Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

On 18 July 2013, South Africans exuberantly celebrated the 95th birthday of our "Tata" (father) Nelson Mandela, reminiscing stories of the greatness of this man and his contemporaries and all the "miracles" they achieved towards enabling the freedom of all South Africans. My 4 year old son rushed home from school saying, "Mommy, mommy, we all singed Happy Birthday to Mandela, and I singed so loudly that maybe he even heard me." The magic of our nation continues to touch us all. And yet, these celebrations are awkwardly juxtaposed with the current reality of a hospitalised, frail, ill Mandela, hinting at the inevitability of death and endings (Nandipha, 2013). Our thoughts are drawn to the current recession and continual politicking that has decayed a sense of faith in our leaders for so many. We wonder: what now? Where are we going? The future of our country is no longer held by Mandela and his contemporaries. Now we need to keep their legacy alive – ideas highlighted through movements like "67 minutes", where South Africans were encouraged to give up 67 minutes of our time towards building, restoring or healing our communities in honour of the 67 years of service offered by Mandela. This leads to a further question: what meaning could I have to offer this country here and now?

In the recent years, government regulation regarding the practice of psychotherapy has been taking place in some countries. Government regulation protects the public from false representation or the malpractice of psychotherapy offered by people who do not have the appropriate training, competencies, and certifications. The regulation of professional practice has begun to reach the music therapy profession as well. These new regulations have serious implications for the training and practice of music therapy.

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: Religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." Linus van Pelt, Peanuts

The Problematization of Religion in Music Therapy

Eleazar the Maccabee and War "Elephant" Carrying Seleucid General, Based Upon Apocryphal Book of 1 Maccabees From Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Anonymous, 14th Century)

During recent years, the United States has experienced an intensification of the discourse on the role of religion and faith-based belief systems in public policy. At the core of this discourse is a fundamental tension between the basic civil rights to freedom of, and freedom from, religion. The discourse itself is nothing new, and it certainly comes as no surprise that such a discourse would arise, in an environment where demographic diversity abounds, including divergent sets of values and worldviews; but it has taken on a distinctly amplified character over the past decade or so, during an era when the US political arena has witnessed the emergence of movements that have challenged past precedent in new ways. This discourse has tended to become controversial, contentious, and even hostile in tone, wherever it has arrived at non-negotiable, fundamental impasses around such challenging issues as religious expression in public education, reproductive rights, marriage equality, and so forth. Further complicating matters are the sometimes subtle politics of privilege that are interwoven into the fabric of these issues. In spite of the great diversity of religious orientations that coexist among members of the US population, not every orientation (including those which are non-religious in character) is endowed with the same degree of public respect and socioeconomic legitimacy. This, in turn, has established multilayered, hegemonic structures that have readily contributed to implicit or explicit glorification of certain orientations and marginalization of others.

After four weeks I am still nourishing from my visit to Hamburg and therefore want to share some impressions with you. First of all: What a good idea - celebrating one’s big birthday inviting friends and colleagues, sharing food, wine, information and emotion during a whole day. This was what happened on Eckhard Weymann´s birthday-Symposium entitled: “Momente des Nicht-Wissens” or “Moments of Not-knowing”. I wonder who received more gifts, the celebrated or the visitors.

I remember when, as a child, I saw those films and cartoons in which characters were thirsty in a desert, and the heat made them believe that a few hundred meters away there was an oasis where they could stop their agony. Finally, they dove hopefully and just found more sand. Thus, I learned that the mind could create the illusion of a supposed reality, which might not be as thought. It seems to me that it is one of the situations in which we can incur, if we believe in some of the mirages that these hyper-computerized times (and allegedly hyper-connected time) provide us.

As a feminist I have grown up with the catch phrase that the personal is political. To me this means that if I see something I think is wrong or problematic in the world, I can be part of the solution to that problem. By joining organisations that promote positive change, by raising my voice, by writing, and by influencing those around me to care about making real changes the world can be a better place not just for me but especially for those who have not experienced my opportunities and privileges.

I stepped down in July from my position as an Interview Co-Editor of Voices, ending 11 years of work with Voices. In this position, I had worked with Interview Co-Editors Leslie Bunt and Krzysztof Stachyra to build the interview section to what I think is a vibrant part of Voices. Leslie had worked on this section alone before I joined him in 2007 and had brought some very interesting interviews, so we had lots to build upon. (In the listing that follows, I am including only the interviews that occurred after I joined as an Interview Co-Editor.)

It is with a feeling of astonishment and much emotion that I survey thirty years of meetings and labor toward music therapy.

It was the year of 1981 and the World Congress of Music Therapy would be gathered that July, in Puerto Rico. However, it lucked out that I chose to first visit New York, where I had already scheduled a meeting with Barbara Hesser, the coordinator of the Music Therapy courses in New York University (NYU). To my surprise, in the day scheduled for that meeting I was informed that Barbara was away on vacations and that I would be received instead by the Head of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions who, in the end of our meeting, informed me that in the month of July of next year an International Meeting on Music Therapy was to be sponsored by that university.

Imagine my delight when my friend and colleague Lia Rejane Mendes Barcellos greeted me on my first day of teaching with the words: “Bom dia! Oh, you look just like a cariocas!” She explained that the term cariocas referred to the local Rio dwellers. So, from the beginning of my work and visit to Rio de Janeiro, I felt welcome and somehow like I “belonged”

Now, in September 2012, the first students of the Master of Developmental and Dementia Music Therapy graduate from my University in Wuerzburg in Germany. Sometimes for me it even today feels like beeing in a dream. I don’t know if other colleagues worldwide also can feel this when a new program really starts, when new colleagues really come or when a research project after plenty of applications and preparations becomes true.

It is intriguing to realize how our understanding of music from the musicological context changes or expands in music therapy. Rhythm was the utmost important component in music when I learned it in the early school education and it still remains as the most profound musical component in therapeutic use of music. I had a moment to examine the definition of rhythm and how the definition expanded with time and through its application. I would like to discuss the multi-dimensional attributes of rhythm, formulating more integrated definition of rhythm.

Among the more pervasive understandings of how and why music therapy works—the kind represented in the popular news media, for example—is one generally analogous to a biomedical and/or behavioral practice, wherein natural scientific mechanisms resulting from manualized, procedural interventions (preferably in measurable dose-response proportions) serve as the bases for health outcomes. In this understanding, aesthetic (artistic) and relational (roles, interpersonal dynamics, empathy, etc.) components of music therapy are sometimes acknowledged, but are generally viewed as additional variables in the functional mechanisms that bring about the target outcomes (much in the same manner as medicinal adjuvants help facilitate a target physiological response). Moreover, from this perspective, the sort of evidence prized as most valuable and legitimate is of the positivist, natural science variety supports assertions about the "truth" of music therapy's technical effectiveness.

But does it really make any sense to assert that music therapy works as a technical, natural science?

This time I would like to share with you a very recent interpersonal experience which caused an impact on me and an authentic reaction materialized by the exclamation “really?” I suppose that the impact was a real moment of surprise.

Es mi intención al escribir estas palabras que podamos abrir una instancia de diálogo e intercambio acerca de la nueva definición de Musicoterapia que ha presentado la Federación Mundial de Musicoterapia, que desde mi punto de vista es insuficiente e inadecuada.

Como ya manifesté en una columna anterior (Schapira Diego (2005) estoy convencido de que el trabajo individual y cotidiano de cada uno de los musicoterapeutas, en cualquier lugar del planeta, representa al trabajo de toda la comunidad de profesionales. Lo corroboro cada vez que me toca hablar con profesionales de otras disciplinas (psicólogos, terapistas ocupacionales, médicos, psicomotricistas, etc.) que están en contacto con algún musicoterapeuta, o con alguien que ha conocido el trabajo de algún colega. La modificación de la visión de nuestra profesión en el imaginario social la realizamos cada uno de los musicoterapeutas, de acuerdo con la rigurosidad y ética con que nos desempeñamos.

To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing) or by dancing” Christopher Small (1998)

I have been feeling quite awry with myself in the last 14 months. Something of my natural order and understanding of hopefulness about living and survival has been challenged by recent experiences of loss that have come much closer to me than ever before in my life. I do not mean to sound morbid, or sorry for myself – as I often feel lucky to be in my second fifty years of life, before this has happened to me – but it has certainly felt profound, and brings me closer to understanding something about the practice of my music therapy colleagues working in palliative care, whom I much admire.

Theory is on my mind at the moment. It's not exactly the most peaceful state to be in, and at this point I would even describe it a slightly challenging for of existence. In past columns I have reflected on topics such as motherhood and meditation after my second child was born; or the importance of dancing the tango after the World Congress of Music Therapy in Argentina. But as I prepare for the World Congress in Seoul, I am on sabbatical in Bergen, thinking, talking and dreaming about theory – quite a Norwegian experience perhaps. I will take the opportunity of this column to reflect on the topic at a personal level, by pondering my relationship with theory and describing it as an experience of walking around and around in circles. I will offer this discussion without reference to hermeneutic exercises of circle walking (please see: Kenny, 2006), and without discussion of philosophical understandings of the nature of reality (please see: Rykov, 2011). This is not because they are irrelevant, but because I am choosing to offer a more casual and subjective story about my own experience.

Music Therapists for Peace

Music Therapists for Peace, Inc. (MTP) originated in the 1980s in the United States thanks to music therapist Edith Boxill’s (1916-2005) initiative. I first became aware of the movement MTP in 1988 as an undergraduate student attending a music therapist’s presentation by Christine Routhier, on a special project with children with the Sisters City Project from New Haven, Connecticut and Leone, Nicaragua. At the time, Nicaragua was in a state of civil war and Routhier (1988), with two other music therapists, went to work with an organization helping war victims. Once back, Routhier was approached by Edith Boxill to be part of the movement Music Therapists for Peace (C. Routhier, personal communication, November 10, 2007).

A few years ago I met a person who shared similar views on therapy through the arts and ways of working with people with a range of disabilities. Michal Stanowski is a drama therapist, but also – or maybe most of all – the originator and initiator of an artistic movement of people with health problems, their therapists, instructors and volunteers. All of us together, through systematic artistic activities, by organising various events, and in our daily work strive towards facilitating the personal growth of people within the movement and more broadly to change the situation of people with disabilities within our society. The movement is called “Untrodden Path” and now it is not only in Poland, but also in Ukraine and Belarus.

Vivimos en un mismo mundo, pero también vivimos en realidades diferentes, en distintos lugares del mundo. Como un visionario, Borges escribió varias décadas atrás acerca de las realidades paralelas. La maravillosa posibilidad que hoy tenemos de contactarnos e intercambiar información tan fácilmente entre diferentes lugares del mundo, nos muestra con crudeza esta situación.

A few weeks ago Dr Alison Ledger graduated from her PhD at the University of Limerick. Alison is a University of Queensland music therapy graduate, earning a BMus and an MPhil from UQ. She came to Ireland in 2005 to work with me on a project for which I had received funding from the Health Services Executive evaluating the effects of the introduction of music therapy and art therapy into a dementia service in Limerick. We finished the project within 18 months, and she returned to Australia. She came back to Ireland soon after, teaching on the course and leading the development of a local schools based parent-infant music therapy programme.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of presenting on a panel at the National Conference of the American Music Therapy Association with 10 other co-editors of Voices, representing five countries: Brian Abrams, Jane Edwards, Carolyn Kenny, Lucanne Magill, Katrina McFerran, Rune Rolvsjord, Brynjulf Stige, Lisa Summer, Guylaine Vaillancourt, and Barbara Wheeler. The panel session was entitled Voices and the Open Access Revolution: Culture, Ethics, and Authenticity. As I was listening to the other panellists, I found myself in awe for the collective wisdom at this (quite long!) conference table and the deep care for authentic exchange of ideas.

I am happy to take this opportunity to tell those who have not heard that I will be retiring from my teaching position at the University of Louisville at the end of this academic year, the end of May 2011. This is an exciting point in my life—and the beginning of a big transition. Writing this column presents an opportunity for me to reflect on what it means to me and how it relates to other events in my professional and personal life.

August 2010 presented arts therapists, activists and educators from across the African continent with an invaluable opportunity to interact, share stories, ask questions, inspire and encourage one another at the Drama for Life Africa Research Conference held in Johannesburg, South Africa.

As a music therapy lecturer, I often reflect on the fact that I have ended up being more of a teacher than a therapist. This is particularly interesting to me in light of my personal history since both of my parents were school teachers and I was always quite determined that teaching would not be my destiny. Yet I am very pleased and proud to have reached this point in my career. In the following essay I would like to take the opportunity to consider the steps that led me to this place, taking the opportunity to remind myself of the bigger picture with the (fairly indulgent) hope that this might be of interest to students or colleagues.

It so happened that the time I had for writing this column was May 1. So what? It’s the 121st day of the year, with 244 days to go before we need another datebook. According to Wikipedia, May 1 was also the date of the first cricket match in America in 1751. Some years later it was the date of the opening night of Mozart’s opera "The Marriage of Figaro." Do I care? Not really. These are distant events for me.

Juggling is a beautiful action, a rounded and balanced flow of movement. I certainly do not have the skills to juggle but my life as a musician and music therapist seems to have many parallels with such an action. Whilst engaged in a range of work how can I keep the movement of different ‘hats’ in play? How can there be a sense of flow and balance when trying to juggle the various hats? How can such differing demands and challenges find their rightful place alongside family and personal life?[1]

My article concerns cooperation, because this is one of the most important subjects for me. Cooperation between music therapists, institutions, countries, continents... It is very important that a human is needed for all kinds of cooperation and a human is the most important in the process of cooperation. The value of cooperation lies in the human being. This is a very humane approach.

The tragedy happened in Haiti have deepened wounded us. Looking at TV news within so strong, huge horror, desolation, and grief, I saw a few images which shocked me by surprising me. In the first image there was a woman, taken out from rubble, laying on a stretcher, who sang a song for thanking her rescuers. In the second clip a young woman watched at her destroyed house, she raised her arms, singing a song to compassionate herself for the loss. Finally a group of survived orphans play and sing in the middle of ruins. Almost the same happened after the earthquake in L’Aquila. There the famous conductor, Riccardo Muti, organized concert with musicians only from that area to support survived people who lost everything and lived in tent.

The nature of social communications has been changing at a rapid pace due to widespread use of online social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Traditionally private conversations have become public and this blurring between private and public has resulted in a new social construct, e-professionalism, or the impact of online behavior on one’s professionalism.

En Argentina tenemos una larga tradición de trabajo tanto en el campo de la salud mental, como en el tratamiento de diversos tipos de discapacidades, en prevención, y en musicoterapia comunitaria. Pero hay un desarrollo menor en musicoterapia en medicina. Esta historia habla de una experiencia en este último campo, en el hospital Gral. De Agudos Bernardino Rivadavia, de la ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Developing a New Field of Performance

Experience lends us some assurance. We think that, when we have a long life of clinical practice we can feel confident whenever we begin a job within a new field of performance. On the other hand, we also know about the challenges to face in any new area we ingress, but we can count on the knowledge of our peers and, standing on their former work, we can find a point from which to depart.

