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The Naka­ta­ni Gong Orches­tra (NGO) is a tra­ve­ling par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry com­mu­ni­ty orches­tra foun­ded and led by Japa­nese mas­ter per­cus­sio­nist Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni that per­forms Nakatani’s ori­gi­nal com­po­si­tions and direc­ted impro­vi­sa­tions. This inno­va­tive pro­ject brings toge­ther local musi­cians of diverse backgrounds—regardless of prior expe­rience, pro­fes­sio­nal or amateur—to col­la­bo­rate with Naka­ta­ni on his adap­ted bowed gongs. Under his direc­tion, the ensemble explores gui­ded group impro­vi­sa­tion, craf­ting immer­sive and trans­for­ma­tive sound­scapes. Since its incep­tion in 2011, the NGO has expan­ded from four to seven­teen gongs of varying sizes and pitches, per­for­ming hun­dreds of concerts world­wide with thou­sands of participants.

For each per­for­mance, a local orga­ni­zer assembles a group of 16 gong players, who receive a detai­led pre­pa­ra­tion package—including hand signals, per­for­mance com­mands, and ins­truc­tio­nal videos. On the day of the event, Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni leads an immer­sive work­shop, gui­ding par­ti­ci­pants as they prac­tice with the ins­tru­ments, refine their tech­niques, and learn to respond to conduc­ting cues, seam­less­ly inte­gra­ting them into the final performance.

Naka­ta­ni tra­vels with all neces­sa­ry equip­ment, inclu­ding his cus­tom-made Kobo bows, mal­lets, gongs, and stands—ensuring each per­for­mance is ful­ly sup­por­ted by his meti­cu­lous­ly craf­ted ins­tru­ments. All the mate­rial is assem­bled the mor­ning of the show by the hos­ting orga­ni­za­tion and the par­ti­ci­pa­ting musicians.

On Octo­ber 6, 2024, the ensemble made its Montreal/Quebec debut at La Sala Ros­sa as part of the FLUX Fes­ti­val, a com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive uni­ting key pre­sen­ters and orga­ni­zers in Montreal’s crea­tive music scene.This concert was orga­ni­zed by the improvised/experimental music series and col­lec­tive Mar­di Spa­ghet­ti and faci­li­ta­ted by Raphaël Foi­sy-Cou­ture, for­mer exe­cu­tive direc­tor of the Cana­dian Music Net­work, in col­la­bo­ra­tion with the Par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry Crea­tive Music Hub, Inno­va­tion en concert, and Arts in the Margins.

The Naka­ta­ni Gong Orches­tra (NGO) is the world’s only bowing gong orches­tra, foun­ded and led by Japa­nese mas­ter per­cus­sio­nist Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni. A cele­bra­ted expe­ri­men­tal per­cus­sio­nist, com­po­ser, and sound artist now based in New Mexi­co, Naka­ta­ni has been inter­na­tio­nal­ly active since the 1990s, relea­sing over 80 recor­dings and per­for­ming world­wide. Renow­ned for his inno­va­tive tech­niques on bowed gongs, drums, cym­bals, and sin­ging bowls, he is also an ins­tru­ment maker, craf­ting the Kobo bows, mal­lets, and unique equip­ment used in his per­for­mances. Naka­ta­ni is also a dedi­ca­ted edu­ca­tor, regu­lar­ly conduc­ting mas­ter­classes at uni­ver­si­ties and music conservatories.

The per­for­mance show­ca­sed the NGO’s dis­tinc­tive and mes­me­ri­zing sound.

Here’s an edi­ted trans­cript of the pre­sen­ta­tion made by Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni fol­lo­wing a solo per­for­mance pre­ce­ding the NGO per­for­mance on that night :

[Loud applause]

Thank you very much for coming tonight !

My name is Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni, and I’m a per­cus­sio­nist. I’m ori­gi­nal­ly from Osa­ka, Japan. I moved to the U.S. 30 years ago, and cur­rent­ly I live in Truth or Conse­quences, which is a sou­thern New Mexi­co small town. I’ve been playing per­cus­sion all my life. I’m on tour. From New Mexi­co to here took me over two months.

[Audience lau­ghing]

I left my house on August 5th, and I’m here today. I’ve been playing many places and I’m going back to the U.S. tomor­row. Tonight, actual­ly ! Tonight I’m dri­ving back, and I’m going to go back towards New Mexi­co. 

[Impres­sed exhales from the public|

Tonight I’m ope­ning for my ensemble. I have been playing a drum set since I was a high school kid. A drum set like : hi-hat, cym­bals, etc. At some point I star­ted shif­ting my inter­est to sound and more exten­ded tech­nique-based playing and I star­ted playing solo per­cus­sions, and at the same time, I star­ted bowing per­cus­sions. So in the begin­ning, I was using a bass bow, cel­lo bow, vio­lin bow, to bow on the the cym­bals and the sin­ging bowls. Around 2005, 2006, I star­ted making my own bows, because a conven­tio­nal ins­tru­ment bow doesn’t work for the per­cus­sions. So I star­ted inven­ting and tes­ting pro­to­types. At that time I had in mind this gong orches­tra pro­ject ; « maybe It could be more ». So I’ve been wor­king on this pro­ject since 2005. In my head, maybe since 2000. 

[Audience lau­ghing]

It’s a long-time pro­ject, my life­time pro­ject. And I star­ted gong orches­tra around 2008. It was a small ensemble, only four gongs. It’s expen­sive for an inde­pendent DIY musi­cian to pur­chase these. 

[Audience lau­ghing]

So I keep buying lit­tle by lit­tle, and today I have 16 gongs ! Inclu­ding me, there will be 17 gongs played to you. I think this is a life­time expe­rience, you know, 17 gongs in front of you. How many people have expe­rien­ced that ? 

[Audience lau­ghing and cheering]

I’m going to explain a lit­tle bit, too. I’m Asian, and I’m from Japan. But these gongs are not from Japan, and these bows are not from Japan, either. And this music you’re about to hear is not from Japan. So nothing is about Japan. 

[Audience lau­ghing]

I use only the timing, actual­ly.  It’s in my bio­gra­phy, tal­king about the “Ma”. “Ma” is the timing. “Ma” is the spa­cing bet­ween A and B. So I use lots of ma, in my music. So eve­ry­thing is space and expand, and then using gra­vi­ty to dawn. That’s the “Ma”. But it’s not about Japan. It’s not about any coun­try or region. So my work is from now­here. I live in the U.S., but I’m not Ame­ri­can. I’m kind of away from Japan. I’m not Japa­nese, maybe. I don’t know [Tat­suya laughs]

So these are Chi­nese gongs. It’s cal­led the Wuhan gong and it’s also cal­led the Wind gong. It has a straight edge. Many Sou­theast Asian [coun­tries] have gongs who varies from dif­ferent region. Maybe some people here know more than me, but some have edges or nipples and spe­ci­fic tones. But this is a disc, just a bronze disc and I can change the pitches. The vibra­tion is moving around inside. Some­times it stays there, Some­times it’s from the cen­ter. And some­times I’m using two bows. Than two tones go inside the same gong, and it becomes vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo, vo [imi­ta­ting oscil­la­tion sounds]. The two bea­ting with each other ; that kind of effect as well. 

So I’ve been wor­king on bows and gongs for many years. And I try to teach people and do my orches­tral work. So today we have 16 local Mon­treal players. We did a work­shop all after­noon. 

[Loud chee­ring from the audience] 

I pre­fer you to not have ear­plugs, because I’m very sen­si­tive about the sound. When I go to rock shows, I always put on ear­plugs.  But for this, at some point it’s loud. It’s real­ly loud… It’s incre­di­bly loud I’ll tell you ! 

[Audience lau­ghing]

But it’s not fore­ver.  

[Audience lau­ghing louder]

It’s not a constant. It’s just one moment. You just observe whole vibra­tions, and that’s the best. Not just from the ear. Your organs, your skin, your bone, your hair is lis­te­ning to this as well. So that’s my pro­ject. It’s a vibra­tio­nal project.

Maybe you can tell if you [record] with an iPhone or a smart­phone to cap­ture it when you’re back home :  « it was great, I want to post on my Ins­ta­gram ! ». And then it sounds like biiiiiiiipppp (imi­ta­ting the sound of a flat­line). 

[Audience lau­ghing]

It’s not a sound. It sounds dif­ferent. It’s a vibra­tion. So you are here. You are about to expe­rience it. And it’s pret­ty dif­fi­cult to cap­ture with micro­phone and recor­dings. But it’s live. It’s air. And you are alive here. So I hope you enjoy it. 

[…]

Thank you so much for coming again.

[Audience chee­ring]

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The musi­cians for this Mon­treal edi­tion of the Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni Gong Orches­tra were :

Gene­viève Acker­man, Miel Aze­ve­do, Anna­belle Choui­nard, Sole­dad Coyo­li, Mari­lou Craft, Susan­na Hood, Atsu­shi Ike­da, Chloe Jack­son-Rey­nolds, Pablo Jime­nez, Jean Néant aka Joni Void, Sho­ta Naka­mu­ra, Roxanne Nes­bitt, Fah­mid Nibesh, Helios Para­dis, Chris­telle Saint-Julien, and Tah­lia Stacey

Com­ments from the Mon­treal participants : 

It was a true joy to par­ti­ci­pate in the immer­sive encoun­ter with Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni and with such a wide array of musi­cians from the impro­vi­sed music com­mu­ni­ty. It felt like a rare gift to learn and then per­form toge­ther in this way, having enough time to real­ly enter into and taste ano­ther musi­cian’s world and then to put that expe­rience into prac­tice with an audience. It was nou­ri­shing per­so­nal­ly, musi­cal­ly, and in tan­gi­bly fee­ling crea­ti­vi­ty as and in com­mu­ni­ty. I am very gra­te­ful.  – Susan­na Hood

It was one of a kind expe­rience. Playing a big gong was phy­si­cal­ly way tou­gher than I could ima­gine but I was hap­py to be inclu­ded to such a spe­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty. I liked Tat­suya’s pas­sion. – Sho­ta Nakamura

Thank you so much for the oppor­tu­ni­ty. It was a real­ly cool expe­rience to play with so many dif­ferent musi­cians from dif­ferent back­grounds but in such a novel and uni­fied way, lear­ning to read those wild cues toge­ther – Atsu­shi Ikeda

The expe­rience of the Tast­suya Naka­ta­ni Gong Orches­tra was power­ful and dee­ply moving, Such a com­mu­nal musi­cal plunge into the world of vibra­tions is enough to leave shi­vers of hap­pi­ness bet­ween the ears for a long time ! It was a work­shop and a concert of kind­ness and sim­pli­ci­ty, in the pure joy of sha­ring other­world­ly sounds. Long live this mar­vel­lous pro­ject, which I hope I’ll have the good for­tune to wit­ness again along the way. Thank you for eve­ry­thing ! – Anna­belle Chouinard

During this day of pre­pa­ra­tion, I had the chance to immerse myself in the world of the per­cus­sio­nist, through his pre­cise know­ledge of his pre­cious and mas­sive set of very spe­cial gongs. I lent my body to the expe­rience in an attempt to draw the right vibra­tions from these ins­tru­ments, and I have to say that phy­si­cal­ly it was a chal­lenge, but one that was duly rewar­ded by the direct contact of the rever­be­ra­tions and the syner­gy of the ensemble in the moment. This per­for­mance and the per­son of Tat­suya conti­nue to influence me in my own per­for­mances since Octo­ber 6, 2024. -  Helios Para­dis

__

Thanks to Li Qi for fil­ming this performance.

Thanks to Elaine Gra­ham and Adam from Mly­nel­lo Art Mly­nel­lo for the pic­tures of the event.

__

The Cana­dian Pre­miere of the Tat­suya Naka­ta­ni Gong Orches­tra took place on Thurs­day, June 15th 2017 at The Mount Com­mu­ni­ty Centre in Peterborough.

