Ethnic music therapy
Ethnic music therapy (also ancient oriental music therapy ) has its origin in ancient Greek teaching, which assumes that music has a cleansing effect on the soul, the affects and the character of the person.
The human being is seen as a physical-soul-spiritual unit. Only when body, mind and soul are in harmony can psychological and physical complaints be processed and thus eliminated.
The aim of ethnomusic therapy is to strengthen the personality by establishing a relationship between the environment and the psychological, inner world.
history
“The body is sick when the soul is weakened, and it is impaired when it is impaired. Hence the healing of the body takes place through the healing of the soul by restoring its powers and bringing its substance into the right order with the help of sounds that can do this and are suitable for it. ”- Al Farabi (870–950 AD .)
Music therapy in the Middle East has been a system that has been documented for around 1000 years and - from today's perspective - has therapeutic, prophylactic and rehabilitative significance. Its roots are in the ancient Greek teaching of "ethos" in music. This assumed that the music itself had an "immediate and cleansing effect" on the soul, affects and character of the human being.
In the Middle East, this “music therapy” idea, which was still little concrete, was taken up and further differentiated in practice - by Plato , Aristotle and the later Neoplatonists. From today's perspective, Augustine should also be mentioned as a philosophical, religious-spiritual and cultural link between Orient and Occident.
In the Orient a new sound system developed - the " Makam system " . Islamic scholars such as Al ‑ Kindi, Al ‑ Farabi, Al ‑ Rhasi, Avicenna , and others. a. linked the application of this music system both with the idea of a close interplay between mental and physical processes, as well as with the concept of humoral pathology - the doctrine of four juices. Now "[...] certain types of melodies, rhythms and even the four strings of the lute with certain bodily fluids, affects, primary qualities, cardinal virtues, seasons and times of day, constellations of the stars, etc. have been put into direct relationship and put together in various connections to form whole systems." Caraway 1977)
On this basis, music therapy became a regular medical auxiliary discipline in the hospitals of the Near East from the 9th century onwards. Music as an audible musical implementation of the cosmic sound nourished both the “spiritual soul” and the “material body”. In the spirit of a “ doctrine of affect ”, it unfolded its emotionalizing effect on the listener both in the “Middle East” and in the Occident through the respective common music styles, melodies and genres. With the conceptual change in medicine from humoral pathology to biomedicine, the historical concept of music therapy in the Orient lost its theoretical basis for about 150 years and was practically forgotten.
In the 1980s, the psychologist, musician and Sufi teacher Oruc Güvenc in Turkey took up this old music therapy teaching system for the first time using historical sources. Together with the later cultural scientist, cultural and social anthropologist and music therapist Gerhard Tucek, the first steps towards a practical revitalization have also been taken in Europe since 1986 in the form of courses.
Therapy concept and mode of action
The therapeutic effect of ethnomuscular therapy is based on a scientifically demonstrable restructuring of psycho-biological order structures in the human organism. Molecular biological findings, for example, show the connection between the activation of self-healing powers and the vagototonic state of regulation (relaxation) of the autonomic nervous system. Such a state of regulation can be evoked and supported by means of individually meaningful musical content and forms of expression in the context of a therapeutic relationship.
Methodologically, the mutual musical dialogue between patient and therapist, the “regulatory medical” effect of music played live by the therapist, as well as therapeutic movement and dance exercises are used.
Image of man
Ethnic music therapy understands the human being as a physical-spiritual-mental unit. Similar to today's behavioral therapy, the focus is on the “healthy” parts of the personality, ethnomusic therapy focuses on the image of the “healed person”: the development of the person to the essence on which they are based.
It promotes the turning of the individual person in a meaningful openness to the outside, inside and transcendent world, to develop his individual "healing" (his "wholeness"). This process of knowledge is essentially open and does not draw any sharp dividing lines between physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions of being. Therapy essentially aims within its medical mission profile to induce the patient to implement life principles as a concretization of a higher order principle ("e-movere").
This explains the therapeutic approach of strengthening a person's spiritual and physical nature by strengthening their spirituality. A therapeutic approach that is efficient according to today's criteria requires sound theoretical and practical ethnological and cultural anthropological knowledge from the music therapist, as well as knowledge of musicology , music psychology , human pathology and western therapy methodology. The concept of ethnomusic therapy also makes use of the basic human ability to recognize and act intuitively.