Horomona Horo, a distinguished Māori musician[1] opened a recent national choral festival in Rotorua, New Zealand ‘Sing Aotearoa 09’, with a most arresting sound. A soft "Toc… toc, toc", which changed in intensity, pace and loudness over a period of perhaps two minutes, created a wonderful sense of calm listening, regulated our breathing and a evoked a link with ancient lands. He was playing two pieces of pakohe or argillite [2] – one large, in the palm of a hand, the other smaller, in the opposite hand, tapping like a bird’s beak. He explained later that the argillite – a naturally occurring mineral in Aotearoa New Zealand – was particularly suitable for making these sounds and not quite as hard as the much treasured Māori pounamu or greenstone, which is also used for tools and making koru symbols and other jewels. The cupping of Horomona’s hand changed the pitch across the range of about an octave and a half, which was amazing to see at close quarters in a workshop that he ran for Sing Aotearoa participants later in the festival weekend.

Experiences From Improvisational Music Making

In music, I listen.
In music, I listen to what I feel.
In music, I listen to what I take risks for.
In music, I listen to the others who take care of me with their music.

I immerse myself to what I may not know.

And then come back from the place where I went by myself
                                   to the place I feel at home

In music, I am listening to my own home.

Said, "I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land
And set my soul free" (Joni Mitchell, 1970)

Today (August 15, 2009) we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the famous Woodstock Art and Musical Festival, held in a huge alpha field at the Yasgur Farm near Woodstock, New York on August 15th and 16th, 1969. (http://www.woodstokstory.com) The festival included many great performers like the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Hendrix, The Who, Joan Baez, Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Crosby/Stills/Nash/Young, and many others.

The past year has brought about some big transitions in my life and these transitions have prompted me to think about my identity both as a music therapist and as a person. Having been a music therapy educator for many years, I have had the honor of watching many students develop into music therapists. One of the aspects that is most exciting is watching them develop their sense of identity as a music therapist and how they integrate that into their larger personal identity.

Crisis. This word has been in the media much too often. Can anything be done in the time of crisis? Or would it be better to wait for the end of it? Being pelted with bad news by the media surely has a bad effect on many people. Still, it’s good to know at such moments that the crisis is in the banks, not in us.

After reading Lia Rejane's column about Easter Island, about secrets and musical traditions of this wonderful culture, I felt inspired to show another face of music and culture in Chile. It is perhaps the most violent contrast to Lia’s excursion, but it is worth being mentioned as it shows, how our feelings toward music are conditioned by life circumstances and how music can be misused to cause damage and destruct personality on one side, and used to survey and resist, on the other.

Over recent years, in my various roles as music therapy practitioner, researcher and lecturer, I have engaged in considerable reflection on the concept of Community Music Therapy - what it might mean and how it might impact, if at all, on the practice of music therapy in New Zealand. Much has been written about Community Music Therapy (Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004b) and interesting philosophical, theoretical, and practical positions have been espoused. I do not intend to engage in further in-depth discussion or debate at the philosophical and/or theoretical level, but I am interested in thinking about how the ideas relate to music therapy practice in this country, particularly to special education which is a field I have a special interest in. In writing this column I draw on almost twenty years experience as a music therapy practitioner in the field; close involvement for the same amount of time supporting the development of music therapy in this country at a national level; informal interactions with colleagues; and my recent research which involved interviewing New Zealand music therapists to gain their views on a proposed music therapy protocol for collaborative consultation with teams who support students who have special education needs.

This column is based on the text of the speech made by Jane Edwards at the 10 year celebration of the MA in Music Therapy in November 2008.

The MA in Music Therapy at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance is celebrating its 10th birthday. In a moment of inspiration this anniversary has been titled "reflecting the vision." This moniker gives the perfect opportunity to consider the contribution of the music therapy training programme to the wider context of the university, and in general to the country in which it was founded and resides. It has also been a wonderful chance to invite alumni back to the campus for a celebration. I was delighted to see so many people back with us in November, with each student cohort represented at the event.

As a new parent, I was not prepared for the many sleepless hours I would spend rocking and holding my son. Every hour that passed as he continued to squirm and cry and look around with wide-open eyes left me feeling increasingly despondent, hopeless in my role as a parent and exhausted. I found myself battling between a deep love for this child, a desperate longing to "make everything alright" and wanting to just put him down and run...

My last weeks and months were full of very new experiences and perspectives. First of all, we welcomed a newborn son. The things we did with him for the first time - the first time bathing him, the first walk outside - were exciting experiences. Even though we have done these things a thousand or millions of times in our life, doing it for the first time with him changed our perspectives and perception in a unique way. When the magic of such moments touch my family and I, we are thankful for it by being fully present and by pausing time. This could be also the origin of pauses in music, where everything stops for a moment, where everything is possible and where everything is encompassed by the music.

Another September has come to an end. After so many years as a student and then faculty member, fall always feels like the real beginning of the year to me. My two children are now old enough to also be plugged in to this annual cycle; so it was an especially busy month in our household as we adjusted to the new and continuing programs for both of them. Among these my eldest, 9-yr-old Sarah, has resumed piano lessons for what will be her third year. Naturally, with her increasing capability the material is becoming more complex and the expectations higher.

Recently, I had a consulting job with a Music Department at a small liberal arts college in the States. The department was engaged in a great deal of change. They hired me as an organizational consultant to help them through the change. Why was I shocked when the group of 11 was so resistant to including some type of musical experience in their two - day retreat? I suggested musical improvisation. I suggested a music and imagery experience. Nope. They were not interested. Finally, I came up with a musical experience that I thought would help them to include more than just talk in their retreat, an experience that would engage their senses and take them to a deeper level of getting to know each other through their aesthetic selves. I asked them to "interpret" two pieces of music. The first was Phillip Glass’ "The Plant Boy" from his opera, The Witches of Venice. The second was Arvo Part’s "Sarabande" from his Collage über BACH. This time I did not ask if they wanted to do it. I just started the activity!

Working with cancer patients in oncology and palliative care brings us closer to the precious and fragile nature of life on a daily basis. Given the immediate impact of receiving a diagnosis of cancer or terminal illness, a persons’ life span suddenly becomes tangible and there are so many things that one would like to accomplish. Since I started as a music therapist in the hospital setting, I have met patients, families and caregivers whom have deeply touched me by their way of living life fully. The life lessons are numerous, coming from young to older patients; they teach us to challenge ourselves and to appreciate every moment we are granted.

The multiple relationship issue in therapy is crucial for a health therapeutic process to take place. It has been conceptualized and developed to be one of the basic ethical standards in therapy. In the beginning, multiple relationship was a strict ethical code that therapist had to refrain oneself from having any extra-therapy interactions with the client, which may lead to anything other than therapist-client relationship. However, in 1980s and 1990s the issue and demand for redefining this multiple relationships have been raised by many psychologists (Pope & Vetter, 1992). Questions about boundaries were discussed from various perspectives including therapeutic approach, value system and professional discipline, etc (Pope, Tabachnick & Keith-Spiegel, 1987). In 2002, such debates contributed in bringing amendment in APA Ethical Standards on multiple relationships and additional statement was provided as following: "Multiple relationships that would not reasonably be expected to cause impairment or risk exploitation or harm are not unethical (http:// www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html)."

The opening images of Seamus Heaney’s (1969) poem At the Wellhead are of someone singing with eyes closed, the songs curving back in time like a well-known road. High hedges create boundaries for the road, providing both a sense of familiarity and safety, even if it can be a little lonely at times. Heaney implores his singer to keep on singing and to draw from the deep well from where the singing comes.