It was faci­li­ta­ted by musi­cian and orga­ni­zer Ben­net Bedoukian

The gong players were Ben­net Bedou­kian, Melis­sa Bald­win, John Cli­men­hage, Jean-Paul Contois, Syl­vie Dasne, Ste­phen Dis­her, Rob For­tin, Matt Gre­co, Joelle Levesque, Megan McAn­drew, Leigh Mac­do­nald, Susan New­man, Rick Slouk­ji, and Noah Gerard Vandelinde.

People across the ages have loo­ked up at the night sky and seen sto­ries, fables and myths in the stars. Ins­pi­red by music, this acti­vi­ty invites par­ti­ci­pants of all ages to create their own constel­la­tions and tell their own sto­ries of the night sky.

Mate­rials :

White cof­fee fil­ters (3 per star chart)
Black per­ma­nent marker
Colo­red washable mar­kers (no black and brown)
Spray bot­tle (with water)
Pencil

Ins­truc­tions for making an ima­gi­na­ry star chart :

Lis­ten to a piece of music from Dark Sky Pre­serve, an album and book by Ian Fer­rier, Louise Camp­bell and Sarah Beth Gon­ca­ro­va that explores the ways in which we connect and dis­con­nect from our­selves and others in our search for our place in the universe.

Step 1 :

On a sur­face that can get wet, flat­ten three cof­fee fil­ters on top of each other. Draw dots on the top cof­fee fil­ter using black per­ma­nent mar­ker. The dots can be in a ran­dom pat­tern and of dif­ferent sizes, or in the form of a fami­liar constel­la­tion. The effect will be of a star chart.

Step 2 :

Draw abs­tract shapes and lines in and around the dots using a varie­ty of colo­red washable mar­kers. Colours can touch and overlap.

Step 3 :

Hol­ding the spray bot­tle one foot away from the cof­fee fil­ters, spray the top cof­fee fil­ter with a light mist until the colours bleed into one another.

Tip – too much water sprayed too close to the cof­fee fil­ters washes out the ink. Spray light­ly once or twice, then watch the ink bleed before deci­ding if more water is needed.

Step 4 :

Peel the cof­fee fil­ters apart, and place on a flat sur­face to dry.

Step 5 :

Each cof­fee fil­ter repre­sents a unique constel­la­tion, with the black dots as stars and the colours as auro­ra borea­lis. As you lis­ten to the music, what do you see in your night sky ? Is there an ani­mal, a bird, a per­son, or per­haps a mythi­cal crea­ture ? What is it doing ? Is it hol­ding an object ? What is its name ? What sto­ry does it have to tell ?

Once the cof­fee fil­ters are dry, use the dots and colours as a guide to sketch a dif­ferent constel­la­tion on each cof­fee fil­ter using a pen­cil. Trace the pen­cil lines with a per­ma­nent marker.

Optio­nal :

Many musi­cians have made music ins­pi­red by the cos­mos. Lis­ten to music of your choice and make more cof­fee fil­ter constel­la­tions. Place the resul­ting cof­fee fil­ter constel­la­tions in rela­tion to each other to form your own ver­sion of a night sky.

To go fur­ther and create your own music ins­pi­red by the night sky, contact : mlouisecampbell@gmail.com

« soli­dA­Ri­Ty » is a par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry music pro­ject which can encom­pass musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion, public per­for­mance, inter­ac­tion with public art and even poli­ti­cal soli­da­ri­ty and action. 

« soli­dA­Ri­Ty » as a for­mat requires rather simple condi­tions which can be appro­pria­ted by most to create their own musi­cal inter­ven­tions in public space. 

What is needed : 

1. A sculp­ture or struc­ture* of which the mate­rials it is made of reso­nate when struck.

2. A group of people to par­ti­ci­pate (2 or more): the par­ti­ci­pants don’t need music trai­ning but they should be able to fol­low ins­truc­tions and exe­cute (though not neces­sa­ri­ly per­fect­ly) at least simple rhyth­mic pat­terns and coordination. 

   1. Must have basic mobi­li­ty to stand or be close enough to the sculp­ture in question ;

   2. Must be able to use an object to strike the sculp­ture softly ;

   3. Recom­mend ages : 8+

3. One or two group lea­ders (depen­ding on the size of the group). The group lea­der ideal­ly is a drum­mer or other musi­cian who has a cer­tain faci­li­ty with rhyth­mic motif inven­tion and tex­tu­ral explo­ra­tion, group conduc­ting and struc­tu­ral improvisation. 

4. Soft mal­lets** (a single mal­let or a pair) per participant

HOW-TO :

The musi­cal struc­ture involves a basic “fol­low the lea­der” or call-and-res­ponse for­mat. In its most basic form, the group lea­der is res­pon­sible for inven­ting the rhyth­mic motifs that the group will then copy and play in uni­son. Depen­ding on the size of the group and the abi­li­ty of each par­ti­ci­pant, the per­for­mance can break into sub-groups playing contras­ting mate­rial, thus enri­ching or com­plexi­fying the sonic land­scape. Tex­ture and tone are rich para­me­ters to explore in addi­tion to rhythm alone. Each sculp­ture or struc­ture will offer its unique timbre to play with. 

Impro­vi­sing is, for some, the sim­plest way to go about this musi­cal inter­ven­tion. Howe­ver, some lea­ders may choose to pre­pare their motifs or ideas in advance. 

Essen­tial­ly, this for­mat can be used sim­ply for the joy of music-making and sonic explo­ra­tion and col­lec­tive crea­tion, or it can also stand as a pre­text or com­bi­ned effort for a poli­ti­cal action and expres­sion. I believe the form and pro­po­si­tion is simple enough that it can also be adap­ted to various contexts and needs.

*Dis­clai­mer : some sculp­tures exis­ting in public space may not actual­ly be of public owner­ship. Inter­act at your own dis­cre­tion and be pre­pa­red to explain your acti­vi­ty to pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards or law enforcement. 

**Using soft mal­lets pro­tects the struc­tures from scrat­ching or denting. 

My pro­cess : How I came to orga­nise « solidARiTy »

Over the years, I’ve made a habit of “hit­ting” on pret­ty objects to see how they sound. I’ve come to spon­ta­neous­ly explore a varie­ty of reso­nant sculp­tures in this way, and this has remai­ned a per­so­nal enjoy­ment and curio­si­ty. In par­ti­cu­lar, I have been enamou­red with the Rio­pelle Foun­tain “La Joute” for many years because of its impo­sing size and beau­ty, and to the par­ti­cu­lar­ly varied and rich timbre from the bronze it is made of. I fan­ta­si­zed about a large scale com­po­si­tion uti­li­sing live per­for­mers and robo­ti­ci­zed mecha­nics for per­for­mance… but all these fan­ta­sies were rather out of my reach. I tried to ima­gine a sim­pler way to inter­act with the sculp­ture, but was caught in the weeds of wan­ting to “com­pose” something. 

At the same time, I felt a rising need to use music in the public space to express soli­da­ri­ty for the many atro­ci­ties of today. For me, I felt most outra­ged about the geno­cide in Pales­tine and depor­ta­tions of migrants in the US and beyond, though there is no shor­tage of injus­tice and vio­lence in this world, and all struggles are interconnected. 

Sud­den­ly, the two needs and desires col­li­ded. I could create music with the sculp­ture in the context of a spon­ta­neous poli­ti­cal action. Using impro­vi­sa­tion for the music expres­sion was the easiest way to get the idea off the ground and to get more people invol­ved in an uncom­pli­ca­ted for­mat that requi­red lit­tle to no pre­pa­ra­tion. In this way, I could also soli­cit musi­cians and non-musi­cians, which was more per­ti­nent to the poli­ti­cal and col­lec­tive inten­tion of the intervention. 

The poli­ti­cal aspect of the work came down to wea­ring ban­ners we made at an ear­lier date during per­for­mance so that pas­sers-by would know what we were evo­king, and to make it clear that we weren’t sim­ply making music for the joy of it (nothing wrong with that though!). Spon­ta­neous­ly, and through the chance of cir­cum­stance, voice, sin­ging and chan­ting became a large part of this per­for­mance. As I had made it known prior that this was a pos­si­bi­li­ty, and as I knew the poten­tial of the people par­ti­ci­pa­ting, I was not sur­pri­sed that it hap­pe­ned. Howe­ver, I was sur­pri­sed at how it hap­pe­ned, what trans­pi­red, and the emo­tio­nal poten­cy of the moment. 

Cap­tu­ring it on video was inten­tio­nal, as the goal was to wide­ly share the action online, beyond the live moment wit­nes­sed by pas­sers­by and dee­ply sha­red by the participants. 

Learn about Uni­ty Cha­ri­ty, a natio­nal cha­ri­ty dedi­ca­ted to empo­we­ring youth aged 13–29 through hip hop pro­grams in all art forms, inclu­ding beat­ma­king, MC, graf­fi­ti, break­dan­cing, and spo­ken word. Pro­grams are all offe­red free of charge. 

About Uni­ty Cha­ri­ty
Uni­ty Cha­ri­ty pro­grams are orga­ni­zed in three streams :

1. Ins­pire : per­for­mance-based single work­shops offe­red pri­ma­ri­ly in schools to intro­duce youth to hip hop art forms as power­ful tools for expres­sion and over­co­ming challenges.

2. Engage : week­ly com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams that build resi­lience, social net­works and skills. These pro­grams are led by peers and mentors.

3. Empo­wer : advan­ced pro­grams that work towards pro­fes­sio­nal deve­lop­ment and laun­ching careers. The pro­grams focus on buil­ding eco­no­mic pros­pects, lea­der­ship skills deve­lop­ment, and career exploration.

Fea­tu­red Pro­gram : Rough Draft

Rough Draft is led by faci­li­ta­tor Adrian Ber­nard, and as part of the ‘Empo­wer’ stream is an incu­ba­tor pro­gram to help MCs launch their careers. The pro­gram focuses on deve­lo­ping tech­ni­cal and busi­ness skills in the music indus­try. Adrian brings in guests from the indus­try to sup­port par­ti­ci­pants in deve­lo­ping pro­fes­sio­nal aspects of recor­ding, wri­ting, per­for­ming, and career building. 

Com­pe­ten­cies nee­ded to faci­li­tate well

Trai­ning in youth work : Uni­ty Cha­ri­ty trains their artist-ins­truc­tors in youth work and in conflict resolution.

Able to hold space for par­ti­ci­pants : faci­li­ta­tors need to be able to balance skills deve­lop­ment with hol­ding space and buil­ding com­mu­ni­ty. This means an awa­re­ness of when to slow down, take time just to chat, and build com­mu­ni­ty among participants.

Conti­nuous deve­lop­ment of your craft : Faci­li­ta­tors need to be good at their own craft that they are tea­ching, and also conti­nue to learn and get bet­ter at their craft. 

Sup­port par­ti­ci­pants whe­re­ver they’re at : meet par­ti­ci­pants where they are at, sup­port them to reach their goals.

What Does Suc­cess Look Like ?

When par­ti­ci­pants are clear­ly enjoying them­selves in the pro­gram, that’s a good ses­sion, and if par­ti­ci­pants keep in touch with each other after the pro­gram ends, that’s pro­gram suc­cess. Suc­cess is also when par­ti­ci­pants have impro­ved artis­ti­cal­ly through the pro­gram, deve­lo­ped their net­works and pro­fes­sio­nal skills, and deve­lo­ped their com­mu­ni­ty. Long-term suc­cess is buil­ding self-expres­sion and lea­der­ship, such as when for­mer par­ti­ci­pants become lea­ders and board mem­bers at Uni­ty Charity. 

