Music Therapy

Touching a chord

Shamik Bag http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=246019

Kolkata, July 14: Anny, his ‘little speechless boy’,writes British author Nick Hornby in his book 31 Songs, remains shrouded under a blanket of silence. Diagnosed as autistic, along with a taste for salt and vinegar crisps and peanut-butter sandwiches, Danny, writes the fascinated father, has grown a taste for music too, even coining a word for it: ‘goggo’. ‘And he seems to be developing tastes, too’, writes Hornby. ‘A couple of weeks ago, in the car, he listened quite happily not to his usual nursery rhymes but to Tapestry, but when the CD-changer switched to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens, an outraged cry came from the back seat: ‘Goggo! Goggo!’ Louis Armstrong, the man who single-handedly created one of the most important musical idioms of the twentieth century, did not, apparently, create music. So we moved on to Nick Lowe instead, and he (Danny) was happy again. This was good news.’ Something similar is being tried out in a small, nondescript room in North Kolkata’s Manicktala: an attempt to make autistic children feel happy with music. It is part of a three-month long research into finding the ‘Effects of Vibroacoustic Therapy as Intervention for Physical and Mental Health Problems’. After a month of research, the final analysis of which will be done by the Indian Statistical Institute, the results are encouraging. “Though initially hesitant, many children head straight for the music room these days and are impatient to be let in. And they get angry if we don’t play music,” says Anjan K Basu, executive secretary of Step One Foundation, a non-profit group that has initiated the research, which also involves adults suffering from Alzheimer, dementia, insomnia, arthritis and work-related stress, among others. Dr Bruce Wigran, Dr Cheryl Dileo, Prof. Joseph J. Moreno, Prof Olav Skille and Dr Bruce Barber, notables in the field of music therapy, informs Basu, are members of the research’s advisory board. The use of vibroacoustic technology, which works on the principle of low-range sound between 40-60 Hertz (human auditory response range being between 20-16,000 Hertz) generating vibrations that can relax the human mind and body, is an important element of music therapy, says Basu. “It is not a curative treatment, but can assure a better quality of life. In the Western world, vibroacoustic therapy is an established area of treatment, but in India it is yet to come in,” he adds. But things might change with institutional support coming in for the use of music as a means of therapy. While Dr Debdulal Dutta Ray, senior lecturer in the psychology research unit of the Indian Statistical Institute will do the final analysis of Step One Foundation’s research, Rabindra Bharati University has recently sent a proposal to the UGC for setting up a Music and Dance Therapy department. If approved, the department will start offering degree courses from next year and help produce trained music therapists, who are currently few in number in India. “The raag-ragini tradition in India, as well as the ras of Indian Natya Shastra, is aimed at creating a feeling of well-being among listeners and audiences. But are we producing only entertainers? Much work has been done in the West in this area, and the proposed department will create trainers who will go ahead and better the lives of the sick with music and dance,” says Amita Dutta, dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at RBU. Even in other respects, the lack of awareness and research about music therapy in India might be considered as an irony by many. The Hindu invocation signifying inner peace and tranquility, Om, as well as Buddhist spiritual chants, after all, make use of the lower range of the human auditory response scale to produce deep, bassy and baritone sounds similar to the ones used by vibroacoustic and other music therapy forms. “Unlike films, which require cause-and-effect understanding by viewers, music has much greater appeal among children with behavioral problems. Many of them, especially autistic children, remain withdrawn and don’t socialise. But when we play music the response is immediate. Music therapy can eventually help in increasing their concentration levels, tame hyperactivity, create communication and interaction skills, and in the case of intellectually-challenged children, musical instruments can increase hand-eye coordination,” says Anamika Sinha, principal (centre for education) at Manovikas Kendra, the rehabilitation and research institute for the handicapped which has music as part of the curriculum for its 350 regular students for the last three years. That the Kendra has not been able to introduce a full-fledged music therapy course, informs Sinha, is because of the paucity of trained music therapists in India. It is a far cry from the West where Juliette Alvin, a concert cellist and teacher, founded the British Society for Music Therapy way back in 1958 and wrote the seminal book, Music for the Handicapped Child in 1965. In the US, according to Mary Adamek, who participated through video conferencing at a Music Therapy and Education workshop at the American Centre on Friday, there are 5000 therapists, a large association, The American Music Therapy Association, and over 70 colleges and universities offering music therapy programmes. “Unlike speech and physical therapy, we are not looking at increasing music skills of the child with music therapy, where the goals are different. We are not expecting the child to create music, but rather, to address their social, emotional, communication and cognitive needs. With the coming of advanced hearing aid implements, music therapy can even help deaf people,” mentioned the director of Clinical Activities in Music Therapy at the University of Iowa. “But as music therapy spreads across the world, it should be conducted while keeping local traditions and cultures in mind,” she added at the workshop, where among others, Mohan D. Sundaram, an American Board-Certified Music Therapist and official representative of the World Federation of Music Therapy was present. While Dr. Reena Sen, director (training and research), Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, rues the lack of trained music therapists, she admits its huge remedial potential. But, also significantly, she talks about music therapy making music a purer art form for what it means and does to the mental health of a challenged child. Something, the father of an autistic child, when he sees his child keeping a silent rhythm to the song, will readily admit.