The events of the last days were significant for me personally, but most of all for the development of music therapy in Poland. They showed how much can be done thanks to so few people. They also proved the importance of friendship and international cooperation. Now you probably wonder what exactly happened lately?

Three friends - music therapists - met and that meeting became an inspiration for organizing a conference which gathered students and adepts of music therapy from all over Poland, but also from France and Ukraine.

Like most music therapists I enjoy ruminating on, discussing, and debating issues which relate to humans and their music making. I am therefore excited by the New Zealand School of Music’s new initiative to have all postgraduate students from their various disciplines including performance (classical and jazz), musicology, composition, and music therapy, sharing ideas at a weekly forum to consider how we can learn from each other and strengthen our research work. Staff members who instigated the forum are keen for it to be student led and it is gratifying to be able to participate as a PhD student, rather than a music therapy lecturer.

Durante el mes de enero tuve la oportunidad de viajar a Cuba, para dictar clases inaugurando la maestría en musicoterapia. Es el segundo curso de estas características en Latinoamérica, junto con el que se dicta en Colombia. Esta maestría se cursa en la Universidad de la Habana, una institución con 280 años de antigüedad, y en el Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), en el que se forman prestigiosísimos músicos de ese país.

Two recent columns in Voices offer thoughts around the value of silence as an integral part of music and music therapy (Bunt, 2007), and a reflection on the consistent background muzak that seems to accompany much of everyday public life (Edwards, 2008). My own cultural and contextual background would generally lead me to concur with the thoughts offered in both columns. I value the powerful effect that an acknowledgement of silence can have within music, music therapy and life. Similarly, I can become annoyed at the presence of music that I am forced to listen to in public spaces, due to its apparent ability to make me buy more at a shop, or relax while waiting to see the dentist. The past year, however, led me towards some very different perceptions of noise, sounds and silence.

Spinning and weaving are activities whose genesis is lost within History’s tangled strings, which were warped as responses to those needs that sprang from natural and cultural proddings. To perform such activities, animal or vegetal fibers are raveled and from these the threads are prepared that will grow into tissues of manifold textures, imprints, hangings, and thicknesses. [1]

I have recently returned from being involved in co-organizing and teaching on a January World Song, Rhythm and Dance Summer School (please note NZ is in the southern hemisphere!) in which a rich mix of song, rhythm, dance and creative activity were experienced by the twenty-plus participants during a lively week. One morning we had an interesting combination warm-up which began with some Tai-Chi exercises and ended with a round of juggling. To give you an idea, here on the left is Amanda our facilitator, a musician and circus school graduate, accompanied on the right by Eileen, a summer school member and juggling-apprentice.

One music therapist confessed, "Although I profess myself as a 'music therapist,' I cannot keep my own peacefulness when I deal with the personnel problems at the work, and sometimes I blame myself for it." This person is the leader of a music therapists organization. Another young music therapist said, "While I declare to lend a helping hand to the clients, I have so much of the egotistic mind in myself, which I am ashamed of."

I always enjoy how music fits so well into such a variety of contexts. Music can set, reflect or intensify the emotional tone or message of an event. As is well discussed in the music therapy literature music is such a basic, primordial human endeavor that it's pairing with other human endeavors makes for an overall experience with a "punctuated" (Ruud, 1998) or an "amplified" (Kenny, 2006) meaning; a sense of spirit brought to bear. As music therapists this awareness is our business, our daily mode of operation. However, in my culture it is easy for music making to remain compartmentalized within the context of music therapy. Therefore I also always appreciate it when music finds its way into life beyond my work in music therapy.

Most of the time we Music Therapists are talking or writing about our clinical work, our research, issues of culture, theoretical ideas. But seldom do we stop to talk and write about the important friends, the non-Music Therapists, who support our work. This Fall 2007 we have lost two very important Friends of Music Therapy – one in Canada and one in Iran.

I am typing this piece in a tiny town in Portugal. We are here visiting my husband's family to introduce our small twin boys. Last week we were in England spending some time with my own family. My sons are half Portuguese, a quarter British and a quarter South African (although that last quarter has some rather diverse roots too if traced a few generations back). In England, my children played with my cousin's daughters – who are half British, a quarter Israeli and quarter Polish. This week they are playing with a different cousin who is half Portuguese and half New Zealander and another who is three quarters South African and one quarter British. At home they have second cousins who are half Portuguese, a quarter South African and a quarter Hungarian. As one can see, my family's nationality is rather blurry – as is the concept of nationality itself. Somehow – my immediate family at least – has found some shared identity to call our own. We have a sense of what it means to be a Dos Santos.

VOICES nous donne la chance de rejoindre des musicothérapeutes du monde entier. La rubrique "Pays du mois" nous fait voyager et connaître la situation de la musicothérapie dans plusieurs pays. Dans certains pays où les musicothérapeutes sont assez isolés, ceux-ci ont une tâche considérable pour faire connaître la profession. D’autre part, comme j’ai pu le constater au 7e congrès européen de musicothérapie tenu en Hollande en août 2007, les ateliers, conférences et échanges professionnels constituent un grand enrichissement pour plusieurs musicothérapeutes. On y apprend aussi ce qui se fait ailleurs. Évidemment, on revient gonflé à bloc de ces congrès.

This week I embark on the beginning of another fall semester at my university. I met with the incoming master's students last week at a beautiful retreat in New Hampshire, about one hour north of Boston, MA. At this retreat we went over the expectations of the program – clinical expectations, academic expectations, and personal development expectations. I was inspired by this group of students who seemed enthusiastic and ready to undertake the rigors of graduate school.

People from all over the world are drawn to visit sacred places such as Assisi in Italy and the sounds of many different languages fill the small streets and picturesque squares from morn to night. This year it is noticeable that even more tourists are flocking back to a beautifully restored Assisi after the damage caused by the earthquake a few years ago. Signs written in many languages are to be found in the many sites sacred to the memory of St. Francis, one of the most common instructions being to be respectful of silence. At times in the great Basilica built over the Saint's tomb any rise in the sound level is punctuated by a loud and highly resonant 'Silenzio' from one of the Franciscans charged with taking care of the space. A few relatively silent moments follow during which it feels for that brief period of time that a deep sense of community is created amongst the visitors of all ages and from so many different countries. As Max Picard (1952/2002) writes: "Within the realm of creative silence the individual does not notice any opposition between himself and the community, for the individual and the community do not stand against each other, but both face the silence together" (p.65). In the Basilica this sense of joining and facing the silence in the present moment is almost palpable. The imagination is also given space and time to make unspoken connections with the millions of people who have shared similar times of quiet stillness and reflection in this space, this year being the 800th anniversary of St. Francis' conversion.

When this column is online, we will be attending the V Latin American Congress of Music Therapy (V Congreso Latinoamericano de Musicoterapia) in Santiago de Chile, under the motto "Music and Identity". This event takes place every three years in a different city and gathers music therapists from the whole continent, from Mexico to Argentina. Since the previous congress, a special out-of-the-region guest is also invited; in 2004 we enjoyed the lovely presence of Clive Robbins in Montevideo (Uruguay) and on this occasion Even Ruud will share his experience with us.

I was excited when, earlier this year, I was invited to join the editorial team of Voices. I firmly believe that awareness of global music therapy practices greatly enriches our clinical work, theories, and research. In addition, the international essays on Voices help us gain a better understanding of the world views, values, and traditions of different cultures. When I read the many international voices on this forum, I am often reminded of my experiences of coming to the US to study music therapy at Temple University. I was born and raised in Belgium. I had just obtained a Master's in Music Pedagogy when I came to Philadelphia. "Maak je geen zorgen, ma, ik ga er gewoon 2 jaar studeren en dan kom ik terug! Ik zou nooit in Amerika willen blijven wonen!" [Don't worry, mom, I am just going to study there for 2 years and then I will be back! I would never want to stay in America!]. And so here I am, 13 years later, still living in the US, married to the most wonderful man, mother of two precious daughters, and loving my job as the assistant director and researcher at the Arts and Quality of Life Research Center at Temple University.

