Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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
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]
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
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