View sec­tions of the documentary : 

00:00 Intro­duc­tion to Uni­ty Cha­ri­ty and streams of programming

01:48 Rough Draft Incu­ba­tor program

03:12 Impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty in hip hop

06:37 Com­pe­ten­cies artists need to facilitate

08:32 Indi­ca­tors of Success

09:38 Hip hop as an art form and a culture

Explore the pro­ject Nask­wa­ha­mâ­to­win (Cree, mea­ning ‘let’s all share in the music), imple­men­ted by Kehe­win Native Dance Theatre in cen­tral Alber­ta, in part­ner­ship with the natio­nal NGO Make Music Mat­ter, sup­por­ted with a grant from Bell Let’s Talk, and sup­por­ted by the Natio­nal Music Centre in Cal­ga­ry. This music crea­tion pro­ject com­bi­ned Make Music Matter’s Hea­ling in Har­mo­ny the­ra­py model with Indi­ge­nous music, lan­guages, and culture to help address the men­tal health cri­sis in the com­mu­ni­ty and other effects of inter­ge­ne­ra­tio­nal trauma. 

Context for the Project

The pro­ject was led by Rosa John (Cibo­ney Tai­no Nation) and Mel­vin John (Plains Cree Nation), who des­cribe the devas­ta­ting impacts of colo­ni­za­tion, and the role of music in hea­ling. Mel­vin John des­cribes how the connec­tion to song, lan­guage and land was bro­ken because of Canada’s resi­den­tial schools. Par­ti­ci­pa­ting artist Tony Dun­can (Apache-Ari­ka­ra and Hidat­sa Nations) des­cribes how the drum connects people to the heart­beat and to Mother Earth. Rosa John des­cribes how chil­dren are the focus for Indi­ge­nous nations, at the heart of eve­ry­thing they do. 

Desi­gn of Nask­wa­ha­mâ­to­win

The pro­ject used a mobile recor­ding stu­dio that visi­ted four reser­va­tion schools each week for 12 weeks. Chil­dren at each school wor­ked toge­ther to write and record songs with pro­du­cer Cin­dy Paul. Chil­dren also wor­ked with guest artists, such as Tony Dun­can (flute player and hoop dan­cer) and Deb Houle (sin­ger-song­wri­ter). A the­ra­pist was always avai­lable at eve­ry ses­sion for participants.

At the end of 12 weeks, chil­dren from all four schools tra­vel­led to the Kehe­win Native Dance Theatre stu­dio for one week to create one final song : Mista­tim, Cree for ‘horse tea­chings’. The chil­dren lear­ned about horses and horse tea­chings from Equine The­ra­pist Jody John (Plains Cree Nation), and got to ride a horse. Fol­lo­wing those expe­riences, the chil­dren col­lec­ti­ve­ly com­po­sed the song Mista­tim, wri­ting the lyrics, and sin­ging or playing ins­tru­ments, which was recor­ded on site by Mel­vin John. A the­ra­pist was also on site for the week.

The song Mista­tim is avai­lable through all strea­ming plat­forms under the name Nika­mo Col­lec­tive. The music video for Mista­tim  is avai­lable on YouTube.

Com­pe­ten­cies nee­ded to do this work 

Lis­te­ning : humans have two ears and one mouth to lis­ten twice as much. Lis­te­ning and being present is key to connec­ting well. In the ses­sions, be atten­tive to each kid and how they can and want to contri­bute. Let the kids do what they do best in their own unique way.

Be authen­tic : Be your­self, and fol­low through on what you pro­mise. Kids know if you are not genuine. You need to know your­self and be com­for­table with your­self to engage authen­ti­cal­ly with participants.

Build rela­tion­ships that are cultu­ral­ly sen­si­tive and spe­ci­fic : the pro­ject was suc­cess­ful in part because the team visi­ted each school per­so­nal­ly, and the week­ly ses­sions hap­pe­ned at each school. This hel­ped demons­trate com­mit­ment and built trust over time. The pro­ject wor­ked because it was spe­ci­fic to that geo­gra­phic areas and the spe­ci­fic Indi­ge­nous nations there. Any pro­ject wor­king within Indi­ge­nous com­mu­ni­ties must be cultu­ral­ly sen­si­tive to that area.

What does suc­cess look like ?

Suc­cess can be seen in smiles, when the par­ti­ci­pants are clear­ly enjoying them­selves. The pro­ject lea­ders saw kids offe­ring to contri­bute more over the project. 

View sec­tions of the documentary : 

00:00 Pro­ject introduction

01:22 Part­ne­ring with a non-Indi­ge­nous organization

02:36 Pro­ject design

03:12 ‘Mista­tim’ horse tea­chings and song creation

04:28 Artists invol­ved in project

05:36 Tra­di­tio­nal Indi­ge­nous culture and healing

07:18 Key Aspects to Suc­cess of Project

10:56 Com­pe­ten­cies and advice 

12:48 impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty and chil­dren in Indi­ge­nous worldviews

The Com­mu­ni­ty Music School of Water­loo Region (CMSWR) is based in Water­loo, Onta­rio, and since 2012, the school aims to pro­vide music les­sons and music pro­grams to chil­dren and youth in the Water­loo region who are under­ser­ved or at-risk. The pro­grams aim to deve­lop kids’ musi­cal skills, crea­ti­vi­ty, confi­dence, and love for music.

Pur­pose and Context

CMSWR aims to build musi­cal skills of chil­dren and youth as well as fos­te­ring rela­tion­ships and buil­ding com­mu­ni­ty. The school offers one-on-one music les­sons and group music pro­grams, all deli­ve­red by volun­teer music teachers. 

Social ser­vice agen­cies refer kids to CMSWR, and fami­lies can also fill out a self-refer­ral form. The school serves many fami­lies who are new Cana­dians, or who have come to Cana­da within the last five years. An addi­tio­nal 30% of par­ti­ci­pants are refer­red through men­tal health agencies. 

In addi­tion to pro­vi­ding a varie­ty of music pro­gram­ming, CMSWR also lends ins­tru­ments to fami­lies to be able to prac­tice at home, and has a nutri­tion pro­gram for fami­lies in the buil­ding when les­sons are offered.

Struc­ture of Les­sons : Student-led learning

Music classes at CMSWR are student-led rather than cur­ri­cu­lum-dri­ven. Volun­teer ins­truc­tors get trai­ning to focus on mee­ting stu­dents where they are at, whe­ther a student wants to learn clas­si­cal reper­toire, pop reper­toire, or impro­vi­sa­tion. Simi­lar­ly some stu­dents want to learn an ins­tru­ment to a high level of pro­fi­cien­cy ; other stu­dents are loo­king for enjoy­ment and connection. 

Acti­vi­ties

First les­son is the ‘get to know you les­son’. Try tal­king to the student about their favou­rite music ; lis­ten to some examples toge­ther. This helps bon­ding bet­ween student and tea­cher, and helps the tea­cher unders­tand what the stu­dents likes to lis­ten to and how they interact.

Wor­king with neu­ro-diverse stu­dents requires dif­ferent stra­te­gies within a music les­son, such as get­ting stu­dents on their feet, use visuals, and hel­ping stu­dents focus on tasks.

Com­pe­ten­cies to do this work well

Flexi­bi­li­ty : tea­chers need to be adap­table and student-first, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in wor­king with stu­dents from diverse cultures, with diverse needs. This some­times means that tea­chers need to take their own egos out of the pic­ture, as some stu­dents may not be there to become high-level musi­cians or may not respond to conser­va­to­ry-style tea­ching methods.

Strong musi­cian­ship : tea­chers need to be pro­fi­cient in their ins­tru­ment, with a level of theo­ry to sup­port stu­dents with diverse inter­ests and needs.

Able to connect with kids : ins­truc­tors need to want to work with kids, and be sen­si­tive to each student’s par­ti­cu­lar context. Ins­truc­tors need to genui­ne­ly enjoy wor­king with kids. 

Atti­tude that ali­gns with the school : ins­truc­tors need to be able to work with kids and sup­port them on their music journey. 

What does suc­cess look like ?

Suc­cess will look dif­fe­rent­ly depen­ding on each student. In some cases, when a student feels moti­va­ted rather than dis­cou­ra­ged, or figures out a par­ti­cu­lar skill. Lon­ger term, suc­cess is when stu­dents conti­nue to love music even after gra­dua­ting from the program. 

Ano­ther indi­ca­tor of suc­cess is seeing parents for­ming connec­tions with each other, par­ti­cu­lar­ly immi­grant parents connec­ting with other parents who speak the same language.

End-of-year concerts often show all facets of these suc­cesses, as stu­dents feel a sense of accom­plish­ment in per­for­ming, and friends and fami­ly are gathe­ring toge­ther to sup­port and cele­brate the students.

View sec­tions of the documentary :

00:00 Over­view of school

02:15 Social and musi­cal goals of program

04:51 Student-focu­sed rather than curriculum-focused

06:41 Com­pe­ten­cies that tea­chers need

10:54 What suc­cess looks like

Music in Com­mu­ni­ties is a non­pro­fit col­lec­tive based in Can­ning, Nova Sco­tia that pro­motes music lite­ra­cy, pre­sents live music, sup­ports under-repre­sen­ted voices, and streng­thens com­mu­ni­ties in the Anna­po­lis Val­ley through sha­red musi­cal expe­riences.  Music in Com­mu­ni­ties also has the man­date of pro­vi­ding paid work to local musicians.

Pro­grams

Music in Com­mu­ni­ties (MiC) offers diverse pro­gram­ming to sup­port people in rural Nova Sco­tia. Exe­cu­tive Direc­tor Kim Bar­low notes that people in their com­mu­ni­ties expe­rience food inse­cu­ri­ty, hou­sing inse­cu­ri­ty, men­tal health chal­lenges, and forms of iso­la­tion.  MiC has wor­ked on many kinds of pro­grams for diverse groups within their com­mu­ni­ties, inclu­ding new­co­mers, youth at risk, people with disa­bi­li­ties, and seniors. They are also part­ne­ring with Mi’kmaq nations to col­la­bo­rate on musi­cal pro­gram­ming ser­ving Indi­ge­nous com­mu­ni­ties. Some­times MiC ini­tiates pro­gram­ming, and some­times they respond to com­mu­ni­ty requests for pro­grams or facilitators.

Here are a few fea­tu­red initiatives :

After-school pro­grams : MiC has two after-school pro­grams. One pro­gram is for kids aged 9–12 to learn the uku­lele. The pro­gram aims to build skills, but also to pro­vide fun and less struc­ture for kids to enjoy them­selves out­side of school. Ins­truc­tors include music-based games, and struc­tu­red and unstruc­tu­red time each week. The second pro­gram is a song­wri­ting and per­for­mance pro­gram for youth aged 13–17. These older par­ti­ci­pants gene­ral­ly want to play music but have not had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to play with and for others live. MiC also hosts month­ly open mic nights for the teens, open to friends and family. 

Com­mu­ni­ty Song Circles : Exe­cu­tive Direc­tor Kim Bar­low hosts week­ly song circles open to anyone. Par­ti­ci­pants take turns playing songs for each other, often invi­ting the group to join in. While the circle is open to anyone, this pro­gram tends to attract older musicians. 

Present Moment Sin­gers : a week­ly sing-a-long ses­sion for seniors at a reti­re­ment resi­dence in Wolf­ville, Present Moment Sin­gers is led by Wen­dy LaPierre and Tyler McDo­nald. Seniors connect and have fun sin­ging songs toge­ther for an hour each week.

Queer Choir : based in Wolf­ville, the choir wel­comes queer com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to come toge­ther to sing, and have a queer-dedi­ca­ted week­ly space. The choir approa­ched MiC to pro­vide some lea­der­ship to guide rehear­sals, although the rehear­sals are more sha­red space to make music toge­ther, with some per­for­mances through the year.

Fea­tu­red Acti­vi­ty : Uku­lele tag

An acti­vi­ty sui­table for chil­dren, this acti­vi­ty uses the clas­sic game of tag, in which one per­son tries to touch the other players to get them out. When a player is tag­ged, they go to ‘jail’ loca­ted next to one of the ins­truc­tors. Ano­ther player can get their friend out of jail by repea­ting a chord pro­gres­sion or melo­dy played on the uku­lele by the ins­truc­tor. Uku­lele tag helps kids learn uku­lele skills within a fun context so that the lear­ning is almost subconscious.

