Interaction between children, parents and medical staff with insight into different cultures

Music in hospital supports children’s social education to the extent that the musical activities can help the child to develop aspects of their ‘human capital’ (Karkou & Glasman, 2004: 170) through the promotion of adaptability, creativity and social skills. Music also offers possibilities for collaboration and interaction between children, parents and medical staff, as well as giving insight into different cultures. This is often the case when children/parents from different countries or different social backgrounds have to share a room for long  periods of time. Music sessions in these cases often facilitate communication through the exchange of songs or simply by lightening the atmosphere in the room, fostering casual conversations between parents, or between parents and nurses, that, for a brief time perhaps, are not focused on the children’s illness.  […]

Music in this context can be successfully employed to support social interactions between different people involved in the process of music-making. Experiencing a successful participation in musical activities facilitates an increased sense of community, of belonging to a group, embracing patients, carers and musicians (Karkou & Glasman, 2004). This sense of community has been fostered officially by the hospital management who have recently expanded the music scheme to other wards across the hospital. The management have institutionalised the music provision through systematic financing and the designation of key personnel with responsibilities for ensuring the music programme. Musicians are now perceived as part of the paramedical staff and the ‘institutionalisation’ of the programme has made collaboration between musicians and nurses easier and more effective.  […]

For Lave and Wenger (1991: 116), learning ‘is never simply a matter of the transmission of knowledge or the acquisition of skill . . . it is a reciprocal relationship between persons and practices’. In a community of practice, members are brought together by joining in common activities and by what they have learned through their mutual engagement in these activities. In this respect, a community of practice involves shared practice. […]

Conclusion

The provision of music in a hospital context embraces a multiplicity of potential and actual experiences for all the participants, whether adult or child, patient or carer. Its multifaceted character relates both to the nature of musical sound and also to its human processing, whether as initiator, participant or ‘audience’. The power of music as a form of emotional  symbolisation is reflected in the organisation of its sounds, such as its tone colours, contours, intensities and rhythms unfolding over time. The selected music’s impact (physiological, psychological, social, educational) is likely to be enhanced by the physical action, the communication behaviours, of the live performers, who have to remain sensitive throughout to the subtle nuances of response from the ‘audience’ (patients, parents, hospital staff) in a moment-by-moment monitoring of performance effectiveness towards the intended outcome. This is a symbiotic process in the course of which performers, patients and other members of the (often participant) audience ‘share’ a musical experience and perhaps are all changed by it in some way.  


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231743662_Music_in_a_hospital_setting_a_multifaceted_experience

Abstract
The article offers an explanation of the effects of music on children within a hospital setting and points up the multifaceted nature of this experience. The nature of the client group allows the musical experience to work on many different levels, such as modifying the child’s perception of pain and reducing stress, whilst at the same time having an integral educational element that supports musical development. The evidence base is drawn from an extensive review of the music/medicine literature, interfaced with the first author’s experience over many years as a participant musician in a paediatric oncology ward.

Source: Costanza Preti & Graham Frederick Welch in”Music in a hospital setting: a multifaceted experience”, November 2004 British Journal of Music Education 21(03):329 – 345

On the responsibility to share one’s legacy: “My music is never isolated” – Aruna Sairam

The Sangita Kalanidhi is a happy validation of Sairam’s life and struggles, but “it also entails an important responsibility — to record, document, and share,” she points out.

