Contemporary voices in music therapy: Communication, culture, and community

Kenny, Carolyn & Stige, Brynjulf. (2002). Contemporary voices in music therapy: Communication, culture, and community. Unipub forlag: Oslo, Norway. This book is an excellent and timely anthology that reflects the growing awareness within the profession of music therapy of the critical importance of cultural factors as they directly affect virtually every aspect of music therapy theory and practice. We have long passed the time when national borders implied populations of cultural homogeneity. Rather, due to a variety of factors, societies are becoming more diverse. Incorporating new cultural elements as a result of the influx of increasingly mobile immigrant populations, heterogeneity has become the norm of the 21st century. Just how music therapists can adequately respond to this global mix without holding on to established models of practice that may be confining rather than liberating is the basic theme of this stimulating volume. Part I (Essays On Communication, Culture and Community) features articles by an international group of authors who reflect upon different issues and approaches related to music therapy and multiculturalism. Part II (International Reports On Music Therapy) presents a series of shorter contributions related to the status of music therapy and cultural considerations in eight countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and North and South America. Part III (Introducing Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy) provides an introduction to this online journal as a vital global medium for exchange in the field. All of the chapters in Parts I and II grew out of selected articles from previous issues of Voices. Editors Kenny and Stige begin by defining culture, not an easy task. As they point out, while each of us is shaped by our cultural experiences, at the same time, we may not fully recognize the extent of these influences since cultural assimilation is not a conscious process. To a large degree we may take our own cultural context and its related assumptions for granted even though our individual and group identities are largely defined by it. This does not minimize the impact of the more-often cited role of family and the narrower social context in determining who we become, but familial and other social experiences themselves are also largely shaped by their cultural setting. Finally, from the perspective of music therapy, culture is a significant factor that colors each person's musical preferences as well as ways of responding to illness, attitudes and expectations towards health care services. As the editors point out, many music therapists have stated that they believe they are able to ". . .go beyond culture when they work with music in or as therapy," seeing music simply as a sound stimulus without cultural reference. Certainly cultural concerns in music therapy have been raised in the past by a number of scholars and practitioners including Bright, Bunt, Gaston, Kenny, Moreno, Ruud, Sekeles and Schwabe. However, today a broader community of music therapists is committed to confronting this issue with a greater sense of urgency. The editors suggest that to realize a truly client-centered perspective in music therapy a generic form of empathy is not adequate. Rather, what is needed is for the therapist to develop a more specific kind of cultural empathy which must be consciously cultivated. In comparing music therapy with indigenous healing rituals, Pavlicevic in Chapter 10 raises a question posed to her by an African master drummer and music ethnologist who asked if music therapy isn't some kind of colonial import, how it is different from music-making, and why it is calling itself this in South Africa instead of imbibing African music and healing traditions. These are indeed very pertinent questions, especially when we consider what kind of role music therapy can play in the developing world which is still 80% of the planet. In these parts of the world traditional healing practices are often the norm, whereas modern professional music therapy may be unknown. …