Therapy goals
Three basic concerns can be formulated as overarching therapy goals:
- The desire to support the patient in the therapeutic process in (re) establishing a coherent interplay between a (outwardly facing sociocultural) design of a successful way of life and inner subjective coherence.
- Flexibilization and balancing of vegetative rhythms (sympathetic and parasympathetic / vagal tone) of the patient by means of music or movement-induced activation or relaxation. Studies (including Tracy 2002) showed the connection between stress (reduction) and self-healing powers.
- The therapist's credible mediation of human sympathy for the patient's fate and therapeutic path, which arises from a loving attitude (in the sense of “agape” as opposed to “eros”). This leads to the experience of connectedness and appreciation, which in the vegetative part is often represented as relaxation.
methodology
A distinction can be made between the active and the receptive form of ethnomusic therapy. Both are based on a non-conflict-oriented concept based on the principle of physical and mental balance.
Basics of receptive ethnomusic therapy
The historical basis of the theory of action of receptive ethnomusic therapy is the "doctrine of ethos" in music: Its basic idea in music is the theory of a close interrelationship, based on the principle of movement, between sound and rhythm on the one hand and the human emotional life on the other. Its core sentence is: "The audible movement is not only able to represent and reflect the movement of the soul, but also to generate it" (according to H. Albert (L 1899) in: Kümmel 1977). What is striking here is the relationship to the idea of the healing potency of music as represented by Plato in his scientific work Timaeus - an approach that extends into the 20th century: the natural law-based ontic (i.e. also human) ordering principle, in the form of sound.
The methodological orientation is conceptualized “ allopathically ”, thus follows the principle of the physiological and mental compensation of deficits or surpluses through harmonization and strengthening. This phenomenon finds its methodological answer today in acupuncture systems, biophoton concepts and ultimately even in pharmacologically oriented psychiatric schools that differentiate between stimulating, sedating and psychologically regulating drugs. Ethnomusic therapy is based on a consistent, not conflict-oriented treatment plan, but rather, similar to the paradigms of homeostasis and equilibration in psychosomatic medicine, based on the principle of balance. She understands music as a link between physiological and psychological events in people. The ancient oriental treatment concept includes therapeutic, prophylactic and post-therapeutic aspects.
The therapeutic effect is based on a sequence of certain modes and melodies (macaques). Their structurally intuitive path differs significantly from the musical piece-sequence plans of western music therapies, which represent a more analog-heuristic approach. Macamas are nine-tone (i.e. a whole tone is divided into nine partial tone steps), microtonally aligned tone scales that are based on specific sound structures on a certain fundamental tone and are therefore not freely transposable. Of the 375 macams known by name today, around 50 macams are actually still in use.
The concept of active ethnomusic therapy
The concept of active ethnomusic therapy, which can be described as "movement (consciousness) therapy" in modern western usage, consists of a sequence of initially defined movement elements that are later expanded by the patient improvisationally (Tucek 2000). Therapeutic movements not only have a functional character, such as physiotherapy-rehabilitative movement exercises, but are also carriers and mediators of universal spiritual principles.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from Werner F. Kümmel: Music and Medicine - Their Interrelationship in Theory and Practice from 800 to 1800 . Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg 1977
- ↑ Werner F. Kümmel: Music and Medicine - Their Interrelationship in Theory and Practice from 800 to 1800 . Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg 1977
literature
- Werner F. Kümmel: Music and Medicine - Their Interrelationship in Theory and Practice from 800 to 1800 . Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg 1977
- H. Pfrogner: Living sound world. About the phenomenon of music. 2nd edition, Verlag Langen-Mueller, Munich 1981
- G. Tucek: Cultural anthropological considerations on ethno-music therapy in Austria. in: MuG Music and Health 19/2011, pp. 21–27, Reichert Verlag, 2011
- G. Tucek, E. Ferstl, FM Fritz: A study of synchronization behavior in a group of test persons during Baksy and Dhikr exercises via psycho-physiological monitoring. In: Music that works. Eds. R. Haas, V. Brandes, pp. 267–294, Springer, Vienna New York 2009
- G. Tucek: Selected Aspects of Cultural Transfer. Ethno music therapy in transition. , in: The mask. Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology No. 1, June 2007, pp. 39–42