The theater’s large steel doors slowly open. These are emotional moments highlighting a time in which expectation springs out of the event, especially for those who watch and listen to a Symphony Orchestra for the first time. Present are official personalities representing the State of Rio de Janeiro and the city of ‘Nova Iguaçu’, located in one of the most violent areas of this state. Within the theater’s closed spaces, sheltered, cozily seated and "well-groomed", are 450 invited guests. By and by, as the large steel doors gradually open, 4,000 more members of the community, not endowed with an official invitation, but welcome, and more than that, hoped for, have also arrived. These people, exposed to the whims of weather, standing, casually dressed but showing the respect the occasion requires, took over the most lively and busy square in the Rio’s downtown area, bearing a highly suggestive name – the Peacemaker’s Square. Also invited and expected by everyone, never denying to show up to the theater so often mentioned in the newspapers are: Bizet, Ravel, and Villa-Lobos!

Southern Cross by Moonlight @Christopher J. Picking

Haere mai, haere mai;
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.

At the end of March, I am leaving my three-year term of office for board director of Japanese Music Therapy Association (JAMTA) 2004-2007 fiscal year. During this period JAMTA held 101 councilors and 23 directors, and they were the first election-selected board members. The board members of the 2001-2003 fiscal year term were selected through internal negotiation, due to the founding time of the association. Here is the rough comparison between the director lineups of the two terms. (For convenience I call the 2001-2003 as the first term, 2004-2007 as the second term.)

If there is anything worth describing as a new development in the consciousness of the world today, it may be summed up in one word: globalisation—by which ethnocentrism and myopic or parochial world views or cosmologies are fast crumbling to make way for new all-embracing world views—thanks to Anthropology and other similar academic pursuits and the awareness that all human beings on our planet have a common destiny.

It is inevitable that the events of one’s life affect our presence as a therapist. It is equally true that our training and experience of being a music therapist have an influence on our private lives. I sometimes find the balancing act between these two parts of myself to be strenuous. The greatest guidance I have found in the endeavour of juggling these roles came from a book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey, 2004) which was recommended to me on a leadership course within the University where I work. The author validated my experience of multiplicity and suggested naming the many roles that we each have within our lives, and valuing them equally. My list was, and still is, made up of: Mother; Wife; Researcher; Colleague; Friend; Teacher; and of course, Music Therapist. It was incredibly liberating to be given permission to value each of these roles. Not only did it mean that I could write ‘To Do’ lists for every part of my life (a favourite past-time), but it provides a constant challenge for me to strive for balance in my life.

Last August, the Association Québécoise de Musicothérapie lost one of its greatest music therapists. Josée Préfontaine died after a year and a half of combat against leukemia, at age 53, leaving two wonderful daughters.

It’s been over 7 years since "introduction to music therapy class" has been offered as an elective class to undergraduate students at Ewha Womans University. In Korea, music therapy is offered at the graduate level, therefore, the primary purpose of this class was to let the students know that there is graduate program in music therapy for those who are interested.

One of my favourite quotes about music, relative to its therapeutic effects, is:

Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form (Plato). (Wordsworth Dictionary of Musical Quotations, 1991, p. 45).

It is possible to read too much into a run of synchronous moments, making a series of coincidences out to become more than just that. But the following examples took me rather by surprise over the last few months. Could there be a link to working in the fluid medium of music where, as both musicians and therapists, our antennae are particularly open to apprehending such moments? The examples also seem to have a curious life of their own, a kind of internal logic, something again that we find so often in the music therapy process with our patients/clients working through similar patterns over time, their internal patterns synchronising with the external world of shared music-making. I would appreciate any of your ‘readings’ of the following. You may think they are all just pure coincidence or maybe there are other connections at work. So here goes…….

As a music therapist I have often had the opportunity to observe in my clinical practice the importance of knowing, respecting, and employing the kind of music that belong to the patients’ cultural roots. This aspect has been stressed by music therapists/authors from different countries, since the first books on music therapy were written till the present time. Among these we can quote: Gaston, 1968; Benenzon, 1985, 1988; Millecco, L. A., 1977; Leinig, 1977; Barcellos, 1992, 2004; Millecco, R. 1997; Bruscia, 2000; Brown, 2002; Wigram, Pedersen and Bonde, 2002. They all consider the employment of this kind of music extremely relevant to the development of the therapeutical process.

On its west riverside the Rio de la Plata (de la Plata River) kisses the lips of Buenos Aires, capital city of Argentina. On the opposite margin Montevideo, capital city of Uruguay, rests and dreams. It is such a broad river that Spanish conquerors on their arrival in the XVI century called it "sweet sea." Standing on its bank it is difficult to imagine that beyond the horizon it is still the same continent, the same land.

日本の音楽療法士は忙しい。待ったなしのセッション、たまっていく記録、360度方向に無限に広がる知識獲得の要求、新しい専門書を読むこと、講習会に出かけること、楽器や役に立ちそうな備品を捜し購入すること、楽器を練習すること、教える仕事、頼まれた記事やレポートを書くこと、学会の発表を準備すること、そしてもしそれだけやっても収入が追いつかなければ、専門外の仕事も入れなければならない…。その間にも毎日食事をし、住んでいる場所を最低限快適に暮らせるよう管理し、調子を崩せば医者の順番待ちに並び、家族との時間も確保しなければならない。しかも雇用の安定や職場環境にあぐらをかくことは一日とて許されず、常に「攻め」の姿勢をとるか、少なくともアンテナをはりめぐらしていなくてはならない。こんなスーパーマンのような生活をできるのは、一重に私たちがこの仕事を好きだからだと思うが、それでもときに疲れ果て、ささいなことに傷つき、自分や他人のしていることに疑心暗鬼に陥りそうになっても不思議はないだろう。しかし音楽療法士としての現実の生活はそんな悩みに浸っている暇を潤沢に与えてはくれない。毎日、進んでいかなければならないのだ。

Various studies have been undertaken in industrialized countries over the years to find out how music may be used in industry either to increase productivity or to reduce errors and also avoid accidents. Management commissioned some of such studies and findings have influenced subsequent strategies. Unfortunately no such studies have ever been carried out in Ghana. But paradoxically, music is performed at some workplaces in Ghana through the initiative of some individuals. It is for the purpose of finding out more about this development that this writer has conducted a study into the nature and purpose of workplace choral groups. The findings of this study may well be an invitation for the use of music therapy in industry in Ghana as a way of managing stress rather than anything else.

Thinking about the new column for voices three thoughts came into my mind. I want to share these thoughts with you and may be you can share your reflections on this with me in our discussion section.

When music therapists embark on a research project they typically articulate a question to guide and focus their endeavours. This process is a significant stage of the research journey and is often the first moment of focused thinking and deliberation on the selected the topic. Although a great deal of research is pain-stakingly detailed and meticulous work, I always find this in-depth thinking to be an equally challenging aspect of the research experience. It requires the researcher to achieve a state of deep mental focus on the selected topic, which I liken to the experience of meditation. Once this state has been achieved, I usually undertake a kind of debate, with myself, my peers and sometimes a supervisor, about the nuance of the question and its expression. The results are often fastidious - minor word changes, experimentation with more appropriate synonyms to capture the real intention of the question, and deliberating issues of phrasing and grammar. But the process is conceptual, creative and intellectual. This has been detailed in the music therapy literature (Bruscia, 2005; Wheeler, 2005).

