`Indianness’ in Musical Experience
Indian music experience is highly emotional and at the same time very precise and analytical – a similarity with the way the human brain is structured in its two hemispheres, left and right. It is emotionally charged, as it touches the subtlest of nuances in our emotional experience, with the deployment of minute fractions of tones and semitones that could be audible. Ragas are therefore rightly referred to as ‘the miracle of micro-tones’. It’s again highly calculative and analytical as revealed by the possibilities of 108 prescribed ways one could be trained to use beats or tala- which requires not only an elaborate mental calculation but also the simultaneous physical performance.
This is the real secret of its long-known therapeutic role, as one is automatically synchronized with the harmony or balance in the system that enables the listeners to reach the much-needed balance between the thoughts that limit or caution and the feelings that flow freely with gay abandon.
It is this inherent power in our musical experience that came to be used freely and copiously in the cultural and religious milieu in India for centuries, without even being aware of its therapeutic or medical importance.
The arrival of the concepts of Nada Yoga and Raga Chikitsa are the two important landmarks that brought music to the limelight it deserves as the life-saving medicine for the population. Nature with its extremes of climates and climatic changes, alternating floods with drought, cloudbursts with landslides and abundance with scarcity – all caused havoc to people by causing displacement, immigration, with heavy loss of life and properties. History is replete with the instances of frequent invasions of foreign invaders through the North Western passes, resulting in destruction and chaos of the well settled way of life, causing emotional trauma for survivors. Many Indologists are of the view that all such adversities could be faced by the population with resilience, thanks to the great musical culture of the sub-continent which could ensure balance through its in-built flexibility.
Influence of the West in the ‘Reincarnation’ of Music Therapy in India
The movement started in a big way in the post-war North America with the introduction of music therapy experiments conducted in labs, hospitals, hospices, rehab centres etc. – not to mention the violence-prone street-corners – had brought in reawakening in Indian shores in recent times.
Though late to follow suit, in terms of organizations, India is now not far behind in establishing a ‘music therapy rapport’ with a billion and odd Indians.
Towards Building an Organizational Framework for Music Therapy
In India, it all started with two national-level events, organized in the year 2002, which really gave fillip to the heretofore dormant movement of music therapy. Music Therapy Symposium was organized by the famous Shanmukhananda Sangeetha Sabha in Bombay to be immediately followed by a National Consultation on Music Therapy in Delhi. This author, who was invited to present a keynote address in both these events emphasized on the need for therapeutic application of music as a complementary medicine and also needs for utilizing the man-power trained in music with some further training on the concepts and practices of music therapy- as being done in the advanced countries like USA.
The tremendous response received from the organizers and the participants of these two major landmark congregations, created confidence and determination on the part of this author who, to start with, founded a non-governmental organization in 2004, based on his plans and ideas, which concretized into Nada Centre for Music Therapy, the first of its kind in India.
Immediately on its foundation, the author actively engaged in compiling all his earlier work into publication by the Centre between 2004 and 2016. 2019 witnessed the arrival of his (now popular) distance learning programme, which is first of its kind to use emails to exchange lessons and assignments with volunteers, not only from India, but also from other countries volunteering their time and energy for the sake of spreading the knowledge and wisdom underlying this challenging profession. The movement of music therapy got concretized, for the first time, with the solid establishment of this non-governmental organization with the planning and implementation, as conceived by this author, in 2004. With the success of the centre, many enthusiasts – some of his erstwhile colleagues and students organized themselves to create similar establishments in various parts of India: Amritsar, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ludhiana etc. with considerable success in their mission.
World Conferences and Special Workshops/Seminars Organized by Nada Centre for Music Therapy:
Since 2005, when the First International Music Therapy Conference was held in Chennai, the Centre has been actively engaged in bringing together music therapists from various parts of India and outside. So far, seven international conferences have been held in various parts of the country: Bengaluru, Chennai, New Delhi, and Visakhapatnam. Some conferences were supported by Universities and Institutes of Higher Learning like VIMHANS, AIIMS, and Bangalore University. Over 50 seminars/ workshops were conducted in various parts of the country to propagate music therapy in school children and adolescents, besides in hospitals, hospices, elders’ homes etc. with considerable enthusiasm from the public. Volunteers of the Centre were also deputed to meet and treat the survivors of cloud-bursting, floods, tsunami etc. as a charity mission.
Indian Music Therapy Association (IMTA)
As the trained music therapists started emerging slowly from these institutes, and also an impressible number of research students doing MPhil and PhD in music therapy from various universities and Institutes of Higher Learning, an exclusive platform to take care of their career and professional interest was considered necessary music therapy related subjects, it was felt necessary to create an exclusive platform to look after their interests.
I am here to welcome you all to come and join us in India and enrich our efforts with your knowledge and skill so that our humble efforts pay the dividends to our nation and humanity as a whole.
I thank the Korean Music Therapy Association for hosting this unique event today and for inviting me to share my views with fellow music therapists around.
Source: World Music Therapy Presidential Reports at the Seoul Summit Meeting Oct 13 to 20, 2018, Seoul, Korea.
Edited by Geeta Shreedar, Nov. 27, 2021