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GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE

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From Community Music Therapy to Peace
an article by Enrica Tifatino

We live in a time of political, economic and social instability which results in violence and conflicts. To help cope with this, we have launched an investigation to compile testimonies that confirm the hypothesis that through the Community Music Therapy can promote a culture of peace.



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On the one hand, articles about Community Music Therapy by therapists such as Cecilia Isla, Gabriela Sicardi, Claudia Mendoza have confirmed the relation between positive health and social justice.

On the other hand, an obstacle to our research has been the unfortunate lack of research and literature on the relation between Music Therapy and Peace. The first bibliography we found made reference instead to the Music Therapy in the context of war and the victims of war.

After considerable search, we have been able to find a few articles that make specific reference to the subject by the investigator and music therapist Alba Sanfeliu. We found other articles by Edith Hilmann Boxill, Brynjulf, Even Ruud, Wang Feng Ng, Guylaine Vaillancourt, contents in digital reviews like www.voices.no and Web pages like www.escolapau.uab.cat.

In addition, we have reviewed some projects of the movement Music Therapists for Peace )which was created by the music therapist Edith Hilmann Boxill (1997). According to Boxill, music therapy needs to "go out from the walls of therapy rooms and contribute to the healing of an injured planet."

According to these sources, music and Community Music Therapy can be a potential means of change and an instrument that can redress inequalities, with the hope that our actions as health professionals can help produce a world that is more just. It extends the interpretation and use of Preventive and Community Music Therapy from considering it only as a means for individual well-being, but also a way to favor peace and social justice.

Our results so far are encouraging as they verify the positive and beneficial effects of Community Music Therapy in two inter-related aspects: On the one hand the benefits of the Music Therapy as a preventive and communitarian activity at the social as well as individual level, and on the other hand, the possibility of arriving at a culture of peace and collective well-being through Community Music Therapy.

(Click here for a Spanish version of this article)

DISCUSSION

Question(s) related to this article:


What place does music have in the peace movement?,

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Latest reader comment:

As of now, there are 33 CPNN articles on this theme, which shows the great extent to which music is the universal language of peace!


This report was posted on March 9, 2012.