Music Therapy: A War for Ideas

By Carolyn Kenny

This week I forced myself to see the film "Black Hawk Down" which is based on the October 1993 incident in Somalia in which 19 American soldiers and a 1000 Somalis were killed. Soon after this incident U.S. military forces left the country and the United Nations took over the watchdog function in the area. It was a difficult film to watch and I almost left the theater several times before the completion of the film. As we have read so often, Americans are not used to the violence prevalent in many countries around the world. The images of violence and war were graphic.

But I had a personal interest. My own brother was a United Nations team member who flew into the region in 1994. He was in charge of all aircraft delivering medical supplies and personnel to local people on the ground. He returned traumatized by his experiences in Africa. His post-traumatic symptoms were so severe that he had to be hospitalized for several weeks. After checking himself out of the hospital and stopping all medication cold turkey, he spent days and nights in his living room listening to music in surround sound. When he was able to leave his house, he signed up for dance lessons. After a program of music and dance, his symptoms began to subside.

After seeing "Black Hawk Down" I began to reflect. I thought about the striking irony of my brother, an American Indian man, being part of a United Nations team to serve another tribal society and being traumatized in the effort, yet "cured" through his tribal preferences for healing. I thought about Bush's, "war on terrorism". Is this supposed to be new, another expression of American originality? I thought about the less obvious, and perhaps more insidious wars, the wars for ideas. The war for ideas happens daily. And it influences all of our lives.

This war has to do with how we define "civilized" and our complete lack of understanding for contexts in which we are not situated. As music therapists, we have opportunities each day to say, "I don't know". "That has not been a part of my experience."

I am very fortunate in my work to be able to express these sentiments daily. Some of my research is about the role of the arts in the revitalization of Indigenous societies. Though many of the elders I interview cannot read or write and certainly do not have doctorates from prestigious universities, they are providing me with knowledge and wisdom that might help, not only Indigenous societies, but other societies too. This knowledge is precious.

Sometimes when I listen to these elders, it is difficult to follow their thought processes. Most of the participants in my study are very old. And the ones who have lived in remote areas where contact with European cultures came late in our history, have been able to maintain their traditional values and ways of being and thinking. I am the product of a contemporary society that often conflicts with these ways of thinking and being. I've been assimilated because I was not raised on a reservation. I have a Ph.D. I work in a big university and I have a professional identity in music therapy. So I am limited in my knowledge and understanding and rely on elders to help me with the more traditional aspects of my continuing education and development.

I once wrote:

"When I listen to an elder, I do not always understand what is said. Yet there is a presence that holds me in aesthetic arrest. I do not move. I attempt a deep listening. I sense qualities. I perceive the many lines on a face. I open my heart to voice, to tone. I watch arms move and laughter flash. I pay attention to regalia. When elders depart, not only have I gained information on practical things, but I also feel rejuvenated by their qualities, the echo of their spirits. No one can steal this from me, and this sense does not diminish over time, nor is it altered by new ideas, new technology. It is constant and persists." (Kenny, 1998, p. 80)

Isn't this a little bit like what we do in music therapy? We engage in a deep listening. We do not function purely as a cognitive machine. We let our senses move. We try to be integrative in our approach, or as many Native people say, holistic, in balance.

If we create a cognitive hierarchy for music therapy that omits some of the deeper, perhaps more spiritual aspects of our experiences with music, how will we survive and thrive? If we colonize music therapy theory, won't we be conducting a kind of war of ideas? Isn't peaceful coexistence a better model for music therapy, especially when the arts have been so central to healing for so long in our human history? Don't we have an obligation to protect the endangered concepts of tribal societies when it comes to the use of music for healing in order to preserve the more ancient and one might say, primordial functions of music?

It is my hope that the mission statement of Voices communicates clearly our intent to bring diverse voices into the discourse about our work. It is not our intention to reinforce a hierarchy of ideas, but rather to provide a forum of equality. As a "forum", voices can express diverse aspects of our influences and experiences in the use of music within professional and healing contexts. All editors are united in this mission. It's just another way to say no to war.

Reference

Kenny, Carolyn (1998). The sense of art: A First Nations perspective. Canadian Journal of Native Education, vol. 22(1).