“My music is me”: Musical Presentation as a way of forming and sharing identity in music therapy group

Abstract

Musical Presentation is a therapeutic tool for the purpose of increasing clients' and students' knowledge of self and others via presenting their music. It is a collection of various musical compositions that are chosen by the client/student according to their importance and meaning in their lives, to be played in a music therapy group and receive feedback from their peers. By choosing and recording specific musical pieces on a CD in a specific order the client/student creates a personal and meaningful musical collage, which enables her¹ to create and share her personal andmusical identity. The MP's various types and stages are being described and discussed. Two possible ways of analyzing the MP as a basis for understanding the presenter's intra- and interpersonal worlds are introduced: phenomenological analysis and Johari Window. An example of the Musical Presentation of Daniella, a music therapy student, accompanies the article in order to illustrate the use of this tool.

Keywords:

• musical presentation
• identity
• music therapy groups

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Daniella who kindly permitted me to use her MP as an example in this article.

I also wish to thank Dr. Cochavit Elefant and Dr. Nechama Yehuda for reading the first draft of this article and for their valuable comments.

Notes

¹ In this article I use she/her for both genders.

² Daniella is a music therapy student in her first year. The name was changed in order to protect her privacy. She agreed to participate in this research and signed a written consent form. Daniella gave me her diary to read and gave me permission to use it. I also interviewed her two weeks after her presentation and she gave me permission to use the interview as well. The above is taken from my own journal which I kept during the students' Mps.

³ Some presenters play live music in their presentation.

⁴ I have used it in other places where I have been teaching, but the main place isthe music therapy program at Bar Ilan University. I know that it has been utilized in other training programs in Israel by some of my graduates.

⁵ Daniella wrote this part immediately after the session ended.

⁶ Group members' names have been changed.

⁷ Words: Yechiel Halperin; melody: Joel Engel.

⁸ Words: Chaim Nachman Bialik; melody: Daniel Samborsky.

⁹ Words and melody: Daniel Samborsky.

¹⁰ The song was written by Earl Brown in 1968.

¹¹ When one starts playing at age six or seven, she usually has the ability to play these compositions at the beginning of adolescence.