{"id":6394,"date":"2021-06-23T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-23T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/?p=6394"},"modified":"2021-06-17T09:13:31","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T13:13:31","slug":"music-as-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2021\/06\/music-as-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Music As Care"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Music as Care<\/em><\/a> by Sarah Adams Hoover is a book devoted to \u201carts in health.\u201d The topic is light years from my area of expertise so I was surprised when Sarah asked me to take a look at it. I am extremely glad she did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book provides an excellent (and fascinating) overview of a rapidly growing field, one that appears to hold much promise for the future of healthcare. But what struck me most was the way it humanizes music; for the arts to be effective in healthcare settings artists, healthcare providers, and patients must respect each other, listen to each other. The perspective of each must be incorporated in designing the plan of care. As one small example, consideration of the musicians\u2019 responses both to the context in which they perform and to the space in which they do so becomes important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arts organizations that preserve the European aristocratic cultural tradition have placed \u201cart\u201d so much at the center of the enterprise that the human experience of visual artists\/performers and preceivers is not even an afterthought, and this is the root source of most of the problems that the arts face today. Music as Care<\/em> brings the experience of the music maker and the music listener to the fore in ways that I have seldom seen elsewhere. It is an excellent (and necessary) antidote to the \u201csuperiority complex [so] deeply embedded in classical music culture . . . .\u201d (102, quoted from Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow\/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a community engagement advocate, large portions of the \u201chow to\/best practices\u201d sections of the book read like a prescription for effective engagement if you simply change the context from healthcare to community. Beginning with \u201ca \u2018simple commitment to genuine respect, real interest, and heartfelt care\u2019\u201d (92 quoted from Eric Booth, \u201cThe Citizen Artist: A Revolution of the Heart within the Arts.<\/em>\u201d) the book presents an outstanding list of preparatory work. I\u2019m not presenting the whole list, but see how well these excerpts describe good practice in community engagement (emphases mine<\/em><\/strong>): <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before You Start:<\/strong>
Preparing for a potential project in a healthcare setting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n