Music: a universal language

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Raymond MacDonald Glasgow Caledonian
University

• Music a universal language

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Context

• We are all musical
• Every human being has a biological and social
  guarantee of musicianship.
  Hodges, 1995 Trevarthen, 2002
  Hargreaves, MacDonald and Miell, 2002

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Musical identities

• We all have a musical identity
• Infant communication (Trevarthen, 1998)
• Musical taste (Zillman Gan, 1997)
• Musical ability (MacDonald, ODonnell Davies,
  1999)

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Identities in Music

• Individuals who are involved in musical
  participation develop personal identities that
  are intrinsically musical
• The Identity of a musician is a
  Socially/Culturally defined concept

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Identities in Music

• Influenced by certain non-musical factors
• Identity paradoxes
• The family (Borthwick Davidson, 2002)
• The school (Lamont, 2002)
• Jazz identities (Mac Donald and Wilson, 2006)

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Music is a fundamental channel of communication

• Music can facilitate
• A lifeline to human interaction
• Powerful therapeutic effects
• Intensely emotional experiences
• Remembering of specific events
• Music is semantically ambiguous
• It has a floating intentionality (Cross, 2005)

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Musical communication
Hargreaves,
MacDonald and Miell, 2005
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Sounds of Progress Aims and objectives

• To provide access to creative music and theatre
  activities
• To facilitate integration between disadvantaged
  and non disadvantaged groups
• To challenge stereotypes of disability
• To create employment opportunities

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Design

• 60 participants
• 20 participants in each of 3 groups
• Experimental group (Gamelan workshops)
• Intervention control group
• Non-intervention control group

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Measures

• Participants in all groups assessed before and
  after sessions on
• Musical ability
• Communication skills
• Self perception of musical ability

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Results

• Significant Improvements in
• Musical ability
• Communication skills
• Self perception of musical ability

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A Qualitative Study

• The social model of disability
• Experimental and observational research does not
  shed light upon more general beliefs, thoughts
  and feelings of the people who participate in
  music activities.

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Identities talking about music

• participants talk about their involvement in
  musical activities (including listening) help
  construct and maintain particular musical
  identities. The accounts function to create,
  maintain and negotiate identities, rather than
  reflect any objective truth
• Discourse not only functions to fulfil identity
  needs for the participants but also helps to
  shape the participants experiences of music
  itself
• Talking about music is a crucially important
  aspect of the overall process of musical
  communication
• Social constructionist view of identity

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Semi-Structured Interviews

• In-depth interviews with a small sample of
  participants (N6).
• Participants were all involved in SOP activities
  and had been for a number of years.
• Interviews taped recorded and transcribed
• Repeated listenings and readings of data allowed
  for themes to emerge
• Themes refined and checked using thematic
  analysis techniques (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998)

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Theme 1 - Other peoples expectations

• I remember I used to go up in the ambulance up
  to the hospital years ago (.) and there was this
  old woman she was always complaining about her
  illness (.) we used to call her 57 varieties!
  (both laugh) She used to always say about me,
  you know, hes in a wee world of his own there
  (.) and youre sitting listening! (both laugh)
  and youre sitting listening oh aye, Im in a
  wee world of my own here! (laughs) (.) but there
  again, (.) that same old woman, I started a
  sing-song in the ambulance one time and she
  started to talk (.) she started to talk to me
  normally! (laughs) you know what I mean? (both
  laugh) so there you go she forgot about the
  wee world of my own when I started the
  sing-song! The attitude changed.

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Theme 2 - Professionalism

• like when folk came up and spoke to you, they
  werent giving you the sympathy vote any more,
  you know, you thought, (.) well (.) I must be,
  (.) I must be doing all right! You know! you
  didnt get all that pat on the head and that oh,
  thats very good son maybe some would think
  (.) oh, these disabled folk what can they, you
  know, what can they do? you know (laughs) .
  but, I think (.) think they get rather a shock
  when they (.) when they hear us! then when
  things started to get a wee bit professional I
  thought this cant be bad!

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Researching the Arts in Scottish Education (RAISE)

• Explored the views of teachers on a range of
  issues relating to the teaching of the arts in
  primary schools and the first two years of
  secondary schools.
• Six Focus groups and 232 Questionnaires
• Delivering the Arts in Scottish Schools (2005)
  Wilson, MacDonald, Byrne, Sheridan Ewing
  http//www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications

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How the arts are valued

• Participants saws the arts as of fundamental
  importance
• Schools were seen as a stronghold for the arts
• Its important that every child in Scotland has a
  meaningful creative and aesthetic experience
  throughout their school career, from Primary 1
  until they leave, and it should be core, it
  should be a core experience.

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How the arts are valued

• Less able to allocate equal priority to both arts
  and other areas
• the thing is with maths and language weve got
  to teach it, thats weve not got a choice
  whereas, music or other then its just cant do
  that this term.

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Benefits of the arts

• Growth in self confidence, self-esteem, social
  and communication skills, emotional intelligence,
  discernment and being able to articulate
  individual opinions.
• I say to my children that I cant think of any
  job, any university course, any college course
  where drama will not help you, it will be vital
  for some things, it will help you in everything.
  And I also say to them that even if you were
  never to work in your life, you will still need
  these skills, youll still need to deal with your
  family, youll still need to deal with your
  friends, you still need to deal with officialdom

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Improvisation

• Improvisation is an under used musical resource
  (MacDonald and Wilson 2006)
• Evidence that teachers have significant concerns
  about how to teach creativity in general and
  improvisation in particular
• (MacDonald and Byrne, 2003)

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Current conceptions of improvisation

• Improvisation is the highest form of art
• (Daniel Barenboim
  - BBC Reith lectures 2006)
• improvisation is a parlour trick anyone can do
  it (Willie Wonker - Charlie and the Chocolate
  Factory)
• The fundamental mastery misconception

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Music listening examples

• Popular music a pervasive and neglected
  art form?

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An investigation of the therapeutic effects of
music listening

• Interested in subjective responses to particular
  pieces of music and not responses to pre-selected
  music.
• In many experimental studies the precise nature
  of the music is not specified and music is
  pre-selected with an assumption that playing
  this pre-selected music will be relaxing for all
  participants.

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An investigation of the therapeutic effects of
music listening in hospital
3 X 2 ANOVA F(2,76)65.36,plt.01
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Music and pain perception (Mitchell et al 2006)

• 54 participants
• 3 trials
• White noise
• Anxiolytic music
• Preferred music
• Dependent variables
• Tolerance time
• Intensity rating of pain
• Perceived control rating

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Tolerance times
Significant differences Preferred music greater
than white noise plt.001and anxiolytic music
plt.001
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Pain rating on visual analogue scale
Significant differences in females Preferred
music lower than white noise plt.001 and
anxiolytic music plt.05 Anxiolytic music lower
than white noise plt.001
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Perceived control rating
Significant differences Preferred music greater
than white noise plt.001 and anxiolytic music
plt.001 Anxiolytic music greater than white noise
plt.05
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Preferred music

• These findings replicated in other contexts
• Kidney dialysis
• Cancer patients
• During exercise
• Computer game play

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Key Themes

• Music can have intense subjective meanings.
• These meanings may not relate to structural
  aspects of the music (eg tempo or mode).
• Preferred music is an important variable
• Listening to our preferred music may make
  compositions with intensely varying structural
  features functionally equivalent.

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Implications
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Summary

• Theoretical overview musical identities musical
  communication
• Sounds of Progress
• Researching the Arts in Scottish Education
• Music listening examples