Music Speaks And So Do Music Therapists! Part Two Of Our Conversation With Elizabeth Schwartz, LCAT, MT-BC

Here is part two of our conversation with Elizabeth!

Elizabeth: "Our musical tastes, our own musical tastes, does not inform what we need to be as music therapists. So, now I just lectured you, so I'm gonna stop and give you a chance to-"

Sam: "It was great!"

Kat: "No, I loved that! Because honestly it kind of took me back to my college experience. Sam, I know your experience was different, you're a dancer, you were doing musicals, you were already kind of in the culture. But, I was coming from a church scene. There is no classical training, there is no look at the notes on the page and present. It's all coming from inside of you, and it's all coming from the culture that you're coming from. So, as a Puerto Rican woman, this is a whole new world that I'm stepping into. There's a lot of expectations you feel you have to meet and you have to meet them quickly. And, then I looked around and said, "everyone seems more familiar with this". I'm telling you if there was a salsa lecture- and I know there was the usage of the claves (instrument) but, there were just sometimes where I felt more represented in a music ensemble than in a music therapy course. And, there's so many opportunities to bridge that gap, it's just the actual curriculum-it does not. It really is the onus of the educators, and also of the students to express that interest."

Elizabeth: "Right, and I don't want to interrupt you but I'm gonna add the third pillar, which is our professional organization So, we have to put all three of those having equal responsibility."

Kat: "Exactly, exactly. But, it also has to feel reciprocal, like a student can ask what they want to learn about, right? But then as you said it's a structural thing, it's systemic. You come to the school, and you learn a thing, and then you graduate- goodbye! You know what I'm saying? It's so refreshing to hear that this is on your radar, because I was going to ask are there any recent trends in music therapy that are on your horizon? Are there ideologies or approaches that are interesting you and that you are researching? So, this is beyond, This is something I'm very happy to hear."

Elizabeth: "Alright, and stop me if I begin to lecture a little bit too much. I think there's a lot of newer trends and I think part of the challenge is the way in which we communicate about music therapy, not only in this country but globally. I think it's critically important if we're gonna move forward as an understood and respected discipline to have better communication, both among ourselves and communicating to the outside world. And, the trends that most excite me right now are the breaking down of clinical walls. And the recognition that we have moved beyond always having to say and drawing back to, "will you just give me any job?", to really owning it. And we have the pieces now, I really do believe. We've got the solid music cognition/music neuroscience based foundation. Some of which is being done by music therapists and some of which is being done by partners in music therapy. We've got the efficacy research about the differences that happen not only for individuals, but communities as well as societies with music and with the ways we understand music as a human condition. And, we also have, I believe, people who are interested in funding these kinds of resources if only we can be free enough to tap into that. So, you know what is needed to move into that place? We need to get much better about talking about music therapy and what music therapy does. Part of being old and being in the field a long time, is that you can say what you think. I think we all need to take a step back, and move away from the territorial nature of protecting our particular way of practice, and being able to see the universals as well as the connections. That's part of why I was so excited about the musicianship project, because we were looking at all different approaches and what is the connecting feature. And the connecting feature is our understanding and ability to provide music in a specific kind of way, and that really connects whether you are working in an outcome based type of practice or you're working in a more psychoanalytical way of practice. That's where our commonalities are, and we need to focus in on that a little more. I think that we also need to be speaking up more about not only individual work, which is based, as the two of you probably had, in that medical model, where we're gonna close you off in one little space with one little therapist, right? We're beyond that. And to really advocate for the place of music therapy and music therapists and communities and societies as pivotal ways of providing change. The challenge right now is that other people are moving into those spaces and they're leaving us behind and I see that as a challenge to us. That being said there's a lot of people who are moving in these new spaces. I just came back from the New England region conference, I like to kind of conference hop. I don't know if you knew that I was kind of a part business owner with a music therapist called Meredith Pizzi. Meredith owns Roman Music Therapy. She's spun off a training platform called Raising Harmony. and now she is running all of that herself. What I realized is I don't like business, and I hate business, and I hate having to do that. But, in looking at her practice in particular, she has published and spoken a number of times on the different levels of where music therapy and music therapists can be instrumental in communities. Even things like going out into community parks right now and leading songs for particular purposes, and I'm not gonna get political here, although I don't think you can separate politics from practice right now."

Sam: "It's true."

Elizabeth: "But, there are people who are writing and presenting and operating in those more comprehensive spaces. It has not yet trickled down to most of the education programs."

Come back for part three next Monday!