Music and Healing Across Cultures unfolds the mechanics of the relationship between music, healing, and the cosmos. It shows the organizing power of this tradition in its ability to even promote mind/body coordination in schizophrenics. This systematic, scientific approach to ethnomusicology and anthropology stands as a beacon light to those researchers who wish to make use of an ancient and wiser time when drums and restraints were preempted by creative energy and inner calm. Those incapable of feeling happiness are found dancing with joy. Those who could not speak are singing.
How do people use music to heal themselves and others? Are the healing powers of music universal or culturally specific? The essays in this volume address these two central questions as to music‘s potential as a therapeutic source. The contributors approach the study of music healing from social, cultural and historical backgrounds, and in so doing provide perspectives on the subject which complement the wealth of existing literature by practitioners. The forms of music therapy explored in the book exemplify the well-being that can be experienced as a result of participating in any type of musical or artistic performance. Case studies include examples from the Bolivian Andes, Africa and Western Europe, as well as an assessment of the role of Islamic traditions in Western practices. These case studies introduce some new, and possibly unfamiliar models of musical healing to music therapists, ethnomusicologists and anthropologists. The book contributes to our understanding of the transformative and healing roles that music plays in different societies, and so enables us better to understand the important part music contributes to our own cultures.
Emotional, as well as physical distress, is a heritage from our hominid ancestors; it has been experienced by every group of human beings since our emergence as a species. And every known culture has developed systems of conceptualization and intervention for addressing it. The editors have brought together leading psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and others to consider the interaction of psychosocial, biological, and cultural variables as they influence the assessment of health and illness and the course of therapy. The volume includes broadly conceived theoretical and survey chapters; detailed descriptions of specific healing traditions in Asia, the Americas, Africa, and the Arab world. The Handbook of Culture, Therapy, and Healing is a unique resource, containing information about Western therapies practiced in non-Western cultures, non-Western therapies practiced both in their own context and in the West.
This volume establishes the discipline of medical ethnomusicology and expresses its broad potential. It also is an expression of a wider paradigm shift of innovative thinking and collaboration that fully embraces both the health sciences and the healing arts.
While the first healers were musicians who relied on rhythm and song to help cure the sick, over time Western thinkers and doctors lost touch with these traditions. In the West, for almost two millennia, the roles of the healer and the musician have been strictly separated. Until recently, that is. Over the past few decades there has been a resurgence of interest in healing music. In the midst of this nascent revival, Ted Gioia, a musician, composer, and widely praised author, offers the first detailed exploration of the uses of music for curative purposes from ancient times to the present. Gioia’s inquiry into the restorative powers of sound moves effortlessly from the history of shamanism to the role of Orpheus as a mythical figure linking Eastern and Western ideas about therapeutic music, and from Native American healing ceremonies to what clinical studies can reveal about the efficacy of contemporary methods of sonic healing. Gioia considers a broad range of therapies, providing a thoughtful, impartial guide to their histories and claims, their successes and failures. He examines a host of New Age practices, including toning, Cymatics, drumming circles, and the Tomatis method. And he explores how the medical establishment has begun to recognize and incorporate the therapeutic power of song. Acknowledging that the drumming circle will not—and should not—replace the emergency room, nor the shaman the cardiologist, Gioia suggests that the most promising path is one in which both the latest medical science and music—with its capacity to transform attitudes and bring people together—are brought to bear on the multifaceted healing process. In Healing Songs, as in its companion volume Work Songs, Gioia moves beyond studies of music centered on specific performers, time periods, or genres to illuminate how music enters into and transforms the experiences of everyday life.
Music, whether performed or heard, has been seen as therapeutic in the history of many cultures. How have its therapeutic properties been conceptualized and explained? Which cultures have used music therapy? What were their aims and techniques, and how much continuity is there between ancient, medieval and modern practice? These are the questions addressed by the essays in this volume. They focus on the place of music therapy in European intellectual, medical and musical traditions, from their classical roots to the development of the music therapy profession since the Second World War. Chapters covering the Judaic, Islamic, Indian and South-East Asian traditions add global, comparative perspectives. Music as Medicine is the first book to establish the whole shape of the history of music therapy in a systematic and scholarly way. It addresses the problem of defining what music therapy has meant in different cultures and periods, and sets the agenda for future research in the subject. It will appeal to a diverse readership of historians, musicologists, anthropologists, and practitioners.
