Lecture 3 Music & Healing

Oliver Sacks
Neurologist
1933 30 Aug 2015
Popular champion of link between music and health / healing
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985)
Awakenings
Book (1973) about victims of encephalitis lethargica epidemic in 1920s, revived
1960s by new drug L-DOPA
Film (1990) with Robin Williams & Robert De Niro
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007)
Focus on people afflicted with strange musical disorders or powers affecting their
professional & daily lives
Powerful case for benefits of music therapy

Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy
something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else
can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further.
Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language doeshumans are a musical
species.
(Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia)
Canadian Music Therapy Programs
Concordia University (QC)
Acadia University (NS)
Wilfrid Laurier University (ON)
The philosophy of our program is music-centred psychotherapy. Clinical
musicianship and psychotherapeutic techniques are developed through
clinical, theoretical and experiential practices.
Criticisms of MT?
It is neither
Clients [patients] just respond to the attention, the empathy.
Music undoubtedly makes us feel good. But is it therapeutic? Does it have a place
in healing the psychological, even physical, scars of illness?
Limitations of definitions?
therapy not necessarily clinical

music not necessarily Liszt

health not necessarily the absence of a pathological disease
Need to expand our notions of Music, Health & Healing

Music
Paul Farnsworth, in The Social Psychology of Music (1969): Music is composed
of patterns of sound acceptable to the people of some subculture.
Music is a social fact, not an acoustical one
John Blacking: Humanly organized sound / musicality of listening
Reminder: Cultural Relativism
Cultural knowledge is not absolute, rather it exists in relation to a specific cultural,
social, or historical context
We can only know a musics meaning if we understand the context in which it is
created and heard
Universal Language
Music is a species-specific trait / ability
Musics transformative power is universal
but music is not a universal language
The kinds of music, what they mean to us, and the ways in which they are used are
culturally specific
Flashback to Bali
Ceremony to bless new hotel complex
Gamelan, dance, ritual
involves the whole community
Blocks evil spirits from taking up residence
Social obligation
Music, dance & drama have strong social /ritual functions
Gamelan orchestra in every village ward
All households must contribute at least one member
Cosmic Purpose
To re-establish a proper balance between good and evil in the cosmos
Disease, disaster, social problems etc. are viewed as a result of cosmic imbalances
Sanghyang Deling
Holy puppets
Spirit possession
Social, spiritual, environmental ills addressed through ritual to appease evil forces
Communal catharsis

Health?
A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity (WHO)
The condition of being sound in body, mind and spirit (Websters Dictionary)
Holistic views of health combine mind & body (unlike Western medicine) and
include the spirit and the community
Healing?
Humans are in a constant state of flux between illness and health
Progression towards regression away
Progression towards health = healing
Not isolated to one aspect of our being:
Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual & social health
Difference?
Therapy is specifically an interaction between therapist and client
Healing is broader, beyond medical setting
prayer, meditation, spiritual / religious beliefs & practices
The supernatural almost always critical to success, esp. in traditional healing
contexts
Healing in Traditional Contexts
Shamanism
Ancient religious practice
A matrix of beliefs, myths & rituals centered on
The shaman: communicates with and controls spirits through ritual
Shaman, from
Tungus (Siberia)
Saman
Controls ancestral spirits of clan
can cause harm (illness, accidents, death) to living humans if allowed to roam
freely
Drums
Esp. frame drums
Siberian: often egg-shaped symbol of birth
Cross-stave = fertility
Portal to the spirit world
Shaman sings into drum skin

Circumpolar Region
USSR under Stalin: shamans persecuted, killed
Shaman rituals banned as primitive, backwards
Instruments burned, songs banned
Keith Howards definition
From Shamanism, Music and the Soul Train in Music as Medicine [reading]

