Regarding culture and music therapy.
Shoemark, Helen
This special edition of the Australian Journal of Music Therapy
gives focus to a key issue of our time, the understanding of culture in
our own lives and those of the people with whom we share music as a
therapeutic medium. The growth in immigration patterns around the globe
means that inevitably we will connect with people from many cultures in
our practice, research and development of knowledge. Working in our own
community or in someone else's community we must turn outward to
cherish the moment, to learn and live with people and their music, and
to reflect anew on our own experience and understanding of music. The
potential influences on our practice as music therapists are both
exciting and daunting as we consider the multiple meanings and purposes
of music for people from different cultures. How are we regarding
culture in our thinking and learning, in the experiences of the people
with whom we work, and in the acceptability of music therapy as a
worldwide profession?
The call for abstracts for this edition elicited an unprecedented
number of submissions, demonstrating the currency of this topic in the
thinking of music therapists. We are delighted to offer eleven fine
articles for you. Because of the rich breadth of these articles, we have
relinquished the popular commentaries this year.
Underpinning much of what we do is a systems knowledge perspective
which allows us to re-evaluate the ways to think about the work we do.
Claudio Cominardi brings a new theoretical lens to intercultural process
in Italy, helping children in kindergarten to grow their own acceptance
and understanding of each other. In Australia, Lucy Forrest unfolds the
intricacies of culturally responsive practice in home-based palliative
care.
The mobility of music therapists is evident; no more so than in the
journey of people who travel from their own country to another culture
to train as music therapists. In her article about being a Chinese
student training in the USA, Yi-Ying Lin shares the experience of a
student peer-support group created to traverse the expectations for
classes, placement and beyond. Angel Leung and her colleagues
investigated (investigate) the very real prospect of reverse
culture-shock on returning to one's own culture and the challenge
of re-immersion in one's own cultural systems of family, friends
and work-life.
The immersion in another country to train is emulated for those
music therapists who practice in a culture other than their own. Through
a thematic analysis, Anita Gadberry interprets the lived experience of
one American music therapist's experience of providing music
therapy in Ecuador; while Amy Thomas and Fiona Sham use duo-ethnographic
methods to explicate the hidden rules of culture which are present each
day for the clinician practicing in a newly adopted country. Continuing
the dualities of immigration, Grace Chan unravels the robust status of
music in cross-cultural music therapy when both therapist and client
begin life in other countries and then find themselves in Australia.
In Australia the increasing reality of an ageing population is
enlivened in this edition with an appreciation that this population
includes many older adults who have arrived in Australia from other
countries and particularly from China. Yeung, Baker and Shoemark explore
the repertoire selections of older Chinese adults in Australia, while
Ip-Winfield, Wen and Yuen report on cultural sensitivities for
delivering music therapy with Chinese older adults in Australia.
Traversing terrain new to many is the idea of culture within
culture. Stepping more deeply into our own community, Sian Truasheim
uses cultural safety as a lens for crafting community-based health
programs with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island adults. The final
paper by Williams, Teggelove and Day tackles the "big picture"
for hidden populations by addressing the Australian federal government
conceptual language and frameworks which govern practice with at-risk,
and hard-to-reach families.
In this edition of AJMT, we welcome the world, we celebrate the
outward sharing of music in its beautiful diversity, and cherish the
nuance of the inner worlds we hope to understand.
Helen Shoemark
Guest Editor, AJMT Special Edition
Melbourne, May 2104