Music therapy is a discipline and profession of mixed origins. This is often commented upon in the literature, directly or indirectly, as indicated by some of the recent columns and discussions in Voices. For example; Jane Edwards (2006) writes about thresholds between practice and research and elicits a response from Helen Shoemark (2006), while Leslie Bunt (2006) reflects upon the relevance of films, poetry, novels and the world of myth for our work as music therapists. Music therapy seems to be very much about the balancing of art and science, practice and theory, process and product. Each of these terms is in turn multifaceted; there are several forms of art, practice, and process and several types of science, theory, and product.

While a research imperative has driven much of the scholarly work that has been published in music therapy, especially in refereed journals, my own experience of research is that the reality of practice-work, the "doing" of music therapy, is sometimes at risk of marginalisation when inquiry about music therapy takes place. I have therefore found the "signature practitioner" concept (Melrose, 2003) an interesting notion to try to translate across to practice in our field. Her suggestion has helped me consider whether we have thresholds between practice, practice-research and writing that could be further developed as a recognised "register" of scholarly work.

This past November, as part of the American Music Therapy Association's annual conference I hosted an international panel of distinguished guests from around the world. Panelists included Marcos Vidret from Argentina, Maria Hernandez from the Dominican Rebublic, Moahn Sundararaj from India, David Akombo from Kenya, Kris Stachyra from Poland, Thomas Wosch from Germany, Masoud Nematian from Iran, Inge Nygaard Pedersen from Denmark, Robert Krout representing New Zealand, Paige Robbins Elwafi representing Qatar, Alexander Grauer from Italy, Sandi Curtis from Canada, Fumio Kuribayashi from Japan, Byung Chuel-Choi fromKorea, Patsy Tan from Singapore and a spontaneous panelist from Cypress whose name I did not get.

A couple of weeks ago, the 1st Patagonian Music therapy Congress and 1st. meeting of music therapists from the Mercosur (South American Common Market) took place. It was held in Neuquén, a city used to winds of more than 100 km per hour, and very hard winters, which contrast with the warmth of the music therapists who received us. There were colleagues from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil and also visitors from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. Each one of them with its own soundings, conforming a very particular musical kaleidoscope. Sixteen hours after their departure from Buenos Aires, two buses full of students arrived, singing with their guitars and wanting to see "what's new" in the Music therapeutic field. No doubt, a very unusual scenario for Music Therapy events in South America.

Carolyn Kenny, one of the editors of Voices, visited Japan this summer, and gave a lecture titled "Beautifying the World" at the Kunitachi College of Music. The content of this lecture will be published soon, I hear, so here I would like to introduce one of her statement given as the answer to a question from the audience. The question was about the difference between music recreation and music therapy, and she answered as follows: "The goal of recreation is often to activate. The goal of music therapy, on the other hand, is to build and hold a relationship."

During the summer break I and my colleagues involved in training music therapy students in Bristol, UK have been kept busy writing many documents and getting use to a whole new jargon and way of describing music therapy training. We are transferring the post-graduate Diploma in Music Therapy from the Department of Music at the University of Bristol to the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University of the West of England (UWE). Both universities are in the same city, their main sites only a few kilometres/miles apart!

It is difficult for me to imagine an environment as nurturing and supportive as the gathering of music therapists in Brisbane last month. The World Congress provided an opportunity to listen, talk, sing, play, eat and drink with colleagues both from my home and from the global music therapy community. The quality of presentations was high, as was the level of collegiality. There was music everywhere and frequent opportunities to share in it as an active participant. The food was plentiful and an atmosphere of openness pervaded the environment. I was proud of all these things as a representative of the host culture.

South Africa recently celebrated Youth Day on which we commemorate the 700 school children who lost their lives in 1976 protesting against the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction for half of their school curriculum and against the Apartheid Bantu education system in general. Black South Africans paid a very high price to be granted the recognition of equality.

"Where there's music, there can be no evil."
Miguel de Cervantes

"Each one speaks for everyone"
Diego Schapira (http://www.voices.no/columnist/colschapira110405.html)

Cervantes' often quoted statement seems certain, natural and believable however recently I took pause to consider the alternative view. An excerpt from Jon Ronson's book, The Men who Stare at Goats published by Picador in November last year, was reprinted in the Guardian newspaper (http://spinwatch.server101.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=259)

I have had the privilege to attend 6 World Congresses of Music Therapy over the past 15 years (from 1990 to the present day), and as we head into the 11th World Congress in Brisbane, Australia (July 19th-23rd, 2005) it is timely to reflect on the importance of these 3-yearly events and how they contribute to the development of the profession of music therapy. What follows is a personal account of memories from six World Congresses and the musical offerings that resonated with the region of the world in which the congress was located, and how each Congress expanded my geographical and historical knowledge of the world.

I have become very aware of the words that we use to speak of people with disabilities. In the U. S., there is an effort made to use what is called "person-first" language, meaning that when we speak of people, we speak first of the person, then of the disability. For instance, we would say "a person with autism" rather than "an autistic person" or "a child with mental retardation" rather than "a mentally retarded child." This language has been stressed in our laws (much of it has been an outgrowth of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA) and in our writing (the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th Edition, emphasizes using bias-free language), and many journals have adopted policies by which this language is required for publications.

Among the new graduates who start looking for their first job as music therapists, I observe repeatedly the same situation. I allow myself to reflect about what I insist in calling "the community of Music therapists", as part of a global community.

During the past few years, when I send an original case study article to a refereed journal, I usually get comments concerning the first person writing style. The reviewers usually ask me to be more "objective", to write in a more "objective" manner and to bring more "scientific" sources of information. The main comment I get is that extensive use of first person references greatly reduces the professional tone routinely contained in juried journal.

One of my students gave me a greeting card. On the front is a photograph of an artwork by Deidre Schere titled "Woman and Cello". The work is made of fabric and thread. The woman is old. Her hair is entirely white. The joints on her hands are somewhat disfigured, perhaps by arthritis. She plays the cello. Her eyes are closed. She is deeply engaged. Though she plays, creating the action on the instrument, she is in a receptive posture, hugging the cello, as in relationship, and receiving what the cello has to give.

I would like to begin this column by quoting a sequence from the previous column here in Voices. In a piece focusing upon thresholds and transitions, Leslie Bunt writes:

How many links could be made with transitions in music? What about the invitation we give in every music therapy session to our patients and clients to move across a threshold into a music space? (Bunt, 2005).

I was very interested in reading Barbara Wheeler's last column about powerlessness (Wheeler 2005). Yes, there seem to be a lot of moments in every university teachers' and researchers' life, being powerless and experiencing timelessness. Of course in every job you do, home, at work, with relatives, everyone will feel powerless, if she or he does it with her or his heart, does it very intensively with forgetting her- or himself. Such special moments we try to experience also together with our clients, looking for new perspectives, for new experiences, for richness of every once inner world.

In the second half of 2004 I had various ideas for my December column; I wanted to write about my contact with the Maori culture during my academic stay in New Zealand, about the wild and civilized moments of music therapy due to the Maori legend of Pania; I wanted to write about the individual kernel of community music therapy, which thoughts I got as a mentor of an excellent thesis of my student Ulrike V?ker; and I wanted to write about Franz Schubert and Tony Wigram, about prison and freedom, with thoughts about the differences between some composed music and clinical impr

The past several months have been quite interesting in the US. We have recently re-elected our President to serve another term of office. It was quite an intense campaign to say the least. The weeks leading up to the election were filled with supporters of both candidates being quite adamant that their candidate was by far the better choice to lead our country. I have close friends and colleagues who supported these each of these opposing sides. I witnessed much heated debate at parties, gatherings and even the school bus stop.