HATE MUSIC IS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE THAT REQUIRES ATTENTION, INVESTIGATION, AND COMPASSIONATE UNDERSTANDING. A music therapist explores the world of hate music, pairing narratives from that industry with stories about music therapists, exploring intersections, relationships, and juxtapositions. Music of Hate, Music for Healing includes a look into the roots and history of hate music and music therapy as well as information gleaned from recent headlines and ideas for reachable solutions to address the growth of hate music.
This exciting text is a comprehensive work that examines the use of art, play, music, dance/movement, and drama in different cultures and with diverse client populations. The editors’ primary purpose is to explore how the creative therapies can be implemented in diverse cultures and in different countries. Renowned, well-credentialed, and professional creative arts therapists in the areas of art, play, music, dance/movement, and drama helped write this collection. Examples include the use of art in working with refugee children in Australia and with Chinese-American children; shared experiences in using dance and movement with Arabic women in Jerusalem, indigenous Inner Mongolia, and with survivors of torture. Other chapters offer stories of using drama in the Netherlands, music and other creative arts in China, play therapy in Appalachia and with different races. Additionally, there are chapters on working with children with learning disabilities as well as the use of creative arts in supervision. Some of the chapters are beautifully complimented with photographs of client works of art or play. The text provides a rich tapestry on how the creative therapies can be used across cultures for issues such as depression and trauma to name a few. Of special interest are the chapters on supervision. Not only a tool for creative art therapists, this informative book will be of special interest to educators, students, therapists, as well as people working in other parts of the world or with culturally diverse clients.
'June Boyce-Tillman's new book identifies and discusses the very issues that could render the education that we offer through music more engaging and relevent to those whom we teach. The book presents a wide-ranging and rich mix of psychological, ethnomusicological, philosophical, educational, mythological and theological material. Into this rich tapestry is woven a concern to consider seriously New Age phenomena and to empathize with people's experiences and life stories. Very occasionally, a book is published that has the potential of seriously challenging current orthodoxy and practice. This is such a book.'- British Journal of Music Education.'June Boyce-Tillman has published this beautifully researched essay at what I think may prove to be a vital re-balancing point in our history, when there is a developing realisation that post-Enlightenment culture with its emphasis on scientific reason and logic needs to incorporate again the "subjugated ways of knowing" as June Boyce-Tillman terms Gooch's value "system B" which favours being, subjectivity, personal feeling, emotion, magic, involvement, associative ways of knowing, belief and non-causal knowledge... The bibliography and referencing are excellent, massively extending the hub of resource which this book itself presents for further study, investigation and good practice by people from many walks of life. Many thanks to June Boyce-Tillman for her work.'- The Christian Parapsychologist'In Constructing Musical Healing, June Boyce-Tillman attempts to blend ancient and modern ideas and practices with her own perspective as a New Age practitioner. In an interdisciplinary effort, Boyce-Tillman describer particular philosophical aspects concerning Western music, practices of shamans and healers, and explorations of the new consciousness reflected in the New Age movement and music therapy. Her goal is to establish a new model of healing as balance including physical, psychological, and spiritual elements in a process approach, which she parallels with music therapy practice...Boyce-Tillman has some promising ideas. And certainly she adds her words, her thoughts, and beliefs to the continuing questions about the compatibility between "healing" and "therapy"...The strength of the book is that it has the potential to encourage our own discourse by giving us an opportunity to compare and contrast our own ideas about music therapy with at least one New Age practitioner.'- The Arts in PsychotherapyDrawing on literature from philosophy, anthropology, psychology and musicology, Boyce-Tillman looks at musical traditions and notions of healing in different societies. Her work includes a number of case studies in various cultures - spirit possession cults in Africa and shamans in various traditions. It explores contemporary musical practice in the New Age including neo-shamanism and notions of musical healing in Western musical aesthetics. The use of music in Western medicine is also studied, as Boyce-Tillman draws together a theory of what actually occurs when music is associated with therapeutic intention and examines the role of music within healthcare, education and the community.
There is growing interest among scholars and practitioners in how the arts can help rebuild post-conflict societies. This edited collection explores a range of musical practices for social and political peace. By presenting case studies in each chapter, the aim is to engage with musicality in relation to time, space, peace-building, healing, and reconciliation. Emerging scholars' work on Latin America, especially Colombia, and on the African Great Lakes region, including Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Kenya, is brought together with the purpose of reflecting critically on 'music for peace-building' initiatives. Each author considers how legacies of violence are addressed and sometimes overcome; lyrics are examined as a source of insights. These practical “music for peace-building” initiatives include NGO work with youth hip-hop, music for peace, work in education on memory, as well as popular culture and shared rituals. Special attention is paid to historical and contextual settings, to the temporal and spatial dimension of musicality and to youth and gender in peace-building through music.
