A music and health perspective on music's perceived “goodness”

Abstract

In this paper consideration is given to aspects of social and professional music use premised from a “music as health” perspective. This critical exploration is intended to reveal values about music participation and music listening, with consideration of the way music is constructed as a contributor to social gains within music as health application. The frequently encountered expectation that music participation and music listening are innately good and “helpful” is examined. A range of projects are described and examined with reference to the theme of music's “commodified goodness” or what has elsewhere been termed, the ubiquitous “goodness of music” (Edwards, 2008b).

Keywords:

• music and health
• music therapy
• music education
• homeless choirs

Notes

¹Notable recent developments include the appointment of Lars Ole Bonde to the Chair of Music and Health in Oslo, Norma Daykin's appointment to a Chair of Arts in Health at UWE, and the founding of the Music and Health Research Group at the University of Limerick, led by the author. See also Stige's discussion of music and health in relation to the fields of music therapy and ethnomusicology (Stige, 2008).

²While other authors of relevance to this essay use the notion of the closed framework (for example, Attali, 1985) here I am referencing the idea of the closed framework as discussed in Popper's essay “The myth of the framework” (Popper, 1976).

³Some elements of the notion of music being able to keep returned World War II soldiers in convalescent hospitals in the US in the “right frame of mind” was discussed in a review of historic accounts of the use of music in hospitals (see Edwards, 2008a).

⁴It is beyond the scope of this paper to reference comprehensive examples but a brief review of reading lists in music therapy and music education degree syllabi reveal references such as Deliège and Sloboda (1985; 1997), Deutsch (1999), Hodges (1999), Peretz & Zatorre (2003) and Juslin & Sloboda (2001). Also note the special issue of the Music Educator's Journal on Music and the Brain in 2000.

⁵While the descriptor “homeless” references accommodation issues, it also suggests the possibility that a person described thus will have a greater chance of mental health difficulties including addiction, psychosis, or personality disorder (Fazel, Khosla, Doll, & Geddes, 2008).

⁶These are of course not the only choirs for homeless people. The Choir with No Name, started in London in 2008, and the Spirit of the Streets choir in Perth, Australia have also received television and community media coverage.

⁷This theme of being moved to tears is also reflected in a newspaper headline in The Age “Not a dry eye as Hard Knocks takes Town Hall”, June 25, 2007 see http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/06/24/1182623741923.html

⁸The homepage of the Choir of Hard Knocks states that a contract was signed for a TV series with the national broadcaster (ABC) before the choir was formed. See http://www.choirofhardknocks.com.au/

⁹For example DeNora outlines the debate about the commodification of music proposed by Adorno as follows “[Adorno's] idea that one's hearing, if fed on a diet of the predictable, pre-digested materials (musical cliché) would ‘regress’ in the same, way that, as it is often argued, one's faculties of taste and smell regress in the face of a diet of soda pop and soft-textured McFood” (DeNora, 2003, p. 20).