Jazzing up the Method: Music Therapy, Past & Future

In February of 2024, I interviewed a Minnesota-based music therapist to learn more about how their professional training and experience prepared them to support various identities with disabilities. While the interview began as an assignment for a course, I developed a personal and scholarly interest because of the significant overlap with my dissertation project, which centers jazz music and disability. During this interview, I learned about their observations as a practitioner, what their work includes, how their organization financially sustains itself, opportunities to improve their practice, and what they find rewarding about their work. One of the most striking parts of the interview was when they described their training to become a music therapist. The training ensured that each music therapist had mastery over various instruments, basic psychological/behavioral training, and clinical hours. 

Although seemingly comprehensive, the training only centered the genre of classical music, while remaining silent on various other popular musical genres. Reflexively, I mentioned the various demographics of patients (or clients) who likely don’t listen to, or are unknowledgeable of classical music. The interviewee stated that they shoulder the responsibility to listen to and learn about alternative genres. Within this short exchange of a much longer conversation, the interaction made clear that classical music is the purported neutral foundation of music therapy training. Formalizing contemporary music therapy training with the classical music genre seems counterproductive to the mission of therapy itself. Music therapy is intended to meet clients and patients where they are, with music that is familiar and comfortable to them. Since classical music is not popular in our current social climate, such training would likely be far removed from the modern client’s personal experience.

As a scholar dedicated to researching jazz, race, law, and public health, I immediately wondered, what made classical music so valuable as an educational tool? About a century ago, jazz was widely articulated as a disabling music of morally corrupt people, while classical music was often seen as a heavily skilled artform that could cure the disabilities of those with medical ailments or cure the cultural curiosity of the upper class. This interview made clear that the current structure of music therapy training builds on this earlier interpretation of classical music. Furthermore, current practice could easily facilitate the inclusion of identity-based biases because treatment relies on the practitioner’s genre comfortability and willingness to expand independently. 

The lack of consideration for different identities and backgrounds in the early formation of music therapy has led to significant cultural gaps in its contemporary application.

While the interviewee and I only had one meeting, I gained some key insight into how music therapy is defined as well as the desire to explore the research surrounding the field. Music therapy could be summarily described as a comprehensive system of clinical and evidence-based therapeutic practices that center different music-informed strategies to improve an individual’s health and goal attainment regardless of their age and other identity categories¹. Music therapy is not a new revolutionary practice. Rather, the inclusion of music therapy into formalized disability management systems is what continues to grow. Some theorists suggest a distinction between music as therapy and music therapy². Whereas music has likely been utilized for therapeutic reasons as far back as 10,000 B.C., music therapy as a specialized discipline began as a set of inquiries in the early 1800s³ and has only formally existed as a formal scientific practice since the mid-20^th century. Music as therapy is used to differentiate the casual use of music in establishing positive environments from the formalized scientific method incorporated into medical treatment plans. The transition from music as therapy to music therapy reflects the western demand to develop hard sciences and maintain rigid medicinal structures.⁴

Governance of music therapy has varied widely between each state. While there are national associations that provide guidance, state legislation ultimately establishes their own laws around therapy licensure. Believing in the transformative potential of music therapy, communities of disability advocates and music therapists have been working to create a music therapy license in Minnesota for decades. From 2007 to 2024, these groups have watched various legislative bills fail to effectively incorporate music therapy into Minnesota public policy. While there has been legislative success in expanding the definition of a “teacher” to include music therapists in Minnesota bill SF 1722, a bill supporting overall licensure has failed at every introduction. Music therapy licensure is seen as an important part of disability advocacy because a licensing system helps not only individuals with disabilities but everyone through access to therapy sessions via standard medical insurance instead of out-of-pocket expenses. These small changes trigger huge impacts because without insurance billing, therapy prices can reduce access to care. This is especially true for adults with disabilities, who often make subminimum wage or heavily rely on government financial assistance to support their daily needs.

As music therapists and disability advocates make social and legislative pushes to normalize music therapy as a strategy to support people with disabilities, it is essential that the general population engage with the history of music therapy. Reckoning with that history also necessitates understanding the systemic and medically unjustified disenfranchisement of genres such jazz. Giving attention to the relationship between music therapy practices and their historical origins can help illuminate the fraught foundations which undergird music therapy today. Engaging with this history can also support a more robust discussion around the benefits and limitations of music therapy training and practice. Understanding these tensions are essential for ensuring that music therapy is able to support all populations.

As pushes to expand music therapy continue, there are two distinct issues that should be considered when creating and establishing music therapy degrees, licenses, and training programs. First, music therapy was initially intended to be a tool for curing disability instead of supporting people with disabilities. Second, the field of music therapy has been insufficient at expanding musical training and research to account for various identities and musical interests. The lack of consideration for different identities and backgrounds in the early formation of music therapy has led to significant cultural gaps in its contemporary application. Specifically, the culmination of these two issues has resulted in a music therapy foundation that prioritizes knowledge of classical music at the expense of alternative genres.

The ideological and scientific frame that music therapy should be curative and not supportive influenced music therapy’s original predisposition to training in classical music. Ironically, this logic also demonstrates that ableism was inherent in the creation of this therapeutic practice because of widespread eugenics-based influences at the time. Curative frames were premised on the idea that disabilities could be resolved, thus eliminating undesirable traits within the population. Alternatively, support mechanisms could be described as strategies to enhance the lives of people with disabilities in areas like independence, productivity, or health. Curative frameworks weren’t unique to music therapy or classical music, but they were inherent to the framework of early U.S.-based scientific practice. However, juxtaposed to music therapist training, current musical therapy practice is much more interactive. A modern music therapist would likely ask the client and/or patient what music they would prefer for their sessions.

When music as therapy began to transition to music therapy between the early 19^th century and mid-20^th century, these curative models integrated into formalized medical practice. Classical music was largely already part of the White western musical tradition and music training because it had long preceded the creation of jazz. Nevertheless, during the formalization of music therapy from the mid-20th to late-20th century, jazz had already established a global footprint in various forms. Originating from Black culture, various subgenres of bebop, big band, swing, cool, avant garde and more were already circulating across the country. Why would these therapy practitioners turn to external genres and allow for them to infiltrate their communities and ideologies instead of relying on their own cultural productions? In the creation of concretized programs, it was easier for White medical practitioners to turn to that which was already intrinsic to their culture instead of researching or approaching genres outside of their cultural repository. In response to their paradigms, early music therapy was focused on understanding why, how, and when to use classical music as a curative tool. Pitch, tempo, and other musical metrics have historically been used to contribute to whether or not a practitioner saw a song as a viable therapy option. The substantive focus on music therapy largely ignored the ways in which different demographics responded to the genre that practitioners already deemed curative. 

Since certain forms of music were seen as curative, inevitably other forms of music were seen as disabling. As jazz music solidified its hold on the popular music industry in the early 20^th century, many eugenicists began to critique jazz music because of its purported disabling impact on the general population. Jazz was seen as so uniquely harmful that various ordinances were passed across the country to limit the public’s ability to engage with the genre.⁵ The history of jazz is a useful point of juxtaposition against classical music to explain the contentious site of music while forwarding more varied music therapy training to ensure that all identities are equally supported. 

Jazz was seen as so uniquely harmful that various ordinances were passed across the country to limit the public’s ability to engage with the genre.

Jazz music was seen in stark contrast to the essence of classical music because of the Africanisms present in the evolution of jazz. Jazz was not only originated by Black creatives but it also emphasized improvisation, call and response, syncopation, and polyrhythms. These were key musical techniques reminiscent of west African musical tradition. Although jazz wouldn’t be considered pop culture music today, the musical Africanisms are present in large portions of popular music and therefore provide inroads to contemporary music therapy practice. 