From September 4-5, 2004, the forth annual conference of Japanese Music Therapy Association was held in Kurashiki-city. For this conference we had the two key-note speakers from abroad, Brynjulf Stige and Colin Lee. Stige's lecture was about "Community Music Therapy," and Lee's was about "Aesthetic Music Therapy. " It was a long waited opportunity for a group of Japanese music therapists who have been keen to the forefront of international music therapy scene, to hear these lectures and to meet the speakers.

Yesterday (September 11, 2004), I had the great pleasure to participate in a one-day Symposium, "Music: A Universal Language for Harmony". The purpose of the symposium was to explore the cultural and therapeutic impact of music. We gathered in Melnitz Hall at the University of California Los Angeles for the event, which was sponsored by The Ethica Society, the Nour Foundation, the UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine, and the University of California Irvine Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine.

The large room was full of people: Argentineans, Brazilians, Chileans, a Cuban, a Peruvian and Uruguayans. Sorry, and a British/American: Clive Robbins, the main guest of the Congress. They included music therapists: professionals and students; psychologists, musicians, music educators, and other professionals interested in music therapy.

There were many "faces of music therapy" at the recent European conference in Finland as proposed in the title of the event. We were presented with the usual range of theoretical and practical papers with what seemed from conversations with many colleagues to be a marked increase in the number of research papers connected to the completion of MA or PhD projects. Personally one abiding memory of the conference is the continual need to tell our stories.

In 1998 I established a research unit at the University of Melbourne, which has as its purposes to promote postgraduate research studies, and to develop collaborative research projects. We now have a healthy number of 15 postgraduate students who are researching in a diverse array of music therapy efficacy projects. And we have collaborations with the University of Aalborg in Denmark and the University of Witten-Herdecke in Germany.

I have been thinking about the title of this column, "How Do We Hear All of the Voices?," in relation to several situations in my professional life. Writing this column gives me an opportunity to share a few of my thoughts.

In a few months Dr. Clive Robbins will be visiting the city of Montevideo (Uruguay) as a special guest to the II Latin American Music therapy Congress and IV Latin-American Committee Meeting. This fact, which for most of our colleagues around the world is "one more stop" in the endless itinerary that Dr. Robbins is having since a long time ago, for us who live "southern south", is a fact which I consider historical for various reasons.

音楽療法は比較的新しい領域なので、われわれの仕事の大切なひとつとして、さまざまな人々に音楽療法を教えるということがある。誰に対して話しているのかによって、その内容やレベルのみならず、いかにしてその人のドアをノックするかという方法はすべて異なる。このコラムでは、私が最近多くを学んでいる教育の場の紹介をしたいと思う。

He estado enseñando musicoterapia los últimos 24 años. Al comienzo, cuando el programa de MT de la universidad de Bar llan se creó, yo era la única musicoterapeuta allí y dictaba todos los cursos de musicoterapia. Con el correr de los años la universidad nos permitió aumentar el presupuesto y lentamente fuimos contratando más profesores musicoterapeutas. Ahora tenemos 10 profesores enseñando en 2 niveles: un nivel de iniciación y uno avanzado (para musicoterapeutas que ya tienen un diploma y quieren completar su MA en MT) . En los últimos 2 años he estado enseñando menos cursos en el nivel de iniciación y más en el avanzado.

En un encuentro reciente de musicoterapia comunitaria aquí en la Universidad de Praetoria, Sudáfrica, Sunelle habló sobre su trabajo con un grupo de niños de 10 años de la Escuela primaria de Sea Point en Ciudad del Cabo. Los niños estaban preparando un número musical para el concierto de la escuela, cuando uno de los niños se fijó en los zapatos de Sunelle.

Invitar a musicoterapeutas extranjeros, de culturas diferentes, a disertar o a dar cursos en nuestro país, permite que las personas interesadas en asistir a dichos cursos no solo obtendrán más conocimientos sobre un campo específico, sino que también podrán tener experiencias diversas e intercambiar con los demás participantes y el profesor. El invitado no solo trae sus pensamientos, sus ideas y conceptos sobre un área determinada, sino también aspectos sobre su cultura, así como su propia curiosidad por conocer más sobre el país que está visitando.

Throughout the years, many of my music therapy clients have been psychologists who work primarily in the verbal therapies. My work with one of these psychologists was documented as a case study in Ken Bruscia's book Case Studies in Music Therapy. (Kenny, 1991). Many of these clients come to music therapy because they want to expand their repertoire of receptivity and expressivity. They sometimes complain that both in their own growth and in their professional practice, using "only words" is not "enough".

For me, the last quarter of 2003 was filled with international and especially European perspectives on teaching and research. Beside the teaching and the research at my university in Magdeburg (Germany) I've been teaching and giving papers in Ukraine, Austria and Denmark. But Europe was also always a part of my thinking at my university. One point is: I came back from my teaching in Ukraine together with two Ukraine students, now they are guest students for one year in Magdeburg.

Acabo de retornar de la Conferencia Anual de la Asociación Americana de Musicoterapia (AMTA), que se llevó a cabo en Minneapolis, Minnesota. La Conferencia Anual es siempre una experiencia renovadora para mí, y este año no fue la excepción.

Years ago, when I was in graduate school pursuing a Master's degree in music therapy, I had a teacher who taught us about the difference between expectation and expectancy and the significance of these differences in one's therapeutic attitude. At first I was very baffled by this, they seemed the same to me. Both had to do with expecting something to happen. Over the course of several weeks Edith Boxill, my teacher, patiently kept explaining the difference to those of us in her class.

Regularly, I work in two close towns: in Montevideo (Uruguay), where I work on Mondays an Tuesdays, and the rest of the week in Buenos Aires (Argentina), where I live. In the latter there are plenty graduated music therapists and Music Therapy students in three different universities. It is an ever-changing and dynamic world, with continuous activities. Among them, we had the chance of meeting Barbara Wheeler, who came to dictate some courses a couple of weeks ago.

A few months ago I organized a one-day conference on the subject of "Music in the context of the Holocaust - therapeutic aspects in the past and present". The first part was dedicated to the past. Two musicologists talked about music during the holocaust.

When the first Music Therapy Program was formally established in Brazil in the early 70's,^[2] and when the clinical work was already being done in many institutions, one of the most discussed subjects was if patients should take part in public presentations.

In a recent article, Edward Said once again expresses his frustrations at the global imbalances of power, economics and justice. I usually listen closely to Edward Said, having chosen to invest him with some kind of morally sound intellect, and having decided, rather intuitively, that I trust what he says. An awful responsibility for him to carry, no doubt.

One of the major influences on the development of music therapy students' understanding of music therapy practice is provided through the music therapy literature. Educators therefore have a significant responsibility in shaping students' perspectives of music therapy when choosing reading assignments.

I gave the keynote address at the conference of the Southeastern Region of the American Music Therapy Association in March, 2003, in Chapel Hill, NC. I was very pleased and honored to be asked to give this address, helping to open the conference which focused on interdisciplinary approaches in music therapy. Although I had not thought a great deal about this topic prior to preparing this talk, I found developing it to be very interesting, and I realized as I worked that I and all music therapists are very involved in being interdisciplinary music therapists.

We live in a diverse world, with many different and contrasting realities. I am afraid that while I write these lines, someone from far away can only imagine that it is a fantasized story. Nevertheless, I intend to write a brief chronical of a beautiful work done within a very difficult reality.

