Samba! Samba!
Imagine my delight when my friend and colleague Lia Rejane Mendes Barcellos greeted me on my first day of teaching with the words: “Bom dia! Oh, you look just like a cariocas!” She explained that the term cariocas referred to the local Rio dwellers. So, from the beginning of my work and visit to Rio de Janeiro, I felt welcome and somehow like I “belonged”
[The story continues below the photos]
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| Carolyn Kenny at the Sugar Loaf Mountain in Rio |
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| Rio de Janeiro |
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| Ipanema in Rio |
This was the beginning of an entire week of “belonging” for me. The Music Therapists, Music Therapy students, and related health professionals who I met during my three and a half day teaching experience at the Conservatorio Brazileiro de Musica Centro Universitario in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the middle of September 2012 truly felt like another branch of my tribe. They were warm, loving, demonstrative, expressive, highly musical, and receptive to my offerings. They represented a wonderful blending of race and culture.
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| Participants in the class at the Conservatory in Rio. |
During my conversations at the conservatory, I discovered that the invitation to come to Rio de Janeiro was extended by Profesora Cecilia Fernandez Conde, Diretora, President of the conservatory. She had heard my Sub-Keynote Speech Cultural Influences on Music Therapy Training.” at the 8th World Congress for Music Therapy in 1996 in Hamburg Germany. I had never even met Professor Conde! And all of these years had passed.
Of course I’ve been reflecting on our International networks in Music Therapy since my return to Santa Barbara, California – a place so far away from Rio. Over the course of my career, I have visited many countries and met many colleagues who have hosted me, taught me about their cultural contexts, and shared their beautiful lands with me. I’m feeling very blessed.
As well, having an opportunity to communicate virtually with Music Therapists and related health professionals and traditional healers through Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, as Co-editor-in-Chief with Brynjulf Stige, has extended this blessing from the concrete into the virtual world.
I’ve also reflected on the importance of presenting and publishing our work. How could I have imagined that I would receive an invitation to Rio from a woman who I had never met, but who had heard me speak 16 years ago! Holy Moly! One will never fully comprehend the influences we have over a full career.
My speech for the 8th World Congress in 1996 highlighted the importance of culture in our Music Therapy training programs around the world. And my speech for the Rio Forum was titled “The Field of Play: An Ecology of Being in Music Therapy.” Our personal and professional ecology is grounded in the lands and cultures of the people we serve and our professional tribes. This is an extraordinarily important consideration given that we must all be global citizens now even though our land, our culture, our home base might be Brazil, Norway, Canada, Japan, Denmark, Great Britain, Korea, Australia, China, America, and a host of other countries that you can read about in our Country of the Month section in Voices.
As we travel, we learn and embrace certain qualities from each place and there is a sense of belonging and becoming when we resonate with these people, places, and cultures. Music Therapists have an extended and magnificent map of connections – a professional tribal network of associations that can serve as a road map for meaningful cultural exchanges, important practices that can alleviate human suffering, exciting intellectual and scholarly exchanges, as well as smiles, laughter, tears, and hopes and dreams.
I spent an entire evening smiling when my Brazilian friends took me to Lapa, a district in Rio where the original samba is having a revitalization. The music and dancing were revitalizing me! Here’s a short video. Enjoy!
How to cite this page
Kenny, Carolyn (2012). Samba! Samba!. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 08, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2012-samba-samba
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About Carolyn Kenny
Biography
Carolyn Kenny, Ph.,D. MT-BC, CMT is a Professor of Human Development and Indigenous Studies and one of the founding faculty members in the Antioch University Ph.D. in Leadership and Change in the Professions. She also continues her private practice in Music Therapy in Santa Barbara, California. She serves on the Advisory Board for Music Therapy Education and Research (MUSERS), associated with the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, Bosnia-Hercegovina (http://www.musers.org) and as Co-editor-in Chief (with Brynulf Stige) of Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. She served for many years as Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Music Therapy Journal. And also currently serves on the Editorial Review Board for the Journal of Music Therapy. She contributes as a Book Reviewer on a regular basis to The Arts in Psychotherapy. She has published extensively in both Music Therapy and Indigenous Studies. Her most current publication is A Holistic Approach to Aboriginal Policy Research, published in French and English by the Status of Women Canada.