E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

Amir, Dorit: The Role Of Music Therapy In Establishing Cultural Identity ...
When I asked her in one of our music therapy sessions. “How do you feel
today?” she replied, “I don’t know. There is an inner chaos, as usual.” I asked
her to close her eyes, to breathe, and to inhale each breath deeper than the
previous one. After a few minutes, I asked her to listen to what was happening
inside her. “I feel many streams storming inside me and I hear a cacophony of
sounds: loud and soft, long and short, high and low, coming and blending with
one another....” I asked if she could try to recreate the cacophony of sounds
that she heard in her inner world using musical instruments. Dina chose a
variety of instruments: bongos, two maracas, wind chimes, two drums,
Tibetan bells, a kazoo and whistles. She placed the instruments near her on
the carpet and tried to play several instruments simultaneously. With the
kazoo in her mouth, she made shrieking sounds like sirens. In one hand she
held two maracas, shook them strongly and occasionally hit them on the
bongos. In her other hand, she shook the Tibetan bells and created fast and
loud sounds. After a few minutes she put the maracas and the bells on the
carpet and created metal chaotic sounds with the wind chimes. The
improvisation lasted ten minutes. As I listened to the music, I felt myself
shrinking inside, as though my ears asked me to protect them. Suddenly I felt
fear and imagined I was on a battlefield with wounded and dead soldiers,
sirens shrieking, bullets flying, and bombs exploding around me. I started to
hum to myself an Israeli song that came to my mind. The song was: hyacinth
song. I started to hum it very quietly and then, while Dina's improvisation
quieted down and ended, she joined me and we sang the song together.
Dina started to cry. “It is scary, but this is exactly what is going on
inside me,” she said, and thanked me for soothing her with a song she loves.
She wondered how did I know to choose this particular song. I said that this
song calms me down and I sing it whenever I need to be soothed. The session
ended.
Later on I wondered what happened to me in this particular session. It
brought me back to two personal experiences I had: one had to do with the six
days war in 1967, when I was in junior high school. It brought me back to the
sudden moment we heard that the war started. I felt very scared and
confused, and I started whistling the hyacinth song. The other one was the
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