Music Therapy
Music therapy is a popular career choice for people interested in both music and caring professions. Ask the students what they know about music therapy, and discuss the following clips about music and healing:
Part 1 of a documentary on Nordoff- Robbins Music Therapy - a powerful introduction to the work of Nordoff-Robbins, focussing on how this is used to help two children with complex needs.
Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy – Part 2 of the documentary.
Fox News extract about a music therapist in Arizona, US, who uses musical vibrations of the didgeridoo to help with pain relief.
How a stroke patient who cannot speak can sing and therefore relearn how to communicate.
Oliver Sacks talking about how music therapy can help people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.
Oliver Sacks – Musicophilia and Strokes. Clear and beautifully expressed statements about the healing power of music.
Sir Thomas Allen speaking about a charity that brings live music to hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, day care centres and special needs schools for therapeutic effect. Those interviewed speak about music’s power to help with self-esteem, memory, sharing, communication, a sense of achievement – “bringing the person out of the patient”.
- What qualities inherent in music do you think could make it such a powerful healer?
- How can music therapy help people who suffer from disabilities or illnesses to develop a sense of belonging, and to feel part of the wider community?
In the television series The Choir III – Unsung Town, Gareth Malone tries to unite a fractured community (South Oxhey, a housing estate near Watford, UK) through music:
Information about Gareth Malone’s programme, The Choir III – Unsung Town.
Shows the choir listening to a recording of themselves.
Shows the reactions of people to the formation of the community choir: how it has raised morale, gave a sense of achievement and created a new sense of happiness and shared pride in the community.
Discuss the idea behind the project:
- to create a sense of community through shared experience (in this case, the experience of singing in a choir).
- Does is work?
- Why might music be such an appropriate and powerful tool to restore a sense of community?
Individual Research Project
Research an example that particularly interests you, where music is helping members of a community.
- Japan, where music therapy is primarily used in mental illness
- Tanzania, where music is used in pain relief
- Music therapy for particular groups within communities –
- e.g. for children
- for the elderly
- as treatment for depression or heart disease
- within palleative care
- to help mobility
- Particular techniques of music therapy
- e.g. song-writing
- listening to music
- using music to evoke feelings and memories
- moving to music
Share your findings with a group of 3 or 4.