Things Asian Music Therapists should Learn
On January 10th, 2005, The Asian Music Therapy symposium was held in Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, Japan. In this symposium, Dr. Clive Robbins gave the keynote address "Cultural Background and Development of Music Therapy" while three Asian music therapists presented reports in the panel discussion.
Dr. Robbins talked about his experiences of lecturing and educating in the Asian countries, quoting episodes about national characteristics and culture, culture and music therapy, and led the audience to be aware of the importance of spirituality.
In the panel discussion, Hyun Ju Chong (Korea), Alice Chia-Hui Wu (Taiwan) and Rika Ikuno (Japan) presented the situation in their respective countries, and then a discussion took place, in which both the panelists and the audience participated. You can see Ikuno's presentation in this issue of the Voices. Here I would like to write about my impressions as a participant in the discussion.
In Dr. Chong's presentation she showed video clips of clinical practice in the Nordoff & Robbins Clinic at Ewha Women's University. From the pictures of the clients' lively expressions, I could imagine the high quality of the clinical practice. I offer my respect from the bottom of my heart to her effort in establishing and operating the Nordoff & Robbins Clinic at Ewha Women's University.
However, when I saw that video clip, I also had a shock. The therapists were singing the Play Songs by Nordoff & Robbins to the children. The client children played the snare drum and the cymbal, while the therapist accompanied it with a Nordoff & Robbins style of improvisation. The scene was exactly the same as the clinical practice in the Nordoff & Robbins Music Therapy Center at New York University. There was one difference, however: Both therapists and the clients were Korean and the language was Korean. I got the "something is wrong" feeling strongly here.
I would like to make sure that it is not my intention to criticize Dr. Chong's practice. What shocked me was to see my own and Japanese music therapists' clinical practice overlapping with her practice. The clinical scene she showed, only by altering the Korean language to Japanese language, was just like my own and my colleagues' sessions in Japan. Such music therapy sessions may possibly be compared to "copy products" of the original. Is this the music therapy that Japanese and Asian music therapists should aspire?
Many of the Japanese music therapists have been influenced by Western music therapy approaches. We have considered Western music therapy as the "text book" and tried to model our work on it as close as possible: Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy, behavioral music therapy, analytical music therapy, GIM, etc. Those who have studied music therapy in Europe and the United States seem to have a great enthusiasm in how they could reproduce in Japan the methods they have learned abroad. However, watching the video Dr. Chong has shown, I was suddenly made aware that I have been almost ignoring the resources that I have as Japanese and Asian.
In Japanese culture, there are a lot of resources to support music therapy clients: Japanese music, a unique delicacy in human relationships, the value of the virtue of not standing out, aesthetics, the spiritual tradition, etc. I have been so unaware of the rich resources in Japanese culture.
To begin with, the tradition of "psychotherapy" itself is an import from the Western culture: to build a human relationship under a certain contract in a closed room cut off from the community. Is such a human relationship suitable to the people who live in the Asian countries? To reconsider the "therapeutic relationship" itself must be one of the themes Asian music therapists should think about. All of the Asian countries are in a developing process in terms of the diffusion of "modern music therapy," and there is much we can learn from Western music therapy. However, this does not mean that the Asian music therapists should become "salesmen" of Western style music therapy. In other words, we are not obligated to always import the treatment methods of Western systems.
The more Asian music therapy aims at the high-quality practice of Western methods, the more it stagnates in the limitation of a "copy," and this may prevent us from reaching the real work within human-beings living in the Asian culture. We Asian music therapists should have more awareness on this point.
In Japan some unique music therapy styles exist which are rare to see in overseas countries. Among the clinical practices by the superb music therapists, these unique styles of practice have been refined to a considerable extent. However, Japanese music therapists have not been enthusiastic about theorizing i and communicating their ideas overseas. It is the Asian music therapists' responsibility to have at least the same amount of enthusiasm in discovering our own resources and their clinical applications as to learn about Western music therapy. Here, the meaning of resource is not limited only to "using Asian music" or "using Asian musical instruments." We should make an effort to know our excellent resources in all areas of human relationships, community's ways of existing, aesthetics, and perspectives on health.
And: it should become more of a theme for Asian music therapists to communicate those discoveries to Western music therapists.
