Edwards, J. (2007). Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts.

Shoemark, Helen

Edwards, J. (2007). Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 207 pages; ISBN (10): 1-84718-351-4 / ISBN (13): 97818147183514. Price UK 34.99 [pounds sterling], US$ 52.99.

The compact form of Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts belies the depth of material embraced across 12 chapters. Jane Edwards' mature editorial style draws together international authors from associated fields to illuminate the potential roles of music in health and community settings. Music therapy authors are interspersed with sociologists, psychologists and musicological backgrounds to define community by common parameters such as country, but less commonly by age, cultural disparity, shared musicality and the demands of research communities. The breadth of authors precludes a singularity of perspective which can plague edited music therapy texts, and enables a dispassionate criticism about how music in healthcare communities is researched.

Clare O'Callaghan offers a meaningful definition of the transient communities created through the shared experience of music in her five categories of communities. She expands Aasgaard's writing about the cooperative possibilities of individually directed music therapy and expands the potential of the incidental experience for the various stakeholders.

Joanne Loewy outlines the clinical model of integrative medical music psychotherapy which she and colleague Benedikte Scheiby created for the Louis and Lucille Armstrong Music Therapy Program at Beth Israel Medical Centre, New York (chapter 2). A unique aspect of this program is that it attends to both the vertical growth of expertise in music therapy and the horizontal growth in expertise of the various areas into which music therapy may be integrated. The impact of music therapy purposefully runs across the entire community of the hospital.

Across the ocean again, Hilary Moss reports on the programs which developed in her dual role a music therapist and hospital Arts Officer in a large acute academic hospital in Dublin (chapter 3). The Arts Office co-ordinates a series of formal programs including the live concert, the orchestra in residence, and music therapy programs which are planned for specific areas of the hospital where impact is appropriate. Moss offers a four-part criteria for selecting the appropriate form of music presentation, illustrated by a series of case studies and appendices.

Moving away into a music psychology perspective, the experienced research team of Bailey and Davidson highlight quantitative and qualitative findings from a series of studies of singing participants of all social backgrounds and music skill. While noting that the "most important" results were obtained from "two large scale quantitative investigations" (p.55) reported elsewhere, they use their chapter as a platform to convey in-depth personal views from three women to illustrate the revelation that group singing provides individuals with a sense of well-being, including spiritual and emotional feelings, cognitive and physical arousal, and satisfying social connection.

Batt-Rawden, Trythall and DeNora's conceptual model of illness in which illness "imperils our ability to make, communicate and share meaning, pleasure and meaning." (p.65) establishes the precedent for participation in music to foster meaning making (chapter 5). This team from Exeter University exemplifies the invested interest of researchers outside music therapy in understanding the social capital of music participation. Reporting on two studies, the authors explicate the idea that while musicking undoubtedly can be therapeutic that it is not always identified as such, but rather making it "ordinary" as a bridge back to "normal" (p.68). Trythall's fascinating explication of this idea is presented through her research of work in the UK's Council for Music in Hospitals. Likewise Batt-Rawden's Music as participation and reconnection with "self' or "others " study might be claimed as music therapy but here, its conceptualisation and analysis is firmly located in the idea that connecting and social recovery is located with the collective product of the "musickers" (p.76).

In chapter 6, Norma Daykin's breadth of capability as a researcher is apparent. Standing one step back from music therapy and taking a dispassionate view, she calls on examples from the UK to remind us that there is always more than one way to look at the value of an experience. While arts health is growing exponentially we are able to benefit from the wider lens of arts health to explore alternative theoretical bases upon which to exploit the dimensions of the work. She notes that the insistence on quantitative models of research may even do a disservice to the true worth.

In chapter 7 the book takes a definite turn back towards more traditional territory. Lars Ole Bonde highlights the layers of community to which a researcher must provide authentic value in the research project. Community in this case involves, cultural philosophical, financial and political communities to which the researcher is beholden. His deftly built arguments illuminate the enfolding layers of consideration for research in Bonny Methods Guided Imagery and Music, but pertain to any researcher grappling with where and how to anchor their research.

Likewise, Wendy Magee offers a rich perspective on undertaking research in the medical context supportive of research. With the benefit of well-formed hindsight, she offers salient lessons, not least of which is the timely consideration of design issues to achieve effective planning, rich analyses and writing, and avoid the delays of working with others in the real world.

Returning to the clinical context for the last few chapters, Metzner and Burger delve into the central issue of interpretation in intercultural music therapy practice. As therapists in another country, they used the dual considerations of community music therapy and psychoanalytic theory to offer an exquisite caution against a hegemonic attitude which is vital in this age of vast migrational movement. On the mirror side to this, Edwards, Scahill and Phelan (chapter 10) offer the reader an introduction to a program in which therapists at "home" in their own country use the shared humanity of music as a safe container for asylum seeking mothers and infants. Anecdotes capture their experience of mothers who attended the program.

Alison Ledger provides the closing chapter in this clinical section with a more traditional reporting of clinical examples from a setting for people with dementia. We do not customarily define a community by aged, but perhaps this inclusion offers a chance to reframe this overlooked possibility. Ledger focuses on the ways in which music therapy might be structured to help people successfully participate in community life.

To bring the book to a close, Edwards provides a tightly written chapter about the historical antecedents to modern music therapy interspersed with analysis of what it is we might interpret through a modern lens.

Each chapter of this book is cleanly written and offers a diversity of material. The only criticism I would have is that the logical progression of the book is not apparent in the table of contents, but does make sense on reading the introduction.

Helen Shoemark PhD RMT

Senior music therapist--Neonatology

Co-ordinator, Music Therapy Clinical Research Program

The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne