The focus of this article is on how musical interaction can contribute to bonding and early interaction. This article is based on a music therapy project in a pedagogical institution for people with visual impairment. The study is qualitative and exploratory, where children with visual impairments (aged 1–4 years) and their caregivers participated in music therapy sessions over 10 weeks. Data have been collected by participant observation, video recordings, and interviews. Moments of positive interactions in music were selected and analyzed, and the selections were triangulated by interviews with the caregivers. The data material indicates that music therapy promotes positive bonding patterns and enhances early interaction. Musical interaction facilitates elements of early interaction that can be challenging for children with visual impairments and their sighted caregivers. Both caregivers and children seemed to experience one another as a source of joyful interaction. This article discusses the findings in the broader perspective of disability studies and community music therapy and argues that music therapy promotes positive interactions and empowerment of children with visual impairment and their caregivers.
Despite contemporary perspectives in resource-oriented music therapy, community music therapy, and anti-oppressive practice, there seems still to be a tendency to describe disabled children and their families in a pathologizing, problem-focused way. Disability is often located within the child and not in the societal structures that sustain and support the concept of disability as tragedy and burden for the families. Queer theories challenge the concepts of normality and fixed identities, reject pathologization, and politicize access. In this paper, I attempt to explore how queertheories offer a critical perspective on normativity, identity, and power. I will do this by exploring the concept of normality and normativity and discourse current representations of disabled children in the music therapy literature and by reflecting upon an ongoing participatory action research project where I aim to co-create knowledge on musicking, its accessibility, and meaning together with disabled children and their families. I argue that we need to change the way we talk and write about our practice as well as to challenge the concepts and attitudes toward diversity in order to contribute to inclusive environments that appreciate and celebrate diversity.
This theoretical paper aims to explore the role of a disability studies perspective in music therapy. Disability studies in context of music therapy is a field that is under development. I argue that a disability studies perspective both supports and challenges music therapy models, practice, and research. A disability studies perspective provides a theoretical framework for social justice and the appraisal of diversity, as well as it challenges attitudes and values. This paper suggests dialogues and collaboration between music therapy and disability studies.
This special issue explores the topic of power and language in music therapy in the various ways it manifests within and beyond music therapy. We, the guest editors, are a group of four people at different points of their academic career, some have English as their primary languages and others don’t, we are neurodivergent and neurotypical, living in Norway, Japan, and the US. Our group consists of two music therapists, a musicologist, and an AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) researcher.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.