Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
By Carolyn Kenny
This text was crafted in a performative writing style. Performative writing is
often laced with auto
-ethnographic elements. So, in a way, this is a brief version of the story of my
life in Music therapy. Ideally, I would be standing before you and offering this
text in the oral tradition. Then you would hear the sound of my voice. You
would see the expressions on my face, my body language. You would hear the
silences between words more clearly. You would hear the music.
Prelude
I began my experience in music therapy in a natural way at the age of 16 when
I volunteered at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home in Atlanta, Georgia.
One day, I was doing my usual volunteer duty of sewing cancer pads and I
started to hum. The supervising nun came up to me and said, Carolyn, Mrs.
White asked me if you would come beside her bed to hum for a while. Before
long, my cancer pad sewing days were over and transformed into humming
and singing at bedside to many patients in the Cancer Home. This was 1962.
Id never heard of anything called music therapy at the time. I only heard about
music therapy a few years later when I was an undergraduate student at
Loyola University in New Orleans studying history, political science, and
philosophy and met music therapy majors there. I had met my professional
tribe!
In 1970, while working for the Canadian government doing spontaneous
improvisation with several different groups including First Nations children on
the reserve, I met a wonderful Musqueum elder named Walker Stogan. One
day, I was walking with Walker beside the great Fraser River and beside the
Longhouse where we played music with the children. I asked him: Walker,
what about this thing called music therapy? Walker took a long draw on his
cigarette, turned to reflect on the flowing river, tossed his cigarette to the
ground, crushed it, then looked at me and said: For you, in this world, thats
the one. Thus, after completing another degree, this one in Music Therapy at
Loyola University and receiving my music therapy credentials in 1973, I began
my formal work as a music therapist.
Now as an older person myself, many years after my encounter with Walker
along the banks of the river, I often think of my Native American mother and
her advice to me while I was growing up. She always said: Be a human being
first. The rest comes later.
I dedicate my text to all of those Native elders who walk this way, who stood
before me and guided me, and on whose shoulders I stand here before you
now. All my relations!
As you listen, you can sense that there are many stories to tell. And in this
short article, Ill tell you a few.
Doing and Being
Sometimes, I worry that as health care providers we respond to human
suffering only by doing. We want to find concrete solutions to suffering. We
make our theories. We standardize our practice. We collect our evidence
about what works. And all the while, we rarely pause just to be with our
patients and clientsto pause in long silences just to feel each others
presence.
The Field of Play (REF) is about being. It is about giving our attention to the
spaces we create in music therapy through an intense focus on being. And it is
about the process of how we create the interplay between these spaces of
creativity and wonder in the music therapy experience.
We have our ethical imperatives. There are many. One ethical imperative is to
follow our medical and educational protocols and principles. Another is the
aesthetic imperative, meaning that music is a form of beauty, as any art. As
music therapists, we must adhere to our own ethical codes about what this
beauty means and how we bring it to those in pain and discontent. Beyond our
professional tribe, we also have our own personal and cultural imperatives.
If you take the time to peruse some of my scholarly works, you will find a very
strong themestay close to the earth. This is a cultural imperative that springs
from my roots as a Native person and my love of the beauty and majesty of the
natural world.
Ill tell you another little story. After my Choctaw mother died, I was adopted by
a Haida elder. The Haida Gwaii is a magnificent group of islands just off the
coast of British Columbia near Alaska. Because our traditional territory was one
of the only areas of land in North America not touched by the ice age, we have
magnificent old growth trees in our rain forests. Perhaps you can imagine my
place, my space there in the Haida Gwaii.
Write it Down
Chief Simon Baker of the Squamish Nation always told us young ones the
young scholars to Write it down. He said, If you have a useful idea to
share, write it down. So let us turn to the scholarly part of the story.
In 1976 I began a program of sustained scholarship to explore new ways to
imagine and describe our music therapy experience that traveled beyond the
technical categories I perceived as limiting. At that time, having been a
practicing music therapist for ten years, I became rather disenchanted with
standard terminology from related disciplines such as psychology and medicine
to describe our work with clients and patients. I was inclined to explore ways to
describe our experiences that did not separate us according to categories of
existence like disabled, dying, psychotic, and many others. I was also searching
and dance, song writingwhatever the occasion called for. And by this time I
had done music therapy with people from age 3-102 in every imaginable
human condition. In addition to my own practice, I spent several years
observing Nordoff-Robbins music therapy practice in the United States and
Great Britain and had observed and had my own experiences in Guided
Imagery and Music. Drawing from this wealth of experience, I felt that I was
equipped to launch into a general theory of music therapy that could be
applied to many approaches. Thus I began the process of investigating such a
theory, which naturally involved creating a new language and concepts to
describe our experiences in music therapy. Eventually, this theory became The
Field of Play (Kenny, 1989, 2006).