Shamanismis a holistic system for cathartic healing. Shaman rituals address

often simultaneously personal afflictions, malaise within the spiritual realm, and
communal disharmony, utilizing oracles, narration, secret systems of knowledge, altered
states of consciousness, music and dance
Shaman
Master / Mistress of spirits
Knowledge of rituals
Healer, seer, guider of souls
To diagnose problems, divine the future
Trance, spirit possession
Control of & communication with spirits, spirit possession, use of music in healing
ritualscommon worldwide
even in the modern West
New Age Healing
Alternative modes of healing
Music very often integral to new rituals
Neo-Shamanism
Carlos Castaneda (1925-98)
and another anthropologist
Michael Harner, Way of the Shaman: a Guide to Power and Healing (1980)
Foundational text in Neo- or Core-Shamanism
If you would like to create a personal mantra we will start with a Healing
Music Meditation that will help to ground you, to clear and balance your chakras
and energetic fields and will open your heart.
(healingmusic.com)
Toronto Labyrinth
Shamanism in Korea
Buddhism / Christianity
Korean Shamanism

Rooted in ancient indigenous beliefs

Koreans consult shaman for a range of problems, not just illness
Politicians consult them during elections they are seers
They even interact via internet
Basic terms / main instruments
Musok (Shamanism)
Mudang (Shaman)
Kut (Ritual)
Piri (oboe)
Janggu / chhango (two-headed drum)
Chegum (brass cymbals)

Musok
Beliefs contained in folk epics/myths told through songs
Sung by ritual specialists, mudang
Hereditary
Acquired (often result of illness)
Life-crisis and calendric rituals
Thousands of spirits (Buddhist, ancestral, royalty, military generals, from nature)
Imbalance
As in Bali, musok attributes illness & misfortune (cosmic, terrestrial & human) to
imbalance
Spirits are angry & therefore cause illness etc.
Shaman entertains / communicates with spirits, thus intervenes to restore harmony
or pre-empts calamity through ritual
Musok: Intangible Cultural Asset
Formerly disparaged by Confucians, Christians, Japanese, the military
Now widely accepted
Government protects / promotes rituals as Intangible Cultural Assets
Kim Kum-Hua
Born in 1931 in what is now North Korea, later settled in Seoul. In 1984, she
received the title of Living National Treasure in recognition of her work in
preserving a number of rituals, such as the spectacular fishing-boat blessing. She
received her initiation ceremony at the age of 17 after a mysterious illness showed
her as being chosen.
Annual televised kut
for the benefit of fishermen

Women
Est. 300,000+ shamans in Korea
Appeals mainly to housewives
Focused on family and ancestors
Does it represent power for women?
Power to cure illness, earn money
But low status and marginal
Music
Essential part of shamans training
Play the instruments, esp. janggu
Learn many, very long songs
Shamans with inferior musical/vocal skills only perform small rituals
Musically-skilled shamans officiate at large-scale rituals hire additional
professional musicians

Mudang Kut
Ceremony for moving to new house
Importance of piri
Shaman plays/drops cymbals
Final balancing on swords / banners (to divine the future)
Initiation
If someone is possessed by spirits, they must become a shaman (a calling)
If not, risk of physical & financial misfortune
Initiation ritual allows spirits to dwell in the body of the initiate, speaks through her
Then she must train under an experienced shaman spirit mother
Becoming a mudang
To control or be controlled?
Difference between experienced Shaman who retains lucidity and control
novice who loses control, disoriented and emotionally overcome by experience
of possession
Trance / ecstasy key features in shamanic practice
But is possession really Shamanism?
The bira
Shona of Zimbabwe
Sance
Ancestors continue to advise the living
Spirit possession

Misfortune results from offending ancestor spirit

Spirits attracted to mbira music
Mbira
Thumb piano
Lamellophone
Played in pairs each a distinct part
Hosho rattle
Improvised vocal lines (vocables, few words)
Dance
Nhemamusasa
Lit. cutting branches for a shelter
Kushaura & kutsinhira parts
Drums, rattles, improvised vocal melodies
Interlock, ostinato, varied repetition
A bira ceremony