Com­pe­ten­cies to do this work well

Able to connect with spe­ci­fic groups : faci­li­ta­tors need to be able to be res­pon­sive to the spe­ci­fic com­mu­ni­ties they work with. For example, ins­truc­tors lea­ding the kids pro­gram­ming should be able to connect with kids and keep pro­gram­ming engaging.

Have struc­ture but be flexible : Musi­cians always have a plan so that there is struc­ture for each ses­sion, but they are flexible to adapt to the spe­ci­fic needs and ener­gy of the group. Pro­vi­ding choices for par­ti­ci­pants is also an impor­tant part of this flexi­bi­li­ty, che­cking in at the begin­ning to figure out what par­ti­ci­pants would like to do. 

Diverse musi­cal skills : Musi­cians wor­king in com­mu­ni­ty contexts need a wide skill set. Being able to play seve­ral ins­tru­ments will allow a faci­li­ta­tor to adapt and sup­port par­ti­ci­pant needs in more ways.

Valuing col­la­bo­ra­tive pro­cesses and sha­red lea­der­ship : Faci­li­ta­tors at MiC approach par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry music with the unders­tan­ding that the pro­gram is a col­la­bo­ra­tive pro­cess. Eve­ryone has expe­rience to bring to a group. The faci­li­ta­tors look for ways to encou­rage par­ti­ci­pants to teach and share their own know­ledge to create envi­ron­ments of sha­red leadership. 

What does suc­cess look like ?

The key out­come for pro­grams is that people are exci­ted about all things music. In par­ti­cu­lar, faci­li­ta­tors hope the kids and youth get joy out of making music well before fee­ling like it is work. Suc­cess is also defi­ned by good enga­ge­ment in pro­grams and events, inclu­ding the num­bers of people sho­wing up to pro­grams and events, and also people repor­ting that they are fee­ling good about sha­ring their music with others, appre­cia­ting the music sha­red by others, and fee­ling more connec­ted to each other. 

View sec­tions of the documentary :

00:00 Overview

02:46 After-school programs

06:53 Com­mu­ni­ty song circles

07:31 Present Moment Singers

08:58 Queer Choir

10:00 Competencies

12:04 What does suc­cess look like

Explore the connec­tion bet­ween music and nature through Louise Camp­bell’s work with The C.A.R.E. Centre in her pro­ject Taking it Out­side. 

Louise Camp­bell is a musi­cian and cultu­ral media­tor in Mon­treal, who crea­ted the work­shop Taking it Out­side : Making Music & Art Ins­pi­red by Nature.  In 2023, Louise crea­ted a ver­sion of this par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry work­shop for her sound ins­tal­la­tion at Parc Fré­dé­ric-Back fea­tu­ring music from her album Sources : Music ins­pi­red by the St. Law­rence River. Louise picked Parc Fré­dé­ric-Back in part because it is a ful­ly acces­sible urban park. 

Intro­du­cing clients of The C.A.R.E. Centre

While Louise wor­ked with many dif­ferent par­ti­ci­pants and groups, the docu­men­ta­ry shows Louise wor­king with clients of The C.A.R.E. Centre, a recrea­tio­nal and edu­ca­tio­nal day pro­gram that enhances the lives, func­tio­ning and com­mu­ni­ca­tion of adults with severe phy­si­cal disa­bi­li­ties. Oli­via Ques­nel, Exe­cu­tive Direc­tor of The C.A.R.E. Centre, des­cribes how C.A.R.E. clients, all over the age of 21, have strong connec­tions with music, and use music to be expres­sive and creative. 

Fea­tu­red activities

Louise pro­vides mul­tiple ways of faci­li­ta­ting to include par­ti­ci­pa­tion from ver­bal and non-ver­bal par­ti­ci­pants. In the work­shop, Louise asks par­ti­ci­pants to lis­ten to the music in the park, and ima­gine or draw a bird as they lis­ten to the music. She invites par­ti­ci­pants to ima­gine where the bird lives. Next, Louise hands out bright­ly colou­red scarfs and invites par­ti­ci­pants to move like their birds, with options for par­ti­ci­pants to share their move­ments with each other.

Com­pe­ten­cies nee­ded to do this work

Empa­thy : Lis­te­ning to par­ti­ci­pants and what they want, then reflec­ting that lis­te­ning by making changes as a faci­li­ta­tor, rather than making par­ti­ci­pants change. 

Desire to connect with people : Being curious about people and see­king to unders­tand how they expe­rience the world, which ensures faci­li­ta­tion is more responsive.

Skilled musi­cian­ship : A high level of musi­cal skill is requi­red to be able to work with par­ti­ci­pant inter­ests and abi­li­ties within par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry crea­tive music. 

Enga­ging in sha­red crea­ti­vi­ty : Louise des­cribes exci­te­ment in crea­ting music with others, and Oli­via des­cribes the impor­tance of crea­tive explo­ra­tion for participants.

Advice for Com­mu­ni­ty-Enga­ged Musicians

The work­shop is suc­cess­ful if people are having fun. If people aren’t having fun, then adapt the acti­vi­ties, chan­ging or twea­king so that par­ti­ci­pants stay enga­ged and have a good time.

Musi­cians can pick up the skills they need as they go along, but they need the heart and desire to do this work to be able to do it well. The desire to connect is most important. 

Media­tion is impor­tant in that it is a rela­tion­ship. Making music is about exchan­ging some­thing of each other to create together.

View sec­tions of the documentary :

0:00   Intro­du­cing Louise Camp­bell 

01:48 Intro­du­cing clients of The C.A.R.E. Centre 

03:39 Fea­tu­red acti­vi­ties 

06:35 Com­pe­ten­cies nee­ded to do this work

08:44 What does suc­cess look like ? 

09:25 Advice for com­mu­ni­ty-enga­ged musicians

Explore the pro­ject Music From Hope, in which Nour Kaa­dan and Tarek Ghri­ri lead crea­tive music work­shops for refu­gee youth ages 5 – 25 who have recent­ly arri­ved in Cana­da and are staying in tem­po­ra­ry hou­sing com­mu­ni­ties in Toronto. 

About musi­cians Nour Kaa­dan and Tarek Ghriri

Nour Kaa­dan and Tarek Ghri­ri, the foun­ders of Music from Hope, star­ted offe­ring work­shops for refu­gee youth  in Bei­rut, Leba­non, and are now based in Toron­to. The musi­cians lead music work­shops, and use sound, song­wri­ting, body per­cus­sion, and non­violent com­mu­ni­ca­tion to encou­rage inter­ac­tion bet­ween par­ti­ci­pants. No back­ground in music is neces­sa­ry.  The goal of Music From Hope is for par­ti­ci­pants to have a safe place to feel and express their ideas through music. 

Desi­gn of Music From Hope workshops

Refu­gee fami­lies don’t tend to stay in tem­po­ra­ry hou­sing for more than one month after arri­ving in Cana­da, so the youth  may arrive or leave the pro­gram sud­den­ly. Nour and Tarek desi­gn a set of 3 to 4 work­shops so that par­ti­ci­pants can join at any point, with youth who have atten­ded more ses­sions lea­ding the newer par­ti­ci­pants. Each work­shop is struc­tu­red in three parts : war­mup, body of main acti­vi­ties, and clo­sing activities. 

Fea­tu­red activities

Warm-up : Tarek leads the warm-up that uses a mir­ro­ring exer­cise to match the ener­gy of the kids (shy or ener­ge­tic). Tarek also runs around with high ener­gy to help kids focus on him and lose their shyness.

Reco­gnize music notes : use music note cards to learn dif­ferent rhythms and musi­cal pat­terns. The faci­li­ta­tors then get par­ti­ci­pants to use the cards to lead each other.

Par­ti­ci­pant sha­ring : Tarek and Nour invite par­ti­ci­pants to share a song or acti­vi­ty. Some­times this is then used in the next workshop.

Pass the sha­ker : Hit the drum on the beat for kids to pass the sha­ker in rhythm, and when the sha­ker stops, that par­ti­ci­pant is the lea­der of the exercise.

Com­pe­ten­cies nee­ded to do this work 

Impro­vi­sa­tion skills : to be able to impro­vise musi­cal­ly, and also to work through unex­pec­ted ideas or reac­tions to work­shop acti­vi­ties is impor­tant. The work­shop can change signi­fi­cant­ly in fol­lo­wing par­ti­ci­pants. Being adap­tive keeps the work­shops fun and exci­ting and engages participants. 

Res­pon­sive and adap­tive : Paying atten­tion to the par­ti­ci­pants, mee­ting their ener­gy, and respon­ding accor­din­gly to make sure eve­ryone feels inclu­ded and the par­ti­ci­pant needs are met.

Know­ledge of immigration/refugee expe­rience : Nour and Tarek have expe­rien­ced glo­bal dis­pla­ce­ment, which helps in buil­ding connec­tions with new­co­mer youth. Yet both faci­li­ta­tors are care­ful not to assume they know any participant’s experience.

What does suc­cess look like ?

One out­come for the work­shops is to build res­pect among par­ti­ci­pants through the musi­cal games. The kids are very crea­tive, so suc­cess is seeing the kids over the set of work­shops beco­ming com­for­table to lead the ses­sions, even tel­ling the faci­li­ta­tors to step aside so they can lead their idea.

View sec­tions of the documentary : 

0:00 Artist intro­duc­tion 

0:53 Pro­ject over­view 

5:36 Fea­tu­red acti­vi­ties  

6:43 Com­pe­ten­cies
8:41 Advice

Explore choirs as a vehicle for com­mu­ni­ty buil­ding with Alli­son Gir­van, a conduc­tor who uses glo­bal song to create connec­tions and build rela­tion­ships across cultu­ral differences.

Alli­son is a cho­ral conduc­tor and com­mu­ni­ty music prac­ti­tio­ner in Nel­son, Bri­tish Colum­bia. She has orga­ni­zed 5 com­mu­ni­ty choirs of a varie­ty of ages. The docu­men­ta­ry features :

Fire­works Com­mu­ni­ty Choir, open to any and all sin­gers for one annual event, open to as many people who would like to come and sing toge­ther in the com­mu­ni­ty. In 2023, the choir had 250 par­ti­ci­pants, which was the first time this spe­cial choir hap­pe­ned since the pandemic. 

Lalin Vocal Ensemble, an audi­tio­ned choir of young adults that grew out of the youth choir pro­gram, as there were sin­gers in the teen group wan­ting to conti­nue , and Alli­son iden­ti­fied oppor­tu­ni­ties for lea­der­ship and men­tor­ship deve­lop­ment, as well as dig­ging into more chal­len­ging repertoire. 

Phi­lo­so­phy under­pin­ning cho­ral work

To Alli­son, it is a mis­per­cep­tion that a focus on com­mu­ni­ty-buil­ding in choirs will com­pro­mise musi­cal excel­lence. By nur­tu­ring trust, and inte­gra­ting inten­tio­nal social inter­ac­tions such as eating toge­ther or going on a trip toge­ther, the music changes in a pro­found way.

As someone with mixed heri­tage, Alli­son finds glo­bal music pro­vides a lens to look at ways in which people share the human expe­rience. Approa­ching reper­toire is a way into ano­ther culture’s music based on inte­gri­ty : how do these words reso­nate for each sin­ger ? What do the words mean ? Sin­ging diverse reper­toire helps sin­gers connect across cultu­ral differences.

Com­pe­ten­cies to do this work well

Cultu­ral com­pe­ten­cy :  In choo­sing diverse reper­toire, Alli­son ensures that music is appro­priate to be sung. Some cultures, espe­cial­ly Indi­ge­nous socie­ties, do not share songs out­side of par­ti­cu­lar contexts or people, unless a song is gif­ted. Addi­tio­nal­ly, some groups who have a his­to­ry of oppres­sion may be reclai­ming their own music, so Alli­son is care­ful to build rela­tion­ships to navi­gate these choices. This involves tal­king to many people of those cultures, and kno­wing how to own up to a mis­take if it is made. 

