"Map of music"

[catmandu2]

Here's a pretty cool intro to music. I especially appreciate the anthropological perspective and variety of music functions. I have to say the section on "medicinal" or healing practices - where people are "dancing their illness" - was evocative for me.



Prior to covid I was teaching/facilitating music at our area homeless shelter. There, it is not uncommon for folks to engage in just this type of thing. It's a very interesting setting and opportunity to observe and participate in this aspect of music.

[Sheila Lagrand]

Interesting! My degrees are in anthropology, and my Master's thesis focused in part on music lessons as an example for comparison with language socialization--or "learning to talk" as people who don't spend too much time in musty libraries might call it.

[catmandu2]

I have graduate training in anthro too, but really I'm just sort of an arm-chair musicologist when I'm not playing. I worked in public health and have an avid interest in healing and community work, and I use art and music as effective modalities. I've never worked in such a floridly interesting setting as the shelter. As the narrator in the vid stated, western music therapy methods employ such modalities (as "dancing one's disease") but rarely in the communal context. Everything happens at the shelter. So it is a place where you find the extraordinary. I had planned to document my experience when I started this a few years ago - basing my work on the "Skid Row art project" I saw on a PBS program. But the variables and outcomes are so great and many that I abandoned that piece.

[catmandu2]

Ll