Today is Tuesday, January 7th, and I’m opening this podcast with my own definition of music therapy.
So, what is music therapy for me?
For me, music therapy is essentially a space.
It is the space where, over the past thirty years, I have learned a great many things. But above all, I have learned to be real. I have taken care of myself. I have fallen in love with my own sound. I have learned to listen to my singing voice — and bear in mind that I started out as a musician, and at the beginning singing absolutely terrified me.
In this same space, I have also discovered improvisation. And this too was something I gradually conquered along my journey in music therapy.
In this space, I am able to stay in my own time. I feel adequate. I do not feel judged. I feel right. I feel in time.
I could say that music therapy has been, and still is, the space where I take care of my “musical child”.
This expression, the “musical child”, is an image proposed by Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins, the founders of Creative Music Therapy. They suggest that inside every human being there is a musical child who wants to play, to express themselves, and to be happy through music.
In this space of lightness, which for me is what music therapy represents, I am happy. I feel well. I smile. I have a great deal of energy.
And, of course, it becomes easy — it becomes natural — for me to reverberate, to empathise, to resonate, and to allow the people around me, around me in music, to experience this beauty: all the beauty that I live and feel.
So, in this space of “light music” — music that is light, open, and freeing — something happens quite naturally: the people who are with me feel well too.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
For me, all this is truly beautiful. And I like to think that, in your own work too, it can be like this: that you may feel light, creative, free.
All the rest, if we really think about it, is just ballast.
Well, this brings my first episode of A Light-Hearted Journey Through Music Therapy to an end.
Thank you for listening this far.
We’ll meet again next Tuesday with a new episode, where I’ll share my thoughts and tell you a little about why people study music therapy, and what drives someone to begin this professional journey.