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

In a recent article, Edward Said once again expresses his frustrations at the global imbalances of power, economics and justice. I usually listen closely to Edward Said, having chosen to invest him with some kind of morally sound intellect, and having decided, rather intuitively, that I trust what he says. An awful responsibility for him to carry, no doubt.

Nelson Mandela is another voice that invites my attentive listening, and his 85th birthday celebrations brought into focus his frailty - rather like that of Edward Said - and musings about the world after their departures. Add to this the sense of desolation I experienced on learning of the death of that wonderful Canadian writer, Carol Shields, and the globe seems a little fragile at the moment. Which brings me to music therapy and who, what and how we listen - and what we hear.

I recently had the experience - the terrifying experience - of doing a music therapy afternoon workshop with a group of teachers from a local school in Pretoria. The school social worker had approached me, and explained that the staff group were highly conflicted, there were complicated relationships between some members, all of which had to do with the massive uncertainty in terms of the school's future. Music therapy, the social worker thought, would help address some of these issues (in all of three hours, of course). I wondered whether to even take this on, and listened to my doubts, her hopes and her young uncertain voice.

Came the Friday afternoon and I found myself in a room with 18 adults, and a high level of energy, of laughing, talking, moving around. I listened to how their sounds filled the room. I heard an underlying flow of energy, which felt easy and unforced - rather like music that is lyrical, lively and warm. After briefly introducing ourselves, I negotiated with the group what they might want out of our afternoon, and how we might, together, spend the 3 hours. The teachers wanted to 'play', 'have fun' and 'de-stress' - in any way, they said. Some said they did not want to sing. Together we agreed that everyone would participate, that I would 'lead' the group, and anyone could say if or when they felt uncomfortable doing one or other thing. I did a listening in my mind and heard some slight teasing, as though I was being put into the role of teacher and them the pupils. The teasing felt friendly, I felt I could manage it, and I then listened inwardly again to check whether I was in denial about underlying hostility. I heard none - so, possibly I was in denial, and possibly not.

We spent a free-flowing fun three hours together, with the teachers improvising with sounds and silence, putting sounds and actions to an aboriginal myth I used as a frame for movement and sounds, and using old newspapers in an extraordinarily creative way for making sounds, props and costumes. Our session ended with a relaxation and visualisation, using recorded music, and a stillness in the room.

Music therapy work trains us to listen and hear layers of music at once: the quality of speaking voices, the energy of a lively group, the music of a body in movement, the gathering impressions of a narrative, and the exhilarating meaning of exquisite prose and sudden truths. Listening to what we miss is harder: if we miss it, then how do we know to listen in the first place? The school social worker's 'brief' for our 3-hour workshop was apparently clear-cut, but what I heard intuitively unsettled me. This resulted in my decision to start from the beginning - in other words, to start with the teachers and I as a group in a different context to that of their everyday school lives, which might 'sound' differently.

In thinking, then, about how to listen, it seems to me that we all need to voices that guide our hearing - unexpectedly, deeply, and meaningfully. I listen to Edward Said, Nelson Mandela and Carol Shields because I see them as prophets: folk able to read the 'sign of the times', who help me make sense of the world. When I listen to them, there is a resonance within me over which I have little control, and I trust my hearing. Even if I don't have a full grasp of economics, politics and the world (dis)order(s), these voices grow meaning within me. Through their minds I learn how to listen, to improvise meaning, and how to trust the world to 'sound'. For music therapists, listening is our first sense, and our skills in improvisation - in music and in meaning - need constant honing, tuning and unfolding. It seems to me that we also need to develop a second listening: to those texts, voices and minds - not necessarily from within our discipline - from whom we learn to listen, hear, mean, and grow music around us.

How to cite this page

Pavlicevic. Mércèdes (2003) Listening, Hearing, and Improvising Meaning. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 09, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2003-listening-hearing-and-improvising-meaning