The power of music in therapy…

I’m almost positive you had heard of this Hans Christian Andersen quote at least once in your life. Maybe on a bumper sticker or as an inspirational desktop background picture. But these words, along with many other quotes, stories, and anecdotes about the power and impact that music has in our lives, are at the backbone of why music therapists are music therapists.

I recently attended the 45th Annual CAMT Conference in May. The Canadian Association of Music Therapists (CAMT) is the national professional association, “dedicated to fostering the practice of music therapy in clinical, educational, and community settings throughout Canada.”

The last time I had attended the annual conference was a couple of years back in 2016, while I was near graduating from my master’s degree. The difference of three years of work between being a student attendee back then to having worked as a professional music therapist today was evident, almost amusingly so.

“Why is it that it seems to be only when all the other therapies aren’t working that we decide…hey, let’s give music therapy a shot!” (wildly paraphrased but it captures the tone precisely). It may sound a little dramatic but in my few years of work and even before as a student in internship, this rang so, so true.

Music is powerful. It moves, it connects, it touches the deepest parts of us without so much asking for permission but even deeper when invited.

Music is the heart and soul of music therapy and while the field of music is wide and vast (there is rhythm, melody, genre, style, instrumentation, vocalization, noise, silence…), it is also so simply engrained into our lives. We hear lullabies sung to us from a young age, nature surrounds us with natural sounds, we pick through and learn our preferred music tastes and almost every significant event in our lives is decorated with music.

The conference was refreshing. Not only because it had been three years since my last attendance, but because it was nice to be in a room with hundreds of other people who already believed in what you were doing. Music therapists from not only across the country, but from as far as Australia(!), gathered for four days to share, learn and connect with one another about what strides music therapy had made since the last time they gathered. While it was refreshing, I can’t deny that it wasn’t equally as tiring with so much information, research and news being shared all in the span of four days.

I am also incredibly grateful for music therapy, as I would not have found a career that so closely linked the power of music and the impact it has on people of all ages and kinds. But more so, I am forever thankful for music. It may be the simplest thing – a tune, a song, a short experience of lessons or sessions – but the impact is long-lasting and life-changing.