The Field of Play is a general theory or perhaps a pre-theory or philosophy for
music therapy that does not prescribe particular methods of practice like
improvisation or imagery with music or other approaches. Rather, I like to
imagine that the Field of Play is the great river that flows beneath all of our
practice. In fact, it could be the river itselfthe one that Walker observed as he
stood on the banks of the Fraser beside the Longhouse those many years ago.
It is about imagination, consciousness, presence, attitude, and being. The Field
of Play is all about conditions in the space, the primary one being, as my
mother instructed, being and a focus on being. It is a theory that suggests
connection to all living things. Imagine a rain forest or a field of daisies
ecosystems just like us with conditions. A rain forest is a bioregion. The
conditions in the forest determine what will flourish there and what will die. It is
the same for human beings. We need the best possible conditions, both in
nature and in nurture, to make a good human life. There are constant
modulations in all ecosystems and bioregions. We are all in a state of dynamic
flux.
At the root of all power and motion, at the burning center of existence itself,
there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix
of time. We now know that every particle in the physical universe takes its
characteristics from the pitch and pattern and overtones of its particular
frequencies, its singing. (Leonard, 1978)
There are seven fields in the Field of Play that interplay and interact in this
dynamic musical dance.
I call the first one the aesthetic. The human being is an aesthetica form of
beauty. Lets think and feel into that for one moment. When I begin my music
therapy sessions, I always focus on the beauty within the personinside and
out. What are his or her qualities, the human conditions that form the beauty,
even in the face of suffering and disablement?
Once, I experienced a moment of confluence when I observed Rachel Verny, a
British music therapist, performing a music therapy session with a child at the
Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre in London, England. Rachel was creating
a field of being through which she interpreted his human conditions musically.
She had an extraordinary facility with music. I observed her creating a space, a
place in the interplay between her form of beauty and that of the child. This
field of being, the coming together of two aesthetics, reminded me of the
Navajo Blessing Way:
With beauty before me, I walk
With beauty behind me, I walk
With beauty above me, I walk
With beauty below me, I walk
From the East beauty has been restored
From the West beauty has been restored
From the South beauty has been restored
From the North beauty has been restored
From the zenith in the sky beauty has been restored
From the nadir of the earth beauty has been restored
From all around me beauty has been restored.
(Witherspoon, 1977)
As we move more toward beauty, we move toward wholeness. This is the
Navajo way. If we adapt this Navajo ideology to music therapy, our premise is
that our patient is already beautiful and wholeno matter what the disability.
However, we have an opportunity to move into a deeper and richer beauty and
wholeness in our experience together.
Using her training in the procedures designed by Paul Nordoff and Clive
Robbins, Rachel took the lead in this interplay between two aestheticsthe
Music Child and herself. This space was open. I saw a field of existence in which
musical forms came to represent human existence. Rachel interpreted this
childs human conditions through her improvisations. And the child did the
same.
In my own work, I constantly nurture an open attitude to the beauty of my
clients. This is a beauty that has no bounds. My client, like the Earth, is a place,
a space with certain human conditions. My job is to get to know these
conditions while we are in our music. Each musical rendering educates me
about these conditions because they represent significant aspects of the
persons being. Music is knowledge that cannot be translated accurately into
words.
In the case of Jack, who I met in the hospital after he had a serious physical
injury, I came to understand his g tonality as an aesthetic preference that
had meaning. Perhaps I could not interpret that meaning in words or concepts,
but I knew it as one of Jacks aesthetic preferences. And I trusted that it had
meaning for him. His senses selected g after a great deal of play. This was
primary. Any verbal or conceptual interpretation would be second order. As
well, I got to know his favorite rhythms, as he got to know mine. All of the
elements of music were included in our play. This is a relational contextthe
interplay of aesthetics (Kenny, 1987, 1989, 2006).
are represented as the client journeys into unknown territory, inspired by the
music, only to discover new elements in a forest that comes to symbolize new
life.
These three fieldsthe aesthetic, the musical space, and the field of playare
primary fields. Though I have described them in a sequence here, they are not
necessarily sequential in the music therapy experience. In fact, they can be
present simultaneously. The essential element is being. However, a critical
aspect of these three fields and the four remaining fields or concepts is that
they all alternate in opening and closingjust like breath, just like the human
heart, just like the Seasons on the Earth. This is the ecology of being and the
rhythm of vitality and growth.