Empa­thy and space for emo­tions : If a rehear­sal goes by without the choir lau­ghing, some­thing is mis­sing. People may express them­selves joy­ful­ly one day, or more sor­row­ful­ly the next. Trust that wha­te­ver is pre­sen­ted is what needs to hap­pen. Mutual trust allows grace to be given to the faci­li­ta­tor as well since there is a mutual unders­tan­ding and for­gi­ve­ness that has been cultivated. 

Embo­di­ment of group values : Lea­ding by example and igni­ting joy, kind­ness, confi­dence and com­pas­sion all help the group to reach those goals fas­ter col­lec­ti­ve­ly by seeing an example of it. 

Conduc­ting is rela­tio­nal : rather than the conduc­tor “making” the music, Alli­son sees conduc­ting as in elec­tri­ci­ty, that ener­gy passes through the conduc­tor to sin­gers. Conduc­ting is rela­tio­nal, taking the ener­gy and reflec­ting it to the group and the audience. 

Musi­cal skills res­pon­sive to the par­ti­ci­pants : sin­gers des­cribe Allison’s musi­cal abi­li­ty in kno­wing what to keep and what to let go of. Alli­son is trai­ned as a sin­ger and conduc­tor, but she is com­pel­led to use that trai­ning to build community.

View sec­tions of the documentary :

00:00 Intro­du­cing Alli­son and her cho­ral work 

01:07 Fire­works Com­mu­ni­ty Choir 

02:30 Lalin Vocal Ensemble 

03:44 Phi­lo­so­phy of cho­ral singing

07:48 Competencies

Learn about the Van­cou­ver Adap­ted Music Socie­ty (VAMS), Canada’s only ful­ly acces­sible recor­ding stu­dio ser­ving the metro Van­cou­ver area. VAMS is a pro­gram of the Disa­bi­li­ty Foun­da­tion. 

About VAMS
VAMS offers music les­sons, recor­ding ses­sions, and live per­for­mance oppor­tu­ni­ties for disa­bled musi­cians in the metro Van­cou­ver area. VAMS was for­med in 1988 by Sam Sul­li­van and Dave Syming­ton, two musi­cians who were invol­ved in life-alte­ring acci­dents that chan­ged the way they could play music. No two people have the same musi­cal jour­ney, so the focus of VAMS is to sup­port each unique musi­cian to achieve their musi­cal goals.

Bry­den Vei­not is the pro­gram coor­di­na­tor of the VAMS, and toge­ther with pro­gram assis­tant Noah Stolte, they sup­port musi­cians with disa­bi­li­ties achieve their artis­tic goals. Graeme Wyman, pro­gram mana­ger at the Disa­bi­li­ty Foun­da­tion, manages VAMS as well as other programs. 

Fea­tu­red Activities

Music les­sons : the pro­gram staff assess what is nee­ded in the moment to adapt, such as pla­cing chord shapes onto the music for a client with a brain injury.

Recor­ding : the staff are ‘musi­cal conduits’ and the clients are the pro­du­cers. The staff is there to bridge the gap so that musi­cians can record their music and rea­lize their vision.

Live per­for­mance : staff pro­mote per­for­mance oppor­tu­ni­ties, and search for acces­sible venues for per­for­mers, inclu­ding the buil­ding itself and the loca­tion (close to transit).

Com­pe­ten­cies nee­ded to do this work well

Rela­tion­ship Buil­ding : Staff aim to make genuine connec­tions. Clients are able to be emo­tio­nal­ly vul­ne­rable when trust has been built with the staff at VAMS through genuine connec­tions. This keeps the door open for crea­ti­vi­ty in a way that is authentic. 

Patience : VAMS staff need patience to fol­low and sup­port clients at their pace. VAMS staff need to unders­tand the abi­li­ty of each client and adapt to match the client so they feel com­for­table and validated. 

Adap­ta­bi­li­ty and Pro­blem Sol­ving : The staff have to find the best way to sup­port clients to get to their musi­cal goals. Some­times, VAMS can work with their sis­ter socie­ty Tetra to desi­gn adap­tive devices. Bry­den shows a gui­tar that can be strum­med with a foot pedal as an example. 

What Does Suc­cess Look Like ?

Clients should feel like they are get­ting a posi­tive pro­fes­sio­nal music expe­rience, and clients should see pro­gress in wor­king towards their music goals.

Suc­cess is buil­ding awa­re­ness that fights the stig­ma against musi­cians with disa­bi­li­ties. This includes inte­gra­tion bet­ween the Van­cou­ver music scene and disa­bled com­mu­ni­ty in Van­cou­ver. The Strong Ses­sions is an event that pairs VAMS artists with local bands to per­form sets toge­ther as a way of sup­por­ting disa­bled musi­cians within the lar­ger music scene.

Final­ly, what is abi­li­ty ? Eve­ry per­son that comes through the door has incre­dible abi­li­ty to make music. VAMS staff try to remove bar­riers for clients to reach their musi­cal goals, to ‘re-ima­gine what’s possible.’

View sec­tions of the documentary : 

00:24 Intro­duc­tion of VAMS Musi­cians
01:09 Over­view of the Pro­gram
02:37 Fea­tu­red Acti­vi­ties
06:03 Com­pe­ten­cies
07:34 What Does Suc­cess Look Like ?

Pre­sen­ta­tion of Music and Health Resource 

Hi. I’m Rebec­ca Barns­taple. I am the mana­ger of Com­mu­ni­ty Ini­tia­tives Research and Inno­va­tion here at Chi­ga­mik Com­mu­ni­ty Health Cen­ter. I’m also a post-doc­to­ral research fel­low at The Inter­na­tio­nal Ins­ti­tute for Cri­ti­cal Stu­dies in Impro­vi­sa­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph and I am very exci­ted to wel­come you to this music and Health Resource.

Like many of the people you’re going to see in these videos, I wear many hats, besides the two things I alrea­dy sha­red with you. I’m also a dance the­ra­pist, and I work in the field of dance and health.

I have been offe­ring pro­grams here at Chi­ga­mik for almost eight years for people with Par­kin­son’s and move­ment disor­ders. I was invi­ted to direct this resource based on my expe­rience in the field of dance and health and as many of you pro­ba­bly rea­lize, dance and music are so in meshed and have long his­to­ries in many cultu­ral prac­tices asso­cia­ted with health and well-being.

One of the things that you will also see throu­ghout this resource is the idea of health itself is a very mul­ti-dimen­sio­nal thing. People will be tal­king about not only phy­si­cal health but men­tal health and well-being, social connec­ted­ness. These ideas are real­ly dif­fi­cult to sepa­rate and when we think about artis­tic and holis­tic prac­tices, these are ways that we can address health in a mul­ti-dimen­sio­nal way. So music-based and arts-based resources are real­ly gai­ning visi­bi­li­ty and trac­tion as ways of approa­ching some of the most urgent health crises of our time.

You are going to see videos from people who are resear­chers, prac­ti­tio­ners, the­ra­pists, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, people who are doing com­mu­ni­ty enga­ged work. And you will see that many of the folks who are going to share with us do many of those things at the same time and also separately.

On Health, Social Pres­crip­tion, and the Arts

More than just the absence of disease or hel­ping people medi­cal­ly reco­ver from ill­ness, health is more and more unders­tood to be broad­ly defi­ned as hel­ping people access a sense of thri­ving and well-being, and this is often connec­ted to fin­ding mea­ning in the acti­vi­ties that we engage in.

One of the things that we’ve star­ted doing here at Chi­ga­mik that is real­ly lin­ked with a lot of these music and health ini­tia­tives is social pres­cri­bing. Social pres­cri­bing is a path­way for cli­ni­cians, whe­ther they’re doc­tors, nurses, social wor­kers, men­tal health wor­kers, to refer people to non-cli­ni­cal ser­vices so it it creates a path for people to access things in the com­mu­ni­ty that can help contri­bute to that sense of well-being thri­ving and meaning.

Many of the best examples of social pres­cri­bing pro­grams are rela­ted to arts and health.

The­re’s a a won­der­ful pro­gram cal­led « Arts on Pres­crip­tion » and seve­ral of the ini­tia­tives that you’ll hear about in this resource have a social pres­cri­bing ele­ment. I’m very exci­ted because here at Chi­ga­mik, we’re actual­ly laun­ching into a part­ner­ship with Sing­Well which seve­ral of the people that you’ll hear from are invol­ved, in which is the crea­tion of a health choir for people with COPD and brea­thing disor­ders and their Care Partners.

The other thing that’s exci­ting about that and seve­ral of the other ini­tia­tives that we’re sha­ring is not only the pro­vi­sion of a new pro­gram and ser­vice for people that can contri­bute to their sense of health and well­being, there is a research com­ponent atta­ched to it so we’re able to bet­ter unders­tand real­ly what are the impacts for people who are par­ti­ci­pa­ting in these pro­grams. And also what are the best ways to faci­li­tate access, lower bar­riers for people to access these pro­grams in the community.

I am very exci­ted to share this resource with you. I have brought toge­ther many dif­ferent col­leagues who have also refer­red other col­leagues to share with you a real sense of the diver­si­ty of prac­tices asso­cia­ted with music and health. A range of ways that people have got­ten into doing this work. I real­ly hope you find it as ins­pi­ring as I have. Thank you.

On music and men­tal health

My name is Rob Lutes. I’m a sin­ger-song­wri­ter, musi­cian, and music edu­ca­tor who lives in Pointe-Clair, Quebec.

Music and men­tal health, it’s an enor­mous ques­tion and the ans­wer could be enor­mous, but in gene­ral for me, music is just good for my brain and good for my body. Playing, sin­ging, com­po­sing, explo­ring, lis­te­ning to music, tal­king about music, all these things just make me hap­pier. (They) make me feel bet­ter more ful­filled, more enga­ged, more exci­ted about my life and the world. And in a world full of dif­fi­cult things, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in recent years when it’s been fraught with poli­ti­cal­ly char­ged events and dif­fi­cul­ties, music is a place where the­re’s so much beau­ty. So many great things hap­pe­ning. It’s a place where I can find and others can find ways to tackle these things, cope with these things emotionally.

Music is filled with so many emo­tions and in my defi­ni­tion music is a sha­red expe­rience. You know that someone else is fee­ling what you’re fee­ling. Whe­ther you’re lis­te­ning to a piece by Bee­tho­ven or a song by any song­wri­ter, and no mat­ter what it is they’re expres­sing, if it’s tou­ching you then you know that you’re connec­ting. And to me that’s a huge part of the musi­cal expe­rience as a wri­ter and a performer.

What I’m trying to do is connect and it’s the same with work­shops. When I give work­shops, I’m trying to connect and to me that’s the real cen­ter of health, that connec­tion that you can find through music.

On song­wri­ting and music his­to­ry for seniors at home

I’ve been doing work­shops on song­wri­ting and music his­to­ry, par­ti­cu­lar­ly Blues his­to­ry since about 2000. And what got me star­ted was basi­cal­ly tou­ring and fes­ti­vals where I would be going somew­here and they would say what kind of work­shops could you offer.

And so, I deve­lo­ped work­shops on these two things. When the pan­de­mic hit, a per­son named Fred Agnus, who was direc­tor of an orga­ni­za­tion in Vau­dreuil, Que­bec cal­led Rézo (or net­work) asked me one day. « Rob could you deve­lop some­thing for these people who can’t leave their homes ? » They were iso­la­ted because of the pan­de­mic and so I took about a week and I thought about it.

I thought, I’ve always been real­ly into music his­to­ry and his­to­ry of songs and I real­ly like resear­ching and kno­wing about this. So I deci­ded I’d do a his­to­ry of popu­lar music in Ame­ri­ca and Cana­da. It was an ambi­tious idea, but I thought I’ll just start and see what I can do. I had all this time because of the pandemic.

