Some of the most ‘therapeutic’ musical interactions I’ve witnessed during lockdown are between musicians themselves online. For example, I joined a Facebook group called ‘Tune of the week’ (TOTW). This is about (jazz) musicians showing their working to other musicians. It’s about preserving people’s musical identity at a time when it is facing the challenge of invisibility. Musicians need to be heard, and valued. People need to be heard. There has been a parallel tendency for music therapists to demonstrate their value at this time, to show that music therapy still has something to offer. This is perhaps similarly about preserving identity, but in this case the identity is that of the expert, the person who ‘knows how to use music therapeutically’. I’ve been part of this, interviewing two music therapists from Chiltern Music Therapy who gave expert advice on online interactions. There are also, for example, GIM resources for people with COVID-19, singalong packs produced by Nordoff Robbins music therapists, and online services for health professionals provided by NLMT. Chiltern runs an online group for parents and children. In my face to face work, back in the old world, I felt my work was closer to the ‘Tune of the week’ interactions than to these MT online resources. It was about relationship, and the way music can provide a bridge between people. My therapeutic expertise is partly about being a person with another person, through music (alongside the talking that’s necessary to facilitate it, and the thinking that supports both).
I might be in danger now of being unfair to music therapists promoting the profession, and trying to provide something helpful in a time of crisis. I might be creating a straw man based on an assumption that framing music therapy as a profession of experts who are ‘best placed to use music’ might be about identity but not about relationship, when it can be both. The interventions listed above are all valuable. As music therapists, we should be helping, and reminding people that musical connection is more important now than ever. So this isn’t an attempt to put those things down, more a note-to-self about how music works on a personal level, a reminder not to forget that my therapist-self relies on my musician-self. Inspired by TOTW, I’ve started up a Facebook group for music therapists called ‘Music Therapists’ Music’, for music therapists to share their own music with the group. Let’s see how that goes. I sense some shyness, which is fair enough. Music might be about showing off sometimes. It certainly can be in jazz. But only sometimes. In TOTW musicians are encouraging one another. It includes input from really expert players like Gareth Lockrane, but it’s inclusive. Anyone can put up a video, and talk about their musical challenges. It’s being done in a collegiate spirit. So perhaps one question I have is, as music therapists, can we look after one other? Can we share our musical identities, as a way of shoring up our therapeutic identities? ‘But aren’t they the same thing?’ Perhaps no more than my 'talking identity' would be the same as my therapeutic identity if I were a talking therapist. But, of course, it’s complicated...
As music therapists, we make use of, adapt, and edit our musical identity for each client or group. We use those bits of our musical identity that are useful at the time. But TOTW is a reminder to me of my own need to be heard, which is part of the reason I’m a musician, and so underlies my reasons for being a music therapist. Being a music therapist (in my experience) involves a tension between musician and therapist, but a useful tension, where my awareness of my own musical needs helps me understand what’s happening for the client. If I adopt a stance of ‘expert music therapist’, I might be giving up one kind of performance for another. The interactions on TOTW show musicians exposing their working, their musical struggles, and they show musicians being supportive, encouraging one another, reassuring each other that they are being listened to, and heard. Of course, there's also some showing off, but that's part of the process.
And another thing: RIP the great Lee Konitz, for whom improvising was a way of life, and who was always uncompromising in preserving what he felt was most important about music.
