I was today-minus-3-days years old when I first heard about the Disability Day of Mourning. This is a day for remembering the victims of filicide, specifically victims who were people with disabilities. It started in 2012 and is held annually on March 1st. I’m grateful to music therapist Jessica Leza for my introduction to this Day. For the past several years March 1st has also been World Music Therapy Day, a day for the international music therapy community to usher in awareness of the profession and the impact of music therapists. I’m not exactly sure when World Music Therapy Day started, o ..read more

My primary responsibility in my current academic position is to train future music therapists. The vast majority of my more traditional teaching load is geared towards the preprofessional music therapist—introduction to music therapy, two music therapy methods courses, and pre-practicum, a course where students learn foundational elements of how to “do” music therapy (assessment, goals and objectives, etc.). As Clinical Training Director I oversee student fieldwork experiences, from placements to assignments to clinical supervision. Suffice it to say I’ve spent a fair amount of time and energ ..read more

I have a confession: I am not a fan of the word “musicking.” Not only is it a silly-sounding word to me, but you can’t even find it in Merriam-Webster. (Okay, technically it’s described as the “present participle of music,” meaning it’s the ongoing action of the thing called “music.” But unlike other present participles it doesn’t have its own definition. But I digress…) However, I’m now willing to admit that perhaps I should be more open to musicking and its underlying concept. Or at the very least I’m ready to read and learn more about it. What prompted this shift? A talk I heard in Montrea ..read more

It’s January! Know what that means…? Time for the annual Music Therapy Social Media Advocacy month! I have had the distinct pleasure of helping to coordinate this project since its inception in 2012. Whereas in year’s past we invited music therapy bloggers and podcasters to talk about advocacy, this year we’re structuring the project differently by inviting ALL professional and pre-professional music therapists to participate! Here’s the deal…we are encouraging music therapists to find and share their “advocacy song” by completing the following: THINK of an existing song that could be your ad ..read more

I was recently inspired by an episode of the Revisionist History podcast to explore musical characteristics associated with “sad” music. This particular episode stimulated some other thoughts as well, in particular the role of geography and song preference. Where does this come from? In the podcast episode, host Malcolm Gladwell explored characteristics associated with specific genres—more specifically the repetitiveness of song lyrics from those genres—and how these may mirror personality characteristics of the people from those areas where the genres emerged. Let me break that down a bit mo ..read more