I wasn’t gig­ging nor­mal­ly and I had this pro­gram that I was giving vir­tual­ly, so I got this expe­rience of seeing the reac­tion of people in the pro­grams when I would play songs, par­ti­cu­lar­ly older songs from the 1700s and 1800s. Their reac­tion and these were songs that they knew the metric for the pro­gram was it inclu­ded songs that had sur­vi­ved that amount of time while so many others had fal­len by the wayside.

So it was real­ly Fred who got me star­ted on this and then as I star­ted doing this his­to­ry of popu­lar music. The word spread and other people star­ted wan­ting me to do it and so I had more pro­grams and then also people in the pro­gram would start reques­ting songs. So while I was alrea­dy doing my research, I would start to research the songs that they asked for, and so my reper­toire grew, and my unders­tan­ding grew and it just kept expan­ding. Fin­ding new songs from the past and it was some­bo­dy else that spur­red me into doing this and I have than­ked Fred for get­ting me star­ted on this path.

On his path to his work in music and health

My path into this was real­ly through two things. Well more than two things but one was sim­ply loving music. Real­ly enjoying it and never seeing it as a career. I never saw myself as a per­son who would do this full-time, but just loving, loving music. Num­ber two, final­ly doing the tra­di­tio­nal kind of career recor­ding, relea­sing records, tou­ring, that kind of path­way. The third would be this love of his­to­ry. Some­thing I’m real­ly inter­es­ted in. So those three things com­bi­ned because as a song­wri­ter, I feel like eve­ry­thing is buil­ding on some­thing else. Nothing comes out of now­here, musi­cal­ly or in any of the Arts.

Even if you’re com­ple­te­ly brea­king with a tra­di­tion, you’re brea­king with some­thing. You’re going in ano­ther direc­tion, so it’s rela­ted. I find that real­ly always help­ful in my song wri­ting, is the things you’ve heard that ins­pire you to write some­thing. Wor­king in the health field real­ly came from someone else. And it taught me, I never thought about music and health honest­ly, it never occur­red to me. It was just part of my life and eve­ryo­ne’s life, but it never occur­red to me, the direct connec­tion bet­ween music and men­tal health.

The more I do this, the more I unders­tand how hea­ling and how help­ful music can be for people in all dif­ferent ways, wha­te­ver kind of music you’re doing, so that’s been a a big part of it for me.

Ajay Heble : What is Music and Health ?

My name is Ajay Heble. I’m the direc­tor of The Inter­na­tio­nal Ins­ti­tute for Cri­ti­cal Stu­dies and Impro­vi­sa­tion, and I was the foun­ding artis­tic direc­tor of the Guelph Jazz Fes­ti­val (where) I ser­ved in that role from 1994 to 2016. I’m also pro­fes­sor of English at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph.

It’s a big ques­tion, music and health. My sense is that music and health is a topic that hasn’t real­ly attrac­ted the kind of atten­tion that it should attract, part­ly because I think music inha­bits the social and cultu­ral land­scape in ways that remain lar­ge­ly unin­ven­ted. Des­pite this, I’ve long belie­ved that impro­vi­sa­tio­nal musi­cal prac­tices in par­ti­cu­lar, can contri­bute to the deve­lop­ment and well-being of heal­thy com­mu­ni­ties and in fact, that’s one of the core hypo­theses that we try to test through the work we’re doing at The Inter­na­tio­nal Ins­ti­tute for Cri­ti­cal Stu­dies and Improvisation.

Ajay Hable : Music and Health through the pro­gram KidsAbility

I think the example that comes to mind is the work we’ve been doing for pro­ba­bly about 15 years

with « Kid­sA­bi­li­ty, » which is a social ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion that runs pro­grams for kids that have phy­si­cal and deve­lop­men­tal disa­bi­li­ties. And for years we’ve been brin­ging impro­vi­sing artists into the com­mu­ni­ty to work with youth from Kid­sA­bi­li­ty and those impro­vi­sing artists will run series of impro­vi­sing work­shops that will often culmi­nate in large scale public per­for­mances at the Guelph Jazz Festival.

So for example, we’ll shut down one of the main streets in Guelph at one of the fes­ti­val’s big­gest public events, that’s where these kids get to play on that stage. So it’s real­ly quite remarkable.

And the research com­ponent is that we have our research team mem­bers, for example our gra­duate stu­dents, doing inter­views with the kids, with the parents, with the staff, with the artist faci­li­ta­tors as well, and trying to track the impact that these pro­grams are having.

The sto­ries and anec­dotes we hear are real­ly quite remar­kable about the impact. The kinds of things that people tell us. That the kids are sho­wing self-esteem, that they’re lis­te­ning in ways they didn’t lis­ten before, they’re taking on lea­der­ship roles in front of a large audience. The kids are willing to get up in front of an audience of thou­sands of people and take on a lea­der­ship role by conduc­ting the whole band for example. Often we hear from the parents that this isn’t some­thing that they see their kids doing very often.

So I think we’re real­ly inter­es­ted in this idea that impro­vi­sa­tion can actual­ly be a means of empo­we­ring and ani­ma­ting spe­cial needs youth. And again, the research team that I’ve wor­ked with have docu­men­ted and ana­ly­zed the com­plex rela­tion­ships bet­ween impro­vi­sa­tio­nal prac­tices and their effects on, for example, socia­li­za­tion, well­ness, self-esteem, phy­si­cal coor­di­na­tion, and men­tal acui­ty. That’s a pro­ject that’s been run­ning for 15 years and the impacts on the kids, as I said, are real­ly quite … we hear ama­zing stories.

Ajay Heble : On how Kid­sA­bi­li­ty came to be

How it star­ted. We recei­ved a large scale SSHRC Grant, this was in 2007. It was a SSHRC  « Major Col­la­bo­ra­tive Research Ini­tia­tives » grant for a pro­ject cal­led « Impro­vi­sa­tion Com­mu­ni­ty and Social Prac­tice, » and the bulk of the work was com­mu­ni­ty-enga­ged part­ne­red research focu­sing on the social impli­ca­tions of impro­vi­sed musi­cal and crea­tive practices.

So we alrea­dy had, in this case, a group of part­ners that had signed on to the grant, but in the case of KidsAbility,they came on after the fact. We were just loo­king for a local orga­ni­za­tion that might be inter­es­ted in some of the things we were able to offer in terms of wor­king with impro­vi­sing artists. And so, we had a mee­ting with the staff at Kid­sA­bi­li­ty and they were so enthusiastic.

I still remem­ber that ini­tial mee­ting. There were a few of us, Ellen Water­man and I, and one of our staff mem­bers Jee Bur­rows at the time. We met with staff at Kid­sA­bi­li­ty and they were so incre­di­bly enthu­sias­tic to part­ner with us, and they saw it as very much in kee­ping with their needs, and it com­ple­men­ted some of the kinds of pro­grams they were offe­ring because I gather that music wasn’t real­ly some­thing that they were doing at the time.

So this was some­thing they were real­ly thril­led to do with us, and fur­ther­more what was real­ly inter­es­ting as I think back on that, we wan­ted we had this idea of sta­ging a public concert at the end of the work­shops that the kids would do with the work­shop facilitators.

So there were going to be a series of work­shops that we wan­ted to culmi­nate in this public per­for­mance, but we were wor­ried. We thought « Oh, maybe the kids don’t want to do it or won’t want to do it, » and the staff said « No, no, they’re going to want to do it. » In fact, they (the kids) voted and they were total­ly on board. The kids wan­ted to go on stage. They thri­ved in that ele­ment. So that’s where it began, with the ini­tial SSHRC MCIR grant.

Ajay Heble : On what his path was to work in com­mu­ni­ty health and well­ness and music

I think it was an indi­rect path that had to do with the work I was doing with the Guelph Jazz Fes­ti­val. For years during the Jazz­Fest I would bring toge­ther artists from dif­ferent places, dif­ferent com­mu­ni­ties, and have them impro­vise, and it became clear to me that there was some­thing real­ly spe­cial going on in that moment – where artists come toge­ther to impro­vise. Some­thing that had a lot to tell us about how we nego­tiate dif­fe­rence in the com­mu­ni­ty, how we com­mu­ni­cate with one ano­ther, how we think about issues of trust and social belon­ging. I think this whole issue of com­mu­ni­ty health and well­ness, was some­thing that became more and more evident to me as I was run­ning the festival.

I unders­tood fair­ly ear­ly on, that the work I was doing at the Jazz Fes­ti­val wasn’t just about the music or the pro­gram­ming. It was about some­thing much more than that. I’ve said this before it was about rein­vi­go­ra­ting public life with the spi­rit of dia­logue in com­mu­ni­ty. I think that’s very clear­ly some­thing that has an impact on issues of well­ness and qua­li­ty of life.

I think that was pro­ba­bly the path that led me to the work that I’m des­cri­bing here.

Arla Good : On what music and health means to her

My name is Arla Good. I am the co-direc­tor and chief resear­cher of Sing­Well Project.

The Sing­Well Pro­ject is a net­work of resear­chers, com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, prac­ti­tio­ners, choirs across Cana­da and beyond. We’re all wor­king towards the same goal which is to docu­ment and advo­cate for the bene­fits of group sin­ging. In par­ti­cu­lar, we’re inter­es­ted in people who have com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges. So the ques­tion is how can group sin­ging sup­port both the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the social well-being of these types of individuals.

I want to start by ack­now­led­ging the power of music for music’s sake and art for art’s sake, without dimi­ni­shing that, I think that the­re’s also lots of ways in which we can use music to sup­port well-being and health. In our par­ti­cu­lar context with Sing­Well, we’re inter­es­ted in how we can use sin­ging as a very acces­sible, sca­lable way to get lots of people invol­ved. How we can use sin­ging to sup­port the health and well-being of usual­ly older adults, so using it as a reha­bi­li­ta­tion tool. Using it as a tool for get­ting people toge­ther for com­mu­ni­ty buil­ding, for belon­ging, and for boos­ting mood.

We see the bio­lo­gi­cal impact of sin­ging, so unders­tan­ding what’s hap­pe­ning in the body when we’re sin­ging. It makes people feel good and that’s what, for me, music and health is.

Arla Good : On the impacts of a Sing­Well ses­sion on music and health

Over the last three or four years, we have been see­ding choirs in dif­ferent com­mu­ni­ties. So we focus on Par­kin­son’s, apha­sia, lung disease, hea­ring loss and stut­te­ring ‚and we have choirs (in which) we are tra­cking some of these psy­cho­so­cial well-being benefits.

So a typi­cal single stu­dy might look some­thing like this. We would start a choir usual­ly around 12  to 15 people, and the choir would run for about 12 ses­sions. We would track at the base­line and com­ple­tion of the choir, and we would also track before and after a single sin­ging ses­sion. So we’re loo­king at things like how they’re fee­ling that moment. We’re loo­king at some of the bio­lo­gi­cal effects, so the hor­mones, pain thre­sholds, stress.

Then over the lon­gi­tu­di­nal time frame, we’re loo­king at fee­lings of social connec­ted­ness, psy­cho­lo­gi­cal well-being. One par­ti­cu­lar pro­ject I can men­tion, we’re gea­ring up to run a stu­dy at Chi­ga­mik Com­mu­ni­ty Health Cen­ter. So this will be indi­vi­duals with lung disease, (they) will be pres­cri­bed from their pri­ma­ry care phy­si­cian or self-pres­cri­bed to the choir.

We will be able to docu­ment these indi­vi­duals from day one, when they start their choir, and to see what kind of  effects on their psy­cho­so­cial well-being, but also on their brea­thing. So we’ll be able to see if the choir is having an impact on their breath function.

Arla Good : On the bene­fits of a Sing­Well pro­ject on music and health

So for this par­ti­cu­lar pro­ject, we expect to see impact on breath health. We think that ele­ments of sin­ging inclu­ding deep brea­thing, control­led brea­thing, it’s a way to help streng­then the breath control and the breath health of indi­vi­duals with lung disease.