Within the field of play, we find four new fieldsnew horizons to explore.
Once particular elements of music or color or behavior within the musical
experience become constant, we have rituals that are repeatable forms making
space for innovation. These are steady and secure places for us to exist. This is
an ancient and earth-based principle. The seasons come and go. The day turns
to night. We wake. Then we sleep. We breathe. We follow the natural rhythms
and textures of the Earth.
We all need our rituals, which give us closed and contained spaces for a while.
Music is full of ritualistic spaces from which to spring. And we do see this with
our clients and patients.
I have seen the melodic or rhythmic rituals or rituals of timbre or other musical
elements in my own work and the work of many music therapists.
Previously, I mentioned my patient Maggie. Maggies ritual, the repetition of In
the Sweet Bye and Bye, helped her to create a bridge between what she knew
as life and what she feared or anticipated as death. This was the song that
carried her across a previously unknown land.
When you observe Nordoff-Robbins work, you see many musical rituals in all of
the elements of music. The repetitive patterns of ritual bring us into a
particular state of consciousness. Once we experience ritual space, our
consciousness begins to fly into another open spacea space of innovation
and play of new patterns of existence, a place of dreams and songs and new
healing images of all kinds, metaphors, new behaviors, new feelings and
thoughts.
In Guided Imagery and Music, therapists are trained in an induction method to
bring their clients and patients into this space. Once our consciousness is free
to travel, more opportunities present. Once we are free to travel, we feel our
power. Power is a closed space. It builds energy over time. Then breaks free
into new embodiment, confidence, renewal, and revitalization.
Im quite sure that if you have experienced a drumming circle, you have
experienced such power. And we can observe this phenomenon in many clinical
saw the clamshell and heard their sighs. He landed on top of the shell and
began to sing to these little creatures. Gradually, they emerged from their
hiding place in the clamshell to become human beings. Maybe music therapists
can be like Raven. And even more significantly, maybe music therapists can
access that part of our patients and clients that is Raven, too. Perhaps our
patients and clients can learn to play of their own accord.
Forgive me for asking so much. Yes, yes, in addition to our music therapy
sessions, we have charts to fill, instruments to store, meetings to attend,
articles to read, trainings to take. We have more and more layers of
responsibility as health professionals. All of these responsibilities are very
important. How can I ask you to also take the time to just be? Yet, how can we
not? And how can we not be a part of the great river that flows connecting all
things? Arguelles aboriginal continuity is for everyone. Ken Aigen (1991) offers
an example of our dilemma on the continuum between technological advance
and aboriginal continuity:
Once, flying over the American Midwest, I was struck by the contrast between
the straight and direct lines of the man made plowed fields, and the curved,
indirect meanderings of the rivers crossing these fields. My initial reaction was
to denigrate the linear, shortest distance between two points, logically
produced lines, and to elevate the natural, curved lines that seemed to flow
the whims of the river, unguided by any utilitarian purpose.
Yes, I soon realized that the lines described by the flow of the rivers were
themselves guided by an inner logic, and remembered that geologist have
actually devised formulae for describing the various curves and paths of rivers.
The river is also guided by logic, though it is not a logic that is inflexibly direct
and rigid, but instead, follows, helps to shape and mutually transform the
contours of the land in which the river flows. (p. 44)
We each have different ways of nurturing our attitudes. And if we are to nurture
an attitude of ceremony, ritual, and play, there will be myriad ways to cultivate
these three important elements. The essential question is how do we come to a
greater awareness of just being? And in an ecology of being, our second
question must be how do we come to a greater awareness of the principle of
the interconnectivity between all things?
For the most part, we no longer have the concrete tribal mechanisms of
ceremony, ritual, and play, as enacted in ancient times. But many people do
have these mechanisms planted in their daily lives. So this is where the
awareness begins. Some music therapists have a meditation practice. And,
surely, this is an excellent way of honoring ones being-ness, as well as a good
way to practice the principle of interconnectivity. For others, there may be the
simple acts of bringing greater awareness to entering a room, arranging
instruments, greeting a patient in a certain way. In a sense, these are modern
ceremonies.
Once we begin our sessions, we can anticipate the rituals, the repeatable forms
of gesture, sounds, rhythm, color, shape, timbre, texture, silence, and all of the
Kenny, C. (1989). The field of play: A guide for the theory and practice of music
therapy. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.
Kenny, C. (1982). The mythic artery: The magic of music therapy. Atascadero,
CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.
Leonard, G. (1978). The silent pulse. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Winnicott, D.W. (1971). Playing and reality. New York: Basic Books.
Witherspoon, G. (1977). Language and art in the Navaho universe. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.