On April 4th I came back from the 1st Art Therapy World Congress that took place in Budapest, Hungary, March 30th-April 2nd, 2003. The congress was organized by Dr. Erzsbet Hasz, Chairwoman of the Hungarian Art Therapy Association and Tamas Koves, director of Meeting Budapest Organizer Ltd. App.

Brazil is traditionally a Catholic country. Among its 175.941.698 inhabitants, there are 124.980.132 Catholics and 26.184.941 Evangelists, the latter being distributed in many branches. However, this situation is presently changing fast because there is an increase of Evangelist branches that are provoking changes in the Catholic Church and its members.

To acknowledge that biology matters has not been so common in the humanities and the social sciences as one might have expected. While it is rather obvious that we all have a body, the exact role of biology in human development is not so obvious. Is human nature so flexible that by all practical purposes it can be neglected in the study of humans as social and cultural beings, or are in fact humans determined by their biological heritage?

The new year is very young and every youth has a lot of new ideas. But in the process of one year the power of change is changing and some things are going on as last year. In spring we will have our fifth entrance examination for a new music therapy class. Especially in these examinations I think very lot about the problem, which pre-conditions of musicality are necessary and can be examined, if young women and men want to study music therapy.

As 2002 draws to a close I have taken some time to look back on this year. It has been a reflective year for me both personally and professionally. This deeper reflexivity no doubt has to do with the changes that have happened in the USA since September of 2001 as well as with the current political climate that is unfortunately leading us to the brink of war. It has led me to think about the role of public versus private discussions. When do we need to say things in a public forum and when is a private conversation more useful?

The heat of late November in Buenos Aires announces that the summer is close, and marks the end of another academic year at the University. I have the good fortune to be a professor in the 4th and last year of the Music Therapy training program at the University of Salvador in Buenos Aires, where I am in charge of the Music Therapy class. In a few weeks, my students will be, I hope, brand new colleagues. I watch them, with their fears, waiting for their final exams, preparing of their theses, and all of their expectations and enthusiasm to start their work as music therapists.

It is 5.30 AM. Lately I have been waking up early, very early in the morning. At the beginning I really disliked it and tried to get more sleep, but by now I have gotten used to it and even enjoy it. It is very peaceful and quiet time. I put on Bach's Mass in B minor and listen to it with my eyes closed. This is such a beautiful piece of music; it always lifts me up and touches my spirit. It might sound ridiculous, but I always feel a better person when I listen to this music.

Lights. Colors. Action! And even cameras of journalists from around the world! Kings... queens... and vassals, but also baianas and many other different people... . Almost like a movie. It could be fantasy. But it is not. It is reality. The fire works indicate that the show is beginning.

It is Spring, on this early Sunday morning, and the women's gaol on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg is silent, despite the hum and buzz of the World Summit sustaining itself some miles down the hill. The gaol is empty and my steps echo on the tired grey floor. I hear the whispers of women whose spirits now invade these cells triumphantly: the gaol is now a Healing Centre.

I have just returned from the 10th World Congress of Music Therapy in Oxford, England and wanted to share some of my thoughts from attending this inspiring event.

Periodically I fall into a pit of despair about the possibility of music therapy having a community of scholars who are actually connected to one another. Yes, I know there are pockets of small groups who work together intensively on scholarly works in music therapy. There are think tanks and special interest collectives. I have had the privilege of being in a few of those groups myself. But I'm hoping for something much more inclusive, complex, and challenging.

A few days ago a friend of mine, who is an actor in a playback theatre, called me and asked if I would like to come and improvise music for their playback performance that took place the day after. As she was approaching me with the subject I started to feel an inner tension and some anxiety rising. After a few moments of hesitation I said to her that I would be glad to do it.

Two things are on my mind as I write: the first is Zimbabwe and its grim inability to tolerate differences of opinions, reminding one of the bad old days of apartheid South Africa.

The tragic events of September 11 have had an enormous impact on us in the United States - decreasing our sense of safety and increasing our awareness of vulnerability. National security, possibilities of terrorism, and the war in Afghanistan dominate the news.¹ This is my sense of what is occurring from my home in Louisville, Kentucky, far away from New York City and Washington, DC, where the attacks occurred. I am not intending to reflect what things are like closer to where the tragedies took place. Things in these cities are, I believe, much more immediate and personal.

In the column I wrote in October (October 8, 2001: How to Win in Music Therapy Work?), I referred to the patriarchal value and the matriarchal value. At that time I was in my 8th month of pregnancy, and now I am writing this with the twin-baby-boys sleeping beside of me.

I came to my interest in music therapy theory in 1981 out of a sense of disappointment. These days I spend a lot of time watching my little grand daughter strive to name things. As I observe her, I have an even deeper understanding of that drive in all of us "to name", "to represent", in some ways, "to fix" our understanding of things in the form of words. In fact, one can feel a little crazy at worst or inauthentic at best, when the naming of things does not match our experience of them.

Everyday lives are affected by a strange multiplicity of influences. Always one has to centre on day-to-day responsibilities and usually one treats media messages with a degree of disbelief. But the impact of world tragedies cannot be ignored because repeated media images do not let the shock leave our consciousness.

As reaction to the my last column in Voices Barbara Wheeler ask me about my experiences, that I got in the East-European context, coming from a country, which was situated in East-Europe and in which now exist the values and norms of West-Europe. So I want to start today three "short-stories" about these experiences, which I had in situations, where East and West went into contact with each other in the last ten years.

The other day, my husband and I had a long chat about our twin children who are to be born soon, just like any new parents-to-be, full of hope and concern. In this complex world, what is the best education we can give them? - especially in Japan where the traditional and progressive value systems are mixed, the economy is loosing its former power, but no significant natural resources exist?

Lately there has been an increasing interest for aesthetic aspects of the music therapy process. I welcome this warmly. While in many contexts it is essential to underline functionalistic aspects, it will be very limiting to music therapy if issues of meaning, narrative, and aesthetics are neglected. To include aesthetic aspects has its own pitfalls though, since the western concept of aesthetics have certain romantic and elitist connotations to it. I will try to illuminate the problem by using an allegory.

This title is a paraphrase from something that Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, said to the audience after he finished playing a concerto with a violin that had only 3 strings instead of 4.

I recently had the opportunity to have several GIM (Guided Imagery and Music) sessions. In them I began to re-examine my relationship to music. Revisiting my lifelong connection to music has prompted me reflect on my first experiences with music and how my relationship to music has grown and changed over the years.

The main language of Voices is English. For some, myself included, this creates quandaries of translation. With English as our second, third or fourth language we may feel unable to find the words needed for clear communication of our ideas. Or - if we find words - we may feel that they are inaccurate, that other words would be better if we just could find them. So, here we go, in circles.

I attended the European Music Therapy Conference in Naples in April and had a wonderful time! I found the conference to be stimulating, the presentations to be excellent, the setting to be serene, and the company - old and new friends and colleagues - to be delightful.

Last year I was on a sabbatical leave and spent 5 months in Kauai, Hawaii. It was an amazing place where I experienced a very powerful inner journey. The outer beauty affected me and helped me (re)discover my inner beauty. The need to give expression to both inner and outer beauty was tremendous, but I didn't have a piano or any other musical instrument there, so I couldn't really express myself through playing.

I was 14, and it was about 100 years since Livingstone searched for the sources of the Nile. Living in a small savanna town, young enough to be an explorer and old enough to know the sources of the Nile, I concentrated my efforts on investigating the tiny valley of a river on the outskirts of town. It was a separate world; no people, no houses, only running water and small waterfalls, enormous green trees with colorful flowers and mystical networks of lianas, and - not to forget - huge lizards sunbathing on beautiful rocks in the midst of the water. I almost believed that nobody had seen anything like this before.