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

It is with a feeling of astonishment and much emotion that I survey thirty years of meetings and labor toward music therapy.

It was the year of 1981 and the World Congress of Music Therapy would be gathered that July, in Puerto Rico. However, it lucked out that I chose to first visit New York, where I had already scheduled a meeting with Barbara Hesser, the coordinator of the Music Therapy courses in New York University (NYU). To my surprise, in the day scheduled for that meeting I was informed that Barbara was away on vacations and that I would be received instead by the Head of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions who, in the end of our meeting, informed me that in the month of July of next year an International Meeting on Music Therapy was to be sponsored by that university.

Next April 1982 I was surprised to receive an invitation from that university asking me to participate in the “International Symposium on Music Therapy: Music in the Life of Man”. Therefore, in the month of July of that year I went to New York, my baggage including curiosity, hope, and the will to learn typical of one who had just began a career. On the other hand, to show a little from the Brazilian Music Therapy. There I found the great figures in the scenario of world music therapy, still shining today on the stages wherever the main events on the field are held, as well as those then starting to become today’s stars! For a week we met in a facility of New York University, 29 people[1] altogether (some of whom no longer among us), not all of them music therapists, but also musicologists, one neurologist, one philosopher, and one piano player, led by Barbara Hesser, to whom I owe this important contact with music therapists from different countries. During that week, we worked all day long in small groups, with music intervals mid-morning and half through the afternoon, the whole gathering staying in the university hotel, having lunch and dinner together and going together to a few concerts. In the nights we were supposed to jot down our impressions from the day’s work and write our suggestions for the next; every day started and closed with a general group meeting.

Among the participants was Carolyn Kenny, a mild presence, wearing clothing with bright-hued needlework showing drawings that suggested the typical dress of Canada Amerindians, her tranquility as her registered mark.

In 1996, during the 8th. World Congress of Music Therapy, now held in Hamburg, Germany, we listened to her lecture on “Cultural Influences in Music Therapy Education”. All of us left enthused by her ideas and ever since then, Prof. Cecília Conde, the Rio de Janeiro Conservatory of Music Headmistress, who created the first Music Therapy Baccalaureate-level course in Brazil (1972) repeated all the time she wanted Carolyn Kenny in Rio de Janeiro.

The following meeting proportioned us another important and once more thrilling moment: it was during the 9th. World Congress of Music Therapy, held in Washington, D.C., 1999. In this event, Carolyn invited me for a small-group meeting where the creation of a virtual music therapy newspaper was to be discussed, later named Voices, the latest issue of which I use today to celebrate this first meeting’s 30th. anniversary! Brynjulf Stige and other Norwegian music therapists, Carolyn, and other worldwide music therapists got organized and here we are, eleven years later and with more to come!

It is important to mention that, back in 1982, there was a number of music therapists present in that Symposium who were later invited to bring in their knowledge and teachings to several of the many courses currently ongoing in Brazil: Kenneth Bruscia, Even Ruud, Barbara Hesser, Edith Lecourt, Clive Robbins, and Barbara Wheeler, plus some others who came to present papers in Congresses, like Ruth Bright and David Burrows.

Nevertheless, it was only in September of the current year that we achieved to bring Carolyn to Rio de Janeiro and she arrived as mildly as always bringing along her customary simplicity while she was slowly transmitting her precious experience and work philosophy, captivating all of us who enjoyed the pleasure of being present in that moment when the aboriginal culture was placed on center stage. We all perceived Carolyn as an example of someone who never allowed herself to go much farther than her original roots. More than that, we listened and felt Carolyn stating and broadcasting the importance for a music therapist to be wholly committed with his/her practice – including and respecting his/her own cultural bonds.