This year’s Sangita Kalanidhi awardee says the freedom to create helped her channel her life into art | Read the full interview (The Hindu, 5 October 2018) >>

Related post

No complacency in the search for creativity: Manickam Yogeswaran (The Hindu)

Review by Garimella Subramaniam, The Hindu, January 05, 2017 | Read the full review >>

“The many dimensions of the musical persona of Berlin-based Manickam Yogeswaran of Sri Lankan origin are not easy to fathom just from hearing him sing at one recital. […]

However, a conversation over coffee at Chamiers, days after a performance for Tamil Isai Sangam at Raja Annamalai Mandram, gave a glimpse of the different facets of the disciple of T.V. Gopalakrishnan and his exposure to Hollywood. […]

Yogeswaran’s forays into western classical ensembles, and his key role in global music forums for nearly three decades is a career graph, perhaps, typical of the wider scene in the performing arts these days. At the same time, it is the emotional need to stay anchored to the cultural milieu of one’s roots that probably explains Yogeswaran’s crucial engagement with Carnatic music. […] The challenge now, he says, is to nudge current generation of South Asians from a false sense of security about the future of this traditional art form. The conveniences afforded by technology, in terms of access to the treasure trove of recordings of great masters, ought not to breed complacency in the search for creativity, he argues. The key lies in continued reliance on the rigours of relentless individual ‘sadhana,’ a hallmark of classical music.”

http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/Revelling-in-his-classical-roots/article16992760.ece

Santiniketan: Birth of Another Cultural Space – Free e-book by Pulak Dutta

Of all living creatures in the world, man has his vital and mental energy vastly in excess of his need, which urges him to work in various lines of creation for its own sake […] Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space. – Rabindranath Tagore in The Religion of an Artist *

KG Subramanyam with Pulak Dutta – Santiniketan 2009

Download : Santiniketan Birth of Another Cultural Space (free e-book) here >>

Pulak Dutta. Santiniketan: Birth of Another Cultural Space. Santiniketan 2015.
Contact: pulaksantiniketan@gmail.com

* Quoted by Pulak Dutta (p. 97) from Sisir Kumar Das (ed.). The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore Vol 3. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi 2006 (pp. 687-8)

More on and by Rabindranath Tagore >>

Listen to Tagore: Unlocking Cages: Sunil Khilnani tells the story of the Bengali writer and thinker Rabindranath Tagore: https://bbc.in/1KVh4Cf >>
The acclaimed BBC 4 podcast series titled Incarnations: India in 50 Lives has also been published in book form (Allen Lane).

“I was moved by how many of these lives pose challenges to the Indian present,” he writes, “and remind us of future possibilities that are in danger of being closed off.”((Sunil Khilnani quoted in a review by William Dalrymple in The Guardian, 14 March 2016))

“This music was created by people with heart and intellect”: Remembering the Jewish refugee who composed the All India Radio caller tune

Naresh Fernandes

All India Radio’s caller tune has been heard by hundreds of millions of people since it was composed in 1936. Somewhat improbably, the melody, based on raga Shivaranjini, was composed by the Czech man in the middle of the trio pictured above:  Walter Kaufmann. He was the director of music at AIR and was one of the many Jewish refugees who found a haven in India from the Nazis. […]

Detailed accounts of the musician’s life in Mumbai are to be found in film scholar Amrit Gangar’s book The Music That Still Rings at Dawn, Every Dawn, as well as in Agata Schindler’s essay, “Walter Kaufmann: A Forgotten Genius”, in the volume Jewish Exile in India: 1933-1945. The musician’s reason for coming to India was simple: “I could easily get a visa,” Schindler quotes him as saying in one of his letters. […]

“As I knew that this music was created by people with heart and intellect, one could assume that many, in fact millions would be appreciating or in fact loving this music… I concluded that the fault was all mine and the right way would be to undertake a study tour to the place of its origin,” he wrote. […]

His study would be so intense, it would result in books such as The Ragas of North India, The Ragas of South India : A Catalogue of Scalar Material and Musical Notations of the Orient: Notational Systems of Continental, East, South and Central Asia. […]

Source: Remembering the Jewish refugee who composed the All India Radio caller tune
Address: https://scroll.in/article/685009/remembering-the-jewish-refugee-who-composed-the-all-india-radio-caller-tune
Date Visited: Sun Mar 13 2016 18:53:34 GMT+0100 (CET)Tip

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