In exemplifying historical resistance to jazz, I turn to Charles F. Dight, an early 20^th century eugenicist, medical practitioner, and professor, to demonstrate the distaste eugenicists had with the music. Dight’s archival materials have helped me to better understand the relationship between jazz music and eugenics. Dight wrote to Minnesota’s Tribune newspaper: “The great bulk of ‘jazz music’ as I have heard it is certainly the ‘devil’s kind,’ and appeals to man’s animal nature rather than to his higher feelings. This is perfectly natural considering the originator of ‘jazz’ for was he not a New Orleans, La., deformed and mentally sub-normal person?”⁶ While contested, historians largely credit Buddy Bolden with the creation of jazz music⁷. Buddy Bolden was a Black male cornetist who was born in New Orleans, LA. While Bolden was recognized as a musical expert, he also developed schizophrenia which influenced the latter part of his life. His family admitted him to an asylum in Louisiana where he died. Ultimately, Dight, like other eugenicists of the time, used jazz to signify and reference the Black disabled body without explicitly identifying the racialization of the bodies he was alluding to. Thus, Dight creates both a normalized White body by establishing identities that deviate from it. This paradigm and pathology is how medical practitioners rationalized reliance on classical music as a normative standard of music therapy. Language such as that expressed by Dight, illustrates why jazz was seen as disabling and excluded from therapeutic practices in spite of the lack of scientific evidence to justify such a perspective.⁸

My scholarly research centers jazz and the possibilities it holds for community health and social life. Contemporary research has supported that not only jazz music, but various other musical genres can embody healing and therapeutic values which could generate positive outcomes for people living with disabilities or people generally interested in music therapy. I believe that jazz music could be a helpful intervention into music therapy training because it can reshape what music we decide is meaningful or valuable in supporting various populations. Shifting music therapy training could help practitioners access more support in helping populations that don’t necessarily mirror the cultural interests of the practitioner. Essentially, musical interventions can help increase support for patients across identity lines and ensure a more comprehensive support system. Lastly, as continued legislative pushes contemplate music therapy licensure, jazz-centered interventions could encourage legislative reflections on what training should constitute licensure. Adjusting the foundation of music therapy might offer opportunities to support better mental and physical health for all bodies that are impacted by disabilities.

Bibliography

American Music Therapy Association. (2024, April 30). History of Music Therapy. Retrieved from Music Therapy: https://www.musictherapy.org/about/history/#:~:text=The%20earliest%20known%20reference%20to,were%20conducted%20in%20the%201800s.

Biley, F. C. (1999). Music as Therapy: A Brief History. Complementary Therapies in Nursing & Midwifery, 5, 140-143.

Dight, C. F., & Parsons, E. D. (1936). Call for a New Social Order: Some Activities of Charles Fremont Dight. the University of Michigan.

Johnson, R. L. (2011). “Disease Is Unrhythmical”: Jazz, Health, and Disability in 1920s America. Health and History, 13(2), 13–42. https://doi.org/10.5401/healthhist.13.2.0013

Kramer, C. (2017). Music as Cause and Cure of Illness in Ninteenth-Century Europe. In P. Horden, The History of Music Therapy Since Antiquity. Taylor & Francis.

Landis, L. (2020, March 18). The real ‘Footloose’: Iowa’s bans on jazz dancing in the 1920s. Retrieved from Des Moines Register: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/life/2020/03/18/footloose-iowa-history-state-had-bans-jazz-dancing-1920-s/2867127001/#

PBS (Education). (2022, March 24). New Orleans school board looks to undo little-known 1922 rule banning jazz music. Retrieved from PBS: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/new-orleans-school-board-looks-to-undo-little-known-1922-rule-banning-jazz-music

Peretti, B. W. (1994). The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America. University of Illinois Press.

Thaut, M. H. (2015). Music as therapy in early history. Progress in Brain Research, 217, 143-158.

Washington, H. A. (2006). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Time to the Present. Doubleday.

Yinger, O. S. (2017). Music Therapy: Research and Evidence-Based Practice. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Footnotes

1. (Yinger, 2017) ↩︎
2. (Biley, 1999) ↩︎
3. (American Music Therapy Association, 2024) ↩︎
4. (Thaut, 2015) ↩︎
5. Municipal Ordinance printed by Rolfe Arrow Newspaper, State Historical Society of Iowa (1923); Municipal Ordinance, New Orleans Public Schools (1922) ↩︎
6. Document named “Jazzing the Chimes” transcribed from the Gale Family Library in the Minnesota Historical Society archives, P1628 Dight Papers Box 8, “World War Legacies.” ↩︎
7. (Peretti, 1994) ↩︎
8. (Johnson, 2011)  ↩︎