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

The following expression of the participants during the dialogues
outlines this point: “Seeing that I can’t look by myself, look at what my
voice is doing, yet I never would have thought it possible!”.
The verbal instruction “to communicate with the voice” also produces
three important changes:
• the gradual abandonment of the verbal environment
• the immediate contact with a new instrument which cannot be seen –
exclusion of the visual element – which at the same time can be heard
through the body
• the discovery of a “new voice” which enables an overlapping of
others, but which does not yet represent a song and even less a choral
dimension
What springs from this is an entirely new intermediary sound space
which is neither word nor song. In its journey the voice will find the road
towards its own song and therefore towards an emotive and effective
dimension which will lead the individual to nurture an experience of
internal change in a continual exchange with the song of the group –
therefore, from the interior towards the exterior and vice versa.
What I have described until now regarding vocal improvisation groups
can be compared to the stages of birth and separation between mother
and child. As a metter of fact the image of an upside-down child
appeared during the verbalisation, as well as the scene of a child being
born. Often the voice was defined as “life”! Indeed, reviewing the
various phases it is clear that the first perceptions are internal, within
each individual and within the group itself, just like during gestation. It
is a “love song” that is about to be born which contains primordial and
violent expressions as we shall hear in the last recording.
701