But I don’t want to speak for myself only and therefore I herein employ the voices of other Brazilian music therapists and join their chorus, making mine their own wordage, as thus they expressed themselves about that impressive, strong presence,

“Carolyn transmitted to us the feeling that both in formation and clinical practice we are supposed to learn techniques and methods but cannot ever forget who we are and who are our patients, so as to add depth to the therapeutic space. She reinforces into us the sense that music therapy is a space of love and creativity. She always points out at the concept of mutuality through which patient and therapist exert equivalent, non-hierarchical roles, as each brings something into the therapeutic relationship. Carolyn also emphasizes the importance of our incorporating our roots, the myths underlying the different cultures, our connections with our ancestors into the modern clinical practice. And I wrap this up by stating my comprehension of what the “musicaI space” concept is: that therapeutic space in which both musical and personal tensions and resolutions do occur.” – Vera Wrobel, Clinical Music Therapist, Rio de Janeiro.

“Carolyn Kenny, nature and nurture:
“’While therapists, how do we see the other?" queries Carolyn and she replies herself, "Our patient/client is a form of beauty."
Carolyn Kenny’s concepts and ideas are presented in a gentle fashion and this apparent simplicity stands over complex, well-structured, theoretical bases. Thus emerges a theory, a way of looking at things, a manner to think of music therapy clinical practices that we could define as: organic, integral, ecological, and wholesome. A kind of sanity engendered by cultural roots, within the “mythical arteries” of music, its tensions and resolutions, its “birth and rebirth.”
“Being born into the music”! Music is a history in itself, "you are the music, we are the music." The "field of play", as she names it, is a great flowing river, creating pools of engagement, trust, and healing.
“Music is a space of loving and creating” where Carolyn Kenny is the tree herself, as in the metaphor she presented, roots, bole, branches, leaves, philosophical, theoretical, and practical bases, actions and results.
Carolyn Kenny, whom we had the pleasure of listening and being with, aggregates to us a new clinical, human dimension. HAIDA GWAII!!!!!!” – Martha Negreiros, Clinical Music Therapist, Rio de Janeiro.

“Carolyn looks at you straight in the eye so as to establish a relationship of bonded sights... She presents herself as a member of traditional populations. She grew up from the earth and fertilizes us all. Then she plays… she plays the piano, she plays the soul. She plays the waters, she plays the rites. She produces and transforms emotion, she materializes pleasure. She plays the fire. Thus Carolyn teaches like one who thinks of our profession for a long time. She plays the air. And she looks at us straight in the eye, like she was acquainted with us since ever. I speak of her in the present tense, that’s where she stands.” – Marly Chagas, Clinical Music Therapist, Rio de Janeiro.

All the same, I cannot leave unheard the voices of those who represented the many students of music therapy who joined us, already experienced music therapists, speaking about “the place” of all those who represent the future of music therapy in our country, freshmen from the Music Therapy Baccalaureate-level course in the Brazilian Conservatory of Music (University Center):

“Carolyn sees the presence of the music therapist as an individual being with all his/her pluralities.” – Victor Strattner, Freshman.

“Carolyn has a deep sensibility and dense cultural waters to water the trees that are the human beings.” – Thalyta Azevedo, Freshman.

Along with these voices, I celebrate Carolyn Kenny’s visit to Rio de Janeiro and not only our 1982 meeting, but that of all those who joined Barbara Hesser to think about the future routes for the world music therapy.
Thanks to all and my homage to all those who are no longer among us!

Note

[1]Barbara Hesser, from New York University; Ruth Bright (Australia), Alfred Schmölz (Austria), Fran Herman and Susan Munro (Canada), Hans Siggaard Jensen (Denmark), Sybil Beresford-Peirse and Rachel Verney (Great Britain), Edith Lecourt (France), Chava Sekeles (Israel), Even Ruud (Norway), Alf Gabielson (Sweden), Madeleine Müller (Switzerland), Carol Bitcon, Helen Bonny, Kenneth Bruscia, David Borrows, Charles Eagle, John Gilbert, Lorin Hollander, Carolyn Kenny, Clifford Madsen, Carol and Clive Robbins, Barbara Wheeler, and Frederick Timms (USA), Merete Birkebaeck and Johannes Eschen (West Germany), and Darko Breitenfeld (Yugoslavia).

References

Material of “International Symposium on Music Therapy: Music in the Life of Man”. New York, New York University. 1982.

How to cite this page

Barcellos, Lia Rejane Mendes (2012). "Thirty Years Later ... ". Voices Resources. Retrieved January 08, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2012-thirty-years-later