Music and social healing

The case of institutions: prisons
Music: social education, making life bearable, rehabilitation
Re-live memories
Voice longings
Develop confidence, empathy, tolerance
Prisons & Imprisonment
Roughly 10 million worldwide
US: 724 per 100,000
US: longer sentences / mandatory minimum sentences
Some studies show less punishment = less crime (e.g. in the Netherlands)
Prison System
19C England
Deprivation of liberty = transformation?
Michel Foucault: Discipline & Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1977)
Views prison as disempowering
Our obsession with the idea of discipline & control
Prison perpetuates problems, or solves them only by making inmates
inhuman, slavishly obedient
Willem van de Wall
1887-1953
Pioneered using music in institutions

Harpist, conductor and professor of music education

Advocated controlled use of music in institutions (hospitals, prisons, schools)
Rehabilitation, socialization, re-humanization
Music in Institutions
Published 1936 by van de Wall
Documents practical work and theories for music therapy
Music (esp. singing) promotes sense of loyalty, transforms behaviour
He advocated rehabilitative programs based around music

Malcolm Dudley, a drug and alcohol counsellor at [a nearby prison] was utilising
his skills as a musician to set up a guitar class as a means of engaging prisoners in the
process of rehabilitation. I immediately grasped the potentialknowing from my own
experience how playing guitar and writing songs can help an individual to process
problems in a non-confrontational way. I bought half a dozen acoustic guitars etc.
Billy Bragg
Johnny Cash
American Country singer (1932-2003)
Performed 30 concerts in US prisons
Songs.. social statements
Cash believed prisons did no good:
If they were ever bad in the first place, then when they let em out theyre just better
at whatever put em there in the first place

At Folsom Prison
Live album 1968
Folsom Prison Blues (1955)
Give My Love To Rose
Entertainment, but with a social message
Inmates identified with Cash

Benefits?
Inmates usually have little opportunity for self-expression; suffer from boredom,
loneliness, low self-esteem
1983 report in California: 74.2% favourable parole outcome for those who
participated in arts programs (compared to 49.5% for those who didnt)
Group singing/playing improves:
Emotional health

Social interaction at rehearsals/performances

Trust
Mental stimulation
Studies show inmates in arts programs have fewer disciplinary incidents
After release from prison fewer subsequent violations with the law
Other projects
Flamenco in Spanish prisons
Competitions, recording contracts
UK prisons
Song-writing workshops & performances
Opera workshops
Art-music composition projects
Gamelan

Expanding our understanding of music as and in therapy

Gregory Barz
Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda (2006)
Advocates that AIDS is part of culture
Must use music (songs) to educate people about AIDS, prevent its spread, help
others adapt to life without loved ones
Music at the Edge: The Music Therapy Experiences of a Musician with AIDS by
Colin Lee, 1996
(Wilfrid Laurier University MT program)
Beautifully written document of 33 music therapy sessions by Lee with a musician
dying of AIDS
Personal story, qualitative experience of palliative care not scientific study
Includes perspective of client and therapist
Concluding thoughts
Bio-medicine is important but not the only or even best way to approach diseases of
the mind & body
Need for expanded, holistic understanding of health underpinned by an awareness
of the social meanings of healing & music
Future of Music Therapy
Lots of good, socially-aware, creative educational and therapeutic work goes on
But will it need to justify itself as a primarily medical pursuit?
Implications for its funding?

Can it continue largely to ignore the culturally-determined socially & spiritually

transformative powers of music?

All Welcome: Faculty, Graduate, & Undergraduate Students,

MaHRC Associates, & Community
Music & Health Colloquium Series 2015
Time:
Tuesday, Sept 29 3:10 4:30
Place:
Room 216, Faculty of Music
Presenter: Dr Amy Clements-Cortes, Assistant Prof., Faculty of Music
and Music Therapist, Baycrest Hospital
Topic:
Recent Alzheimers Research: Short Term Effects of
Rhythmic Sensory Stimulation on Alzheimer Patients
The power of music to integrate and cureis quite fundamental. It is the
profoundest non-chemical medication.
Oliver Sacks, Awakenings