“I don´t sing because I´m happy. I´m happy because I sing.”
— William James
A window that looks at the role of music and voice in the arts therapies.
Imagine you are in a room with a group of people; you are asked to sit comfortably and close your eyes, and a voice leads you into a relaxed state of awareness of your own breath; you sit with this and let go into the present moment. When you open your eyes, you see a pile of percussion instruments in the middle of the room – a drum, castanets, a xylophone, a tambourine, a bell, a cymbal, a shaker, and a few other things you don´t even know the name of. You have never played a musical instrument before and you eye the group shyly, wondering what is coming next. The silence from the meditation seems to have poured into the room and no-one breaks it. Gradually, movement breaks the ice; others begin to pick up an instrument and you follow suit. The person leading the group tells you to close your eyes again and play – in the sense of experiment and have fun, as if you were a child. You tap timidly at your tambourine. The noise of different instruments begins to build, and you need to tap louder to hear yourself. For a while there is a cacophony of sound, everyone immersed in the evolving relationship with their own instrument. And then, slowly, while your eyes are still closed, something magic begins to happen.
A particular rhythm in the group asserts itself, and individual rhythms start to mould themselves around it. The instruments begin tentatively to play together. When you are asked to open your eyes, you have a smile on your face, and you meet the smile on the faces or in the eyes of everyone in the circle. You had never met any of them before and yet there is the gentlest feeling of togetherness, of universality or belonging, and a shared awe at the beauty of what has just happened. It occurs to you that this is the opposite of entropy and there is something life-affirming about the realisation that harmony is, despite everything, so strong an impulse in the world.
This could be a description of an activity in a music therapy session. The act of spontaneous musical creation with no agenda and no judgement is an act of release, presence, and connection, creating a sense of wellbeing and compassion. Whether we know how to play an instrument or not, there is something musical in all of us. In the words of my friend and colleague David Guillamón: “Music is a metaphor for life. We experience rhythm, melody, and harmony with every moment we live: the cycle of day and night, our pulse and heartbeat, our emotions, what we feel and the place we occupy on earth.” Through musical improvisation, our emotions and stories find form and a way of being heard.
Possibly the most intimate instrument of all is our own voice. It may need tuning or exercise like a muscle to meet an external standard of what is considered ‘good’, but if we let go a little in a space that feels safe and fun, it will always surprise us. Singing has been part of tribal traditions for thousands of years and is intimately connected to feelings of exhilaration and community, at once calming, energising, and bonding. The very act of singing is uplifting. And, like paint on a canvas, it is a medium that reflects our emotions back to us, which means that we can also learn from what it tells us.
Mindful listening is also a powerful way to engage with our inner world and open the doors to empathy. We are probably all familiar with the power of a particular song or piece of music to trigger a memory. More surprising, perhaps, is the power of music we are not familiar with to transport us back in time or into a landscape of internal emotional imagery. The act of listening to music is explored in different ways in the arts therapies. You may simply listen, perhaps following a mindfulness meditation or relaxation exercise, and translate the experience afterwards into some form of creative expression – for example painting, or creating a body sculpture, or writing a poem. Or you might do any of these things, or improvise with body movement, in spontaneous response to a piece of music while it is playing.
Music – whether we are listening to it or creating it – has a way of getting beyond pain and withdrawal, and connecting with something vital, which makes it possible to begin to move and change in both emotional and physiological ways. Music therapy has been found to help not only with depression, anxiety, grief, dementia, learning difficulties and other mental states or disorders, but also with more physical aspects such as speech, motor skills, memory, and balance.
I would like to close this small window on the role of music and voice in the arts therapies, with the beautiful words of two people with Alzheimer´s who took part in a programme David Guillamón ran in a home for the elderly. As part of the sessions, they would listen to David improvising on the piano.
“You played notes as if they were birds flying, and butterflies returned to my stomach. I remembered my first and only love, my wife, the woman who accompanied me for so many years, and in whom I have always found answers.”
“I have painted one of the most precious paintings of my life. I have painted music; a shame you can´t see it – if I had it in front of me, I would give it to you, but it is not in front of me, it is in my heart.”