So we’re expec­ting to see that, but we’re also expec­ting to see impro­ve­ments in social well-being. What hap­pens when we bring a group of indi­vi­duals toge­ther who all have lung disease ? How does it feel for them all to be sin­ging toge­ther ? What is the impact on their iden­ti­ty ?  One of the quotes that actual­ly trig­ge­red the ins­pi­ra­tion for all of Sing­Well, was an indi­vi­dual living with Par­kin­son’s who star­ted to sing in a choir for Par­kin­son’s. She said « I used to be someone with Par­kin­son’s and now I’m someone with Par­kin­son’s who can sing. » So this shift in the iden­ti­ty is what we’re real­ly trying to docu­ment and this belon­ging in this new com­mu­ni­ty. It’s a strength based com­mu­ni­ty that breaks down stigma.

You might think someone with a brea­thing disor­der wouldn’t be able to sing, and yet here they are sin­ging and impro­ving their breath health while they’re at it. So out­comes, we’re inter­es­ted in breath health and psy­cho­so­cial well-being.

Arla Good : What is your ins­pi­ra­tion in doing this work with SingWell ?

I’m ins­pi­red by anec­dotes that I hear and it’s a very com­mon expe­rience to hear people say that a grand­parent with demen­tia or with Par­kin­son’s who real­ly came alive when they sang. I hear these sto­ries and I think we all see that hap­pe­ning but I wan­ted to unders­tand why this is hap­pe­ning, and to begin to docu­ment it, and create resources for people who want to be doing this kind of work.

So best prac­tices in lea­ding a choir like this, and to help spread the word to com­mu­ni­ties that would bene­fit from pro­gram­ming like this.

Music the­ra­pist Danielle Jaku­biak : What does music and health mean to you ?

My name is Danielle Jaku­biak and I am a coun­se­ling the­ra­pist and a music the­ra­pist based in Hali­fax, Nova Sco­tia. I’m in pri­vate prac­tice, and I believe that’s all I have to say.

For me per­so­nal­ly, a lot of the work that I do is wor­king with adult men­tal health.

So I have found in my work, music helps to bring out a sense of groun­ded­ness in peo­ple’s connec­tion to their emo­tio­nal life, and that’s real­ly real­ly impor­tant for people who have been through things like trau­ma and who have a lot of anxie­ty. It can be some­thing that’s like a real­ly groun­ding force. It can also give them a sense of nor­mal­cy and resour­ce­ful­ness when they’re fee­ling real­ly des­ta­bi­li­zed in their lives. I see it as a great resource I guess.

Music the­ra­pist Danielle Jaku­biak : On the use of gui­ded ima­ge­ry and music with trau­ma clients

I’ve been doing work in this method cal­led « Gui­ded Ima­ge­ry and Music » for quite a num­ber of years now.

Most recent­ly, I did a trai­ning in some­thing cal­led « Resource Orien­ted Music and Ima­ge­ry » which is kind of a depar­ture from « Gui­ded Ima­ge­ry and Music, » but it’s real­ly focu­sing on that first level of sta­bi­li­za­tion when you do trau­ma work. For example, that which we call resour­cing – fin­ding what is heal­thy and good when you’ve been through some­thing that’s real­ly dama­ging and fin­ding that in connec­tion with music that you alrea­dy know in love.

It’s a real­ly great inter­ven­tion that can be used, par­ti­cu­lar­ly with trau­ma clients.

Music The­ra­pist Danielle Jaku­biak : Connec­ting through music

It was some­thing that came out of Gui­ded Ima­ge­ry Music, so that’s a method that’s been around since the 50’s or 60’s. And it’s a real­ly spe­ci­fic method that uses clas­si­cal music and ima­ge­ry like the client’s memo­ries or things that are coming to their mind when they lis­ten to this clas­si­cal music.

So that’s a real­ly spe­ci­fic pro­to­col that’s been around for many years. Then one of the first pro­teges, I would say, of the main trai­ner for Gui­ded Ima­ge­ry Music deci­ded that she wan­ted to do a simi­lar thing, but using the client’s own music. So rather than the spe­ci­fic set of clas­si­cal pieces, ins­tead just ask the client what music that they feel connects to a spe­ci­fic resource or fee­ling inside of them. So it’s a lot more per­so­na­li­zed and also gets past a lot of the inter­cul­tu­ral bar­riers. Some­times that can come with using spe­ci­fi­cal­ly just clas­si­cal music, which some people don’t have great rela­tion­ships to, and some people have com­pli­ca­ted rela­tion­ships to, so it’s just a bit different.

Gilles Comeau : What is music and health ?

I am Gilles Comeau, I am a pro­fes­sor at the School of Music at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Otta­wa. I am the foun­ding direc­tor of the Music and Health Research Ins­ti­tute at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Otta­wa, and recent­ly I became a prin­ci­pal resear­cher at the Research Ins­ti­tute in Men­tal Health at the Royal, where I am res­pon­sible for esta­bli­shing a research cli­nic in music and men­tal health.

There is a lot of research that tends to demons­trate that music can have an impact on seve­ral health condi­tions, on well-being, on men­tal health. I obser­ved in the report that was publi­shed in 2019 by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion that approxi­ma­te­ly 40% of music research had been done with music the­ra­pists, and that the other 60% was by musi­cians, musi­cian-edu­ca­tors, some­times health people who had music training.

At that time, I knew there was lot of research that had been done with music the­ra­pists, that look at how their work was having an impact. And music the­ra­pists often work one-on-one, and often see them­selves as health prac­ti­tio­ners who are wor­king towards hel­ping indi­vi­duals with cer­tain condi­tion. So I deci­ded at that time to put the focus on musi­cians and music edu­ca­tors, because a lot less research has been done in that area.

They were alrea­dy very much imple­men­ting their pro­grams in health and social set­tings, so I wan­ted to be able to stu­dy what was hap­pe­ning and see how I could contri­bute with bet­ter enga­ge­ment of musi­cians and music edu­ca­tors, for the health and well­being of indi­vi­duals and communities.

Gilles Comeau : On the impacts of music and health and stra­te­gies for mea­su­ring these impacts

For people who have demen­tia, it real­ly has an impact on their well-being and qua­li­ty of life. Because we unders­tand that music is not expec­ted to have a hea­ling impact on Alz­hei­mers condi­tion, but, real­ly has a signi­fi­cant impact on well-being and qua­li­ty of life. Even for people who suf­fer from depres­sion and anxie­ty, it is also about being able to make the symp­toms less dis­tur­bing, and being able to improve well-being.

So what we do is that we try to mea­sure how it has an impact on their well-being : mea­sure the impact on anxie­ty, mea­sure the impact on depres­sion, mea­sure the impact on the joy / the exci­te­ment of lear­ning new things. And we do also the stan­dard ques­tion­naires that are of often used to mea­sure the various out­comes. There are spe­cial ques­tion­naires for people with demen­tia. There are ques­tion­naires for their care­gi­vers. There are ques­tion­naires for their anxie­ty level, for their depres­sion level, on flou­ri­shing, lear­ning new things, on joy, their qua­li­ty of joy as well.

Then we also have some bio­mar­kers that we want to use to demons­trate with the dif­ferent impacts it could have. And that could be some watch that you’re wea­ring simi­lar to Fit­bits that, for a per­iod of time, it shows the blood pres­sure, heart rate etc. So it will show if the music acti­vi­ty at one point in the week is having an impact on that day, or the day that fol­lows. We will work things like that.

We work with log books on sleep pat­tern and the self-report on sleep, and it gives us a good indi­ca­tion of how it is affec­ting their sleep. Some­times we can do some cor­ti­sol level with a sali­va test that helps us to mea­sure how things are impro­ving. We also look at the move­ment that they’re able to do, because a lot of the pro­gram we have are music and move­ment. The move­ment that they deve­lop is a real indi­ca­tion of how they per­ceive music and we qui­ck­ly see how the qua­li­ty of the move­ment change within a few weeks. You could also see how well they perceive.

Are they com­ple­te­ly off music, are they get­ting more with music, are they more subtle / supple, so all of that shows a change that we can observe.

Gilles Comeau on his path to work in music and health

I was always pas­sio­nate about tea­ching, and I was fas­ci­na­ting about how people learn.

I star­ted to teach music when I was 16 years old, tea­ching pia­no to young people but also to lit­tle groups of stu­dents and pres­choo­lers. I was fas­ci­na­ted with that aspects of tea­ching music and it has been a constant throu­ghout my life. I was also always in inter­es­ted in health and hel­ping people, and in my teens I had alrea­dy star­ted to volun­teer by spen­ding time in a long-term care faci­li­ty. When I came to Uni­ver­si­ty, I was hel­ping with the Chil­dren’s Aid Socie­ty and wor­king with chil­dren that were deaf and other chil­dren that had severe cases of autism. That was always part of it and then throu­ghout my career at the Uni­ver­si­ty, I did a lot of inter­dis­ci­pli­na­ry work with other resear­chers. It was always part of the work I did to com­bine those aspects. And loo­king at lear­ning, loo­king at tea­ching, loo­king at various groups, then loo­king at musi­cians health, phy­si­cal and men­tal health.

Even­tual­ly, I brought toge­ther a lit­tle bit of all those expe­riences and pas­sion. I’m brin­ging back my trai­ning in music edu­ca­tion and Del­croze, euryth­mics, music and move­ment, or trai­ning with per­cus­sion impro­vi­sa­tions. I’m brin­ging that back, but into health and social context.

I’m brin­ging back my inter­est with those groups of people and I’m also brin­ging my inter­est in research and in mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­na­ry research. I’ve had over two decades of expe­rience wor­king in dif­ferent research culture because eve­ry dis­ci­pline has its own way approa­ching research.

So it’s very fami­liar (to) me and I was able to group people from various fields of research to put eve­ry­thing toge­ther for that work in music and health.

Music The­ra­pist Rebec­ca McDo­nald on “What is music and Health?”

My name is Rebec­ca McDo­nald. I’m a music the­ra­pist who is cur­rent­ly living in Anti­go­nish, Nova Sco­tia, but I’m ori­gi­nal­ly from Peter­bo­rough, Ontario.

I think when I was thin­king about how to ans­wer this ques­tion, it’s a lot about how I look at what health is. I think in music the­ra­py espe­cial­ly, we’re loo­king at health as not just those spe­ci­fic phy­si­cal things. A lot of it is the social deter­mi­nants of health and peo­ple’s men­tal health, and how that all contri­butes to someo­ne’s per­so­nal health. I think that’s real­ly impor­tant and I think for myself too.

I use music a lot for my own men­tal health and that’s a very com­mon expe­rience for lots of people. I think for me, music and health are very lin­ked and I think it kind of contri­butes to that loo­king of health, mea­ning the whole person.

Music The­ra­pist Rebec­ca McDo­nald : On music and health in pal­lia­tive care

Music the­ra­py as a dis­ci­pline, I think is at the inter­sec­tion of music and health, espe­cial­ly where I work in a heal­th­care set­ting. I work in a hos­pi­tal so it’s the use of music in this heal­th­care set­ting. The pro­ject that I’m invol­ved in is in an Inpa­tient Pal­lia­tive Care Unit, as well as in an Out­pa­tient Onco­lo­gy Cli­nic, and other areas within the hospital.

So this pro­ject came about when I was an intern at the same hos­pi­tal in which I cur­rent­ly work and this hos­pi­tal has had music the­ra­pists for over 10 years. This job is only fun­ded by cer­tain units and it came out of seeing how well music the­ra­py was recei­ved at this hos­pi­tal and the need for it, and wan­ting to expand the pro­gram that was alrea­dy there. I had a spe­cial inter­est in wor­king in pal­lia­tive care, so I put toge­ther a pilot pro­ject for this unit so that we could expand and have someone who was dedi­ca­ted to that unit with those patients.

We did the pilot pro­ject about a year and a half ago and it was six months. It’s been exten­ded since we were gathe­ring data and gathe­ring sur­veys from people and get­ting peo­ple’s firs­thand expe­rience of what the music the­ra­py meant to them, so that we could show people why it’s a neces­sa­ry ser­vice in healthcare.

