Edwards, Jane (2007). Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
People who use music to improve health and community will find inspiration and guidance in the text: Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts. It is a valuable book, with the potential to shape ideas and practice about health and music, and combinations of the two.
The scope of the text is far-reaching and united by one main focus i.e., the “use of music as therapy or as an arts health practice in hospital based services” (Edwards, 2007a, p. xi). This explanation helps draw together various themes and questions that might emerge from the text for the reader.
A broad understanding of community and health is required to appreciate all of its content, especially as the book’s subject-matter includes work with asylum-seekers and those in a post-war setting, the use of group-singing experiences with adults, and the use of music to promote cultural inclusion, alongside what one might expect to be covered in a more ‘traditional’ healthcare-music book (e.g., oncology, research, music therapy situated within medical settings). In this respect, the content has the potential to expand readers’ thoughts about the links and commonalities between community, therapy, recreation and healthcare work, while also helping to lessen the divide between medical-model practitioners (e.g., hospital-based music therapists and researchers) and those whose work is informed by social or community-focussed models (e.g., community-based arts workers).
One theme that emerges throughout the book involves “relationship” and “relating” (e.g., Bailey & Davidson, 2007; Edwards, Scahill & Phelan, 2007, p. 154; Moss, 2007; O’Callaghan, 2007, p. 13; Ledger, 2007, p. 169). These reflections will help those who incorporate the notion of relationship-based work within their practice. Also, this theme helps draw together the content of the book. In addition, concrete strategies and suggestions are provided, aiding with the development of research (e.g., Bonde, 2007; Magee, 2007) and service-expansion initiatives (e.g., Moss, 2007; Loewy, 2007).
Thoughts about how music-use is influenced by culture, contexts and paradigms are provided (e.g., Loewy, 2007; Metzner & Burger, 2007), including the arts for health agenda (Daykin, 2007, p. 84) and the medical paradigm (Edwards, 2007b). Also, information to help distinguish between music therapy practice and other music-involving practices is shared (e.g., Batt-Rawden, Trhythall & DeNora, 2007; Loewy, 2007). Some authors offer clear viewpoints on this topic (e.g., Daykin, 2007; Loewy, 2007; Moss, 2007).
While many different views are articulated in this book, many contributing authors call for a cohesive response to political and practice issues relevant to practices involving music. Also, the message of working and growing together to promote music-use for health and community emerges resolutely from the book. However after reading the book from cover to cover, I was left with an unanswered question: “What do we need to do now to situate music firmly within healthcare contexts?” It was only then that I caught myself realising that answers to the questions raised in this book will develop as a result of reading the book, and in turn solutions will result.
In this respect, the book itself will help enable community amongst those who use music to promote health and community, while also providing a snapshot about its current and diverse use. The publication of the book is therefore timely as it has the potential to help professions and disciplines respond together to challenges involved in (a) enabling evidence-based practice while facilitating choice, individuality and patient-centred care, and (b) working across what might have historically been considered to be a divide between disciplines and contexts. The book is therefore a valuable tool to promote cohesion across professions, disciplines and contexts, and in time the book may become a classic artefact typifying music-use in healthcare at the beginning of the 21st century.
In summary, in this text “music (remains) at the heart of things” (e.g., O Suilleabhain, 2007, p. vii), and this heart helps diverse opinions, experiences, solutions and challenges to be presented cohesively to the reader, along with foresight about how best to progress the use of music to promote health and create community. The collection of such varied contributors from around the world by Professor Edwards (the editor of the book) and her colleagues is an excellent contribution to our discourse about music, health and community.
In essence, the work in this book is inspired and inspiring, and it is strongly recommended.
References
Bailey, B. & Davidson, J. (2007). Psychological and physical benefits of participation in vocal performance. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 52-63). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Batt-Rawden, K., Trhythall, S. & DeNora, T. (2007). Health musicking as cultural inclusion. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 64-82). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Bonde, L. O. (2007). Using multiple methods in music therapy health care research: Reflections on using multiple methods in a research project about receptive music therapy with cancer survivors. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 105-122). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Daykin, N. (2007). Context, culture and risk: Towards an understanding of the impact of music in health care settings. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 83-104). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Edwards, J. (2007a). Introduction. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. x-xi). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Edwards, J. (2007b). Antecedents of contemporary uses for music in healthcare contexts: The 1890s to the 1940s. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 181-202). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Edwards, J., Scahill, M. & Phelan, H. (2007). Music therapy: Promoting healthy mother-infant relations in the vulnerable refugee and asylum seeker community. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 154-168). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Ledger, A. (2007). Developing communicative relationships in music therapy with people who have moderate to severe dementia. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 169-180). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Loewy, J. (2007). Developing music therapy programs in medical practice and healthcare communities. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 17-28). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Magee, M. (2007). Focussing on outcomes: Undertaking the music therapy research journey in medical settings. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 123-135). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Metzner, S. & Burger, C. (2007). Participation, mutuality, resistance: Intercultural music therapy in a post-war region. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 136-153). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Moss, H. (2007). Integrating models of music into acute hospitals: An Irish perspective. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 29-51). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
O’Callaghan, C. (2007). Music therapy inspired transient ward communities in oncology. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. 1-16). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
O Suilleabhain, M. (2007). Music at the heart of things. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Music: Promoting health and creating community in healthcare contexts (pp. vii-ix). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.