Proceedings, Oxford, UK (2002) - World Federation of Music Therapy

Saharan view of music as sustaining life, and as creating, affirming,
sustaining as well as reflecting social relationships. Music psychologists
whose work is generally contextualised in Modern, Western societies,
have been exploring what it means to ‘be musical’ – and have shown us
that the ‘folk view’ that being music is a ‘gift’ with which we seem to be
born, is alive and well, even in apparently rational and fact-based cultures
(Sloboda, Davidson et al. 1994; Sloboda 1999).
The practice of music therapy (and here I am thinking of Improvisational
Music Therapy) is described in a recent text in the following terms:
Music therapy provides a framework in which a mutual relationship is
set up between client and therapist. The growing relationship enables
changes to occur, both in the condition of the client and in the form
that the therapy takes….. By using music creatively in a clinical
setting, the therapist seeks to establish an interaction, a shared musical
experience leading to the pursuit of therapeutic goals. These goals are
determined by the therapist’s understanding of the client’s pathology
and personal needs. (APMT definition in Bunt & Hoskyns 2002:
10)(Bunt and Hoskyns 2002)
If we take a closer look at this definition, then we see that, within the
cultural complexities of South Africa societies, music therapy and
African Traditional Healing have in common an understanding of the
person ‘in relation with’ the therapist. It is within this relationship - in
other words, in the ‘space between’ therapist and client that, to re-quote
Buber, ‘the spirit moves’. Music is central to this event, not as an
‘imported’ object that exists independently from therapist/healer or the
client/patient, but as a mutual event, co-created by both persons. Like
Traditional African healers, the music therapist has a body of knowledge
that is the result of many years of training, and absorbing of ‘knowledge’
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