History and Heritage

We come to music therapy with musical expectations. Clients do. Therapists do. We come to music therapy with expectations colored by our personal history of music, which is - of course - embedded in culture. I came to music therapy more than 20 years ago with quite mixed expectations: preferring music with a rough edge, strong rhythms, and bold discords, but also longing for - though maybe not so consciously - the soft sound of romantic songs. The first sound of music therapy I ever heard was Paul Nordoff's improvisations. He died the year I "discovered" music therapy and I never heard his live playing, but recordings of the clinical work he did together with Clive Robbins were presented to me by the Norwegian pioneers of music therapy, and I was immediately fascinated by the rough and romantic sound of his music.