed' the event, had I walked in. This was a brutal experience.

There are multiple analogies, of course. As a music therapist, I think of creating the 'therapeutic space' - and how exclusive or permeable is this? In our minds? Do we allow the client's world - the tangible world, to be in this space? Do we really? I think of music therapy sessions in schools - where children begged me to come to music therapy, because they heard the sessions were fun - and I had to say 'not this time, 'not today', week after week. Until they stopped asking. They remained 'outside'. I think of our different music therapy ideologies and trainings - and how flexible we are in really absorbing and inviting some 'other' approach into our own. I think of our work here in South Africa, and the enormous mind shifts in both ourselves and clients, in order to 'make music' together in a way that 'feels right' to all of us in the room - in fact, not in 'the room' - because one of the things I've learned is that the door needs to be left open. Others might want to join in.

How to cite this page

Pavlicevic. Mércèdes (2001) Open Doors. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2001-open-doors