Celanthropy, music therapy and ‘big-citizen’ Samaritans

Abstract

Music therapy is a vigorous, well-established field of theory and practice. The attribution of healing power to music goes a long way back. However, since Live Aid (1985) a new dimension of music therapy has emerged. This pertains to the role played by unqualified music superstars who act as activists and diplomats providing music therapy for mankind.

World-renowned celebrities like Sir Bob Geldof, Bono, Sting, Michael Stipe and Madonna transfer the kudos they have won in the field of popular entertainment to produce stateless solutions to global incidents and emergencies, and wider questions of inequality, hunger and injustice. They act as self-appointed global ‘big citizens’. They are unelected and mostly accountable. Yet they have the ear of many elected world leaders and the widespread support of the public.

This aggregate tendency is known by the name of celanthropy. It represents a remarkable switch in attention capital from state departments of health, education and foreign aid to celebrity advocates and campaigners. The celebrity big citizen is now the focal point of what might be termed stateless solutions to many global ills.

This paper examines the rise of this new relationship between celanthropy and music therapy. It demonstrates the contradictions involved, not least in the matter of trying to live with capitalism, rather than to change the way in which it works as a system of organised inequality and sanctioned injustice.

Keywords:

• celanthropy
• big citizen
• aid
• power
• gestural economy

Notes

1. The Musica Humana research project in Denmark maintains that for post-operative cardiac and neo-natal care, music reduces the prescription of tranquilizers and painkillers by 50%. See also De Nora (2000, pp. 71–72, 151–152).

2. Giffords was the victim of an assassination attempt in Tucson, Arizona, in 2011. Six people were killed and 13 injured in the shooting.

3. Nordoff Robbins uses music therapy to treat patients with medical conditions and social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. It is also used in palliative care. The Institute for Music and Neurologic Function uses music therapy to ‘awaken and heal’ patients suffering from a wide range of neurologic conditions including strokes, trauma, dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. City of Hope uses biomedical research and music therapy for the prevention and cure of cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

4. Symptomatically, it is unclear how the figure of 2 billion was determined. It was not the product of any recognisable quantitative/qualitative research methodology. At best the figure seems to have been drawn from an estimate of syndicated broadcasting rights, which is of dubious scientific value.

5. Kanye West famously used this broadcast to criticise state and federal support for hazard mitigation and disaster relief. His remarks implied tacit racism on the part of the authorities since many of the worst-affected people were the black population of New Orleans.

6. The term stateless solution refers to strategies for solving public ills that emerge outside the corporate-state nexus. Implementation of strategy may involve partnership with this nexus. However, the chief identifying characteristic of stateless solutions is that they emerge ‘spontaneously’ from ‘the people’.

7. Bono's role as an ‘everyman’ is an extraordinary lesson for our times. His current personal wealth has been estimated at $900 million. The 1.5% stake in Elevation Partners that he purchased in 2009 was transferred to the Facebook purchase of Elevation Partners in 2012, when it was estimated that a stake of 1.5% would be worth £1.5 billion. It is ludicrous to imply that a person of this wealth is in any tenable sense a spokesman for everyman.