Music The­ra­pist Rebec­ca McDo­nald on how ser­vice for music and health are acces­sed in pal­lia­tive care

A lot of music the­ra­pists ope­rate on a refer­ral basis when they’re res­pon­sible for like a large popu­la­tion of patients. Lucki­ly for me, the posi­tion that I have right now, the unit is small with only six to eight patients at a time.

So, I’m able to offer it (the pro­gram) to eve­ryone and I like being able to do that because then it puts it in the patients hands and they get to decide if they would like to access the ser­vice. And if they want to (access the ser­vice), that’s great, and if they say « no, thank you » then that’s great too. It’s wha­te­ver they need.

I go in, intro­duce myself, explain what it is that I do, and leave it with the patient and their fami­lies to say if they would like the ser­vice or not. It’s not some­thing extra for which they need to pay.  It’s fun­ded by the hos­pi­tal, so the­re’s no bur­den of them having to pay. It’s just ano­ther ser­vice with all of the other things that are offe­red in the hospital.

Music The­ra­pist Rebec­ca McDo­nald : On the impacts of music and health

I think, in pal­lia­tive care espe­cial­ly, it is dif­fi­cult to talk about qua­li­ty of life, but I think the music the­ra­py contri­bu­ted to giving these people what we’d call « a good death ». Where they feel sup­por­ted and have their needs met and they have an experience.

When the heal­th­care sys­tem is very over­bur­de­ned and the nurses are so busy and they have so much on their plate, music the­ra­py is a time when I’m there just for them. It’s just for us to connect with music and talk about what they’re fee­ling, and expe­rience the music that they love, and talk about their lives. I got to hear lots of love­ly sto­ries and one of the things that was real­ly great to see, is the way that it hel­ped fami­lies connect because it can be a real­ly hard thing.

Someo­ne’s sit­ting with their fami­ly mem­ber and it’s very emo­tio­nal for days and days, and this gives them some­thing dif­ferent over which to connect. A lot of remi­nis­cing comes from when one sings a song and they go « oh do you remem­ber when we had that par­ty » for so and so’s anni­ver­sa­ry, and remem­ber this fun­ny thing hap­pe­ned. They just start to talk about things like that (which bring) relaxa­tion and that emo­tio­nal sup­port to the patient.

Pierre Ran­court : Music in Pal­lia­tive Care

One of the work envi­ron­ments that appeals to me the most is pal­lia­tive care, so I had the chance recent­ly with the socie­ty for arts in heal­th­care, to work to bring music to people at the end of their lives.

It’s real­ly a spe­cial context because that there is a need (and) music allows access to the world of emo­tions at a per­iod of life (the end of life) which is very, very emo­tio­nal­ly char­ged at this level.

So I have the impres­sion that what I see is that it allows a kind of paci­fi­ca­tion, a calm. Obvious­ly, you have to be very, let’s say, atten­tive as an artist at reper­toire level. I’m an ope­ra sin­ger so for sure I will not sing with a big voice. All the art of music media­tion is to feel who we are in front of. What is this per­son experiencing.

So pal­lia­tive care, yes, it’s some­thing that has attrac­ted me for many years. I mean, I sang for my mother at the end of her life, those were unfor­get­table moments. I have sung in contexts like this seve­ral times during my stu­dies, and I find that, as an artist, it is a pro­cess that is bidi­rec­tio­nal. It nou­rishes the people to whom we offer it, to whom we allow to express things that can­not express our­selves in words through our music. But, it also nou­rishes the artist who pre­sents who is there (the media­ting artist) who sees him­self confron­ted with a situa­tion in which there is no pos­sible fake. We can’t pre­tend. You abso­lu­te­ly have to be in the truth of the moment. You have to be in the exchange sin­cere, and it’s very nou­ri­shing for an artist. So, that’s it. This is some­thing that real­ly mat­ters to me.

The Impacts of Music on Health

Yes. In the case of concerts (let’s say) more orga­ni­zed to which we are able to invite people, fami­ly, signi­fi­cant people, it’s obvious that there is pre­pa­ra­tion. A choice of the reper­toire must be made. Just in this pro­cess, the fami­ly in connec­tion with the per­son who is nea­ring the end of life, the choice of reper­toire, it allows a whole return on the themes of life, so there is a kind of phe­no­me­non of life assess­ment which can be done through the construc­tion of a mini concert, a mini concert program.

The works will cho­sen accor­ding to cer­tain life prio­ri­ties. There is defi­ni­te­ly a trans­mis­sion. A cultu­ral heri­tage that is bequea­thed, which gives the fami­ly a fee­ling of cohe­sion that they real­ly need in those moments. So, in terms of fami­ly cohe­sion, it can contri­bute to a cultu­ral inhe­ri­tance. Then, for the per­son them­selves who is at the end of its life, it is cer­tain that the bene­fits are docu­men­ted at various levels of health : good heart rate, pres­sure, anxie­ty level, all that. It is obvious that there is mar­ked improvement.

There can be also emo­tio­nal reac­tions (let’s say) of cathar­sis that occurs. A kind of access to emo­tions that once would have been tur­ned away. So that is very bene­fi­cial. What we notice is that there is also a change in the per­son’s breathing.

It’s even hap­pe­ned for me to sing for people near end of life who were in a coma or uncons­cious­ness, and we even note in these cases, a change in brea­thing levels.

What was your path to wor­king in Music and Health ?

For me, music is an act of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, even if I prac­tice alone in my living room. It’s in pre­dic­tion of one day being able to deli­ver it.

Music is an act, by defi­ni­tion, that is com­mu­nal. Sin­ging in par­ti­cu­lar is one of these modes of ances­tral com­mu­ni­ca­tion which we relates to real­ly, real­ly far back in evo­lu­tion. As such, it amounts to when it sti­mu­lates a part of us like that, a mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion or ances­tral mee­ting, there is real­ly some­thing very spe­cial happening.

I think that’s what got me into health. I star­ted sin­ging in the lit­tle church choir in my vil­lage, so there was from the begin­ning of my musi­cal expe­rience, an aspect of fami­ly. There was my uncle who was there, there was my aunt.We knew eve­ryone. There was an aspect of reu­nion, an aspect of family.

Then when we work in the health field, and we talk about inclu­sion. We’re tal­king about brin­ging back music, brin­ging music to people who have less access to it. It’s work with autis­tic people, for wor­king with people who live with func­tio­nal limi­ta­tions, (for) wor­king with people in diverse envi­ron­ments and, in this case, we were tal­king about pal­lia­tive care.

We not only bring the music, because music is acces­sible to anyone on your phone at any time, but we bring live music.

Live music, the vibra­tion of air par­ticles pro­du­ced by an ins­tru­ment in per­son. With that, we have some­thing that real­ly anchors us in the community.

What does Music and Health mean to you ?

Hel­lo, my name is Pierre Ran­cour. I’m a bari­tone, a trai­ned ope­ra sin­ger, also a gui­ta­rist and cultu­ral mediator.

Music and health. For me, music is health because in my per­so­nal prac­tice, my rehear­sals, my sin­ging, these are always moments of joy, of hap­pi­ness, moments of recon­nec­tion to myself, moments of vita­li­za­tion, but at the same time of calm, of expan­sion, of moments when I feel com­plete. So I think that it’s cer­tain that all of this of which we’re tal­king about, is about qua­li­ty of life. We are tal­king about increa­sing our own qua­li­ty of life as a per­for­mer. That the per­so­nal prac­tice is syno­ny­mous with plea­sure, then this ins­pires us when we do music in cultu­ral and health contexts.

It makes us want to share this joy there. This phy­si­cal, emo­tio­nal, and men­tal well-being becomes conta­gious. And in my expe­rience in dif­ferent heal­th­care set­tings that I’ve wor­ked in with music, that’s real­ly what hap­pens. It is because there is a qua­li­ty of ener­gy, a vibra­tion when we make music that we are sha­ring and trans­mit­ting to others. So the

the way we pose our voice, the way we come into contact, the ope­ning that we real­ly feel – almost at the level of the solar plexus. Some­thing in the order of confidence.

There are many bene­fits that I notice in all the envi­ron­ments in which I have wor­ked with music.  It’s obvious. Research proves them. The research is there to docu­ment all these bene­fits of music, but I see it on the ground. I see that this is a ser­vice that can easi­ly be mini­mi­zed (culture, music, the human contact). That’s what we do. It’s about coming into contact, it’s about vibra­ting toge­ther. But this is not to be mini­mi­zed, on the contra­ry, it’s some­thing excep­tio­nal­ly powerful.

What does music and health mean to you ?

My name is Louise Camp­bell. I am a musi­cian and artist, and I do a lot of work with people in many dif­ferent sec­tors, of which one is health. The work that I’ve done in health real­ly ranges depen­ding on what people are loo­king for. I’ve wor­ked with people who have severe phy­si­cal disa­bi­li­ties, also with many kids who are neu­ro­di­vergent, as well as people who have a diag­noses of fair­ly serious neu­ro­de­ge­ne­ra­tive diseases among­st other things.

For me, music and health is in part what music brings to eve­ryone. It’s the fun of making music, of being crea­tive, of connec­ting with others, and the joy of being in com­mu­ni­ty with people. When it comes to be more spe­ci­fic to health, I think it depends on what people are loo­king for and it can mean many dif­ferent things to dif­ferent people. So someone might be inter­es­ted in addres­sing a phy­si­cal ailment that they have, some­bo­dy else might be more loo­king for the psy­cho­so­cial connec­tions. So it real­ly depends on how we’re going to use music in the context of health.

Music and health at the C.A.R.E. Centre

One of my favo­rite groups of people to work with are the people at the C.A.R.E. Center.

The C.A.R.E. Cen­ter is a cen­ter for adults with severe phy­si­cal disa­bi­li­ties, and I have had the luck of being able to work with them over mul­tiple years. I was ini­tial­ly invi­ted to work with the C.A.R.E. Cen­ter by the direc­tor Oli­via Ques­nel. It’s very spe­ci­fic for her that when I go in, it’s to sup­port men­tal health and to real­ly sup­port fun. It’s inter­es­ting when I go in, because I’ve got­ten to know people a lit­tle bit bet­ter there, and I can see that abso­lu­te­ly the men­tal health and well-being is very much sup­por­ted by what music and the Arts has to offer – in terms of enga­ge­ment, connec­tion with other people, lear­ning things that are new, fin­ding new ways to unders­tand one’s own expe­rience, and share that with other people.

It can also defi­ni­te­ly help with the phy­si­cal side of things as well. The­re’s this one per­son who is a client at the C.A.R.E. Cen­ter. He is in a wheel­chair and when I first met him, he was fair­ly upright in his wheel­chair. Over the years, I’ve seen that he starts to get a lit­tle bit more slum­ped. He’s just a love­ly sweet per­son who has no trouble actual­ly connec­ting with other people, but it’s more this kind of phy­si­ca­li­ty that starts to close his body down a lit­tle bit more that makes it har­der for him to reach out to other people. So, in one of our pro­jects we were buil­ding ins­tru­ments, and when I do these kinds of pro­jects, I leave a lot of room open for other people. We gathe­red all kinds of mate­rials from this recycle bin, lots of dif­ferent things that were around that just could be poten­tial sound makers, and this man star­ted to build his ins­tru­ment. As it tur­ned out, this ins­tru­ment was all kinds of things that were hung from a bar that was just above him.

So he made this beau­ti­ful kind of chime ins­tru­ment that led him to be going up all the time. I spoke with his phy­sio­the­ra­pist after­wards. She was real­ly ama­zed because here was this man going up all the time doing what she was trying to get him to do in phy­sio, and yet he was doing it of his own accord and for far lon­ger than the phy­sio ses­sions were going to hap­pen. And he was having a great time and was able to share this ins­tru­ment with other people who could also play in this up and more open posi­tion. So for me, the C.A.R.E. Cen­ter is a place where it real­ly hits on all of the various dif­ferent ways that we can contri­bute to peo­ple’s health and wellbeing.