Music Therapy

Music therapy is a popular career choice for people interested in both music and caring professions. Ask the students what they know about music therapy, and discuss the following clips about music and healing: 

Part 1 of a documentary on Nordoff- Robbins Music Therapy - a powerful introduction to the work of Nordoff-Robbins, focussing on how this is used to help two children with complex needs. 

Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy – Part 2 of the documentary. 

Fox News extract about a music therapist in Arizona, US, who uses musical vibrations of the didgeridoo to help with pain relief. 

How a stroke patient who cannot speak can sing and therefore relearn how to communicate. 

Oliver Sacks talking about how music therapy can help people suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. 

Oliver Sacks – Musicophilia and Strokes. Clear and beautifully expressed statements about the healing power of music. 

Sir Thomas Allen speaking about a charity that brings live music to hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, day care centres and special needs schools for therapeutic effect. Those interviewed speak about music’s power to help with self-esteem, memory, sharing, communication, a sense of achievement – “bringing the person out of the patient”. 

• What qualities inherent in music do you think could make it such a powerful healer? 

• How can music therapy help people who suffer from disabilities or illnesses to develop a sense of belonging, and to feel part of the wider community? 

In the television series The Choir III – Unsung Town, Gareth Malone tries to unite a fractured community (South Oxhey, a housing estate near Watford, UK) through music: 

Information about Gareth Malone’s programme, The Choir III – Unsung Town. 

Shows the choir listening to a recording of themselves. 

Shows the reactions of people to the formation of the community choir: how it has raised morale, gave a sense of achievement and created a new sense of happiness and shared pride in the community. 

Discuss the idea behind the project: 

• to create a sense of community through shared experience (in this case, the experience of singing in a choir). 

1. Does is work? 

2. Why might music be such an appropriate and powerful tool to restore a sense of community? 

Individual Research Project

Research an example that particularly interests you, where music is helping members of a community. 

• Japan, where music therapy is primarily used in mental illness

• Tanzania, where music is used in pain relief 

• Music therapy for particular groups within communities – 

  • e.g. for children

  • for the elderly

  • as treatment for depression or heart disease

  • within palleative care

  • to help mobility 

• Particular techniques of music therapy

  • e.g. song-writing

  • listening to music

  • using music to evoke feelings and memories

  • moving to music 

Share your findings with a group of 3 or 4.