Deep listening: towards an imaginative reframing of health and well-being practices in international development.
This paper challenges the "intervention-as-solution" approach to health and well-being as commonly practised in the international development sector, and draws on the disciplinary intersections between Community Music Therapy and ethnomusicology in seeking a more negotiated and situationally apposite framework for health engagement. Drawing inspiration from music-based health applications in conflict or post-conflict environments in particular, and focusing on case studies from Lebanon and South Sudan respectively, the paper argues for a re-imagined international development health and well-being framework based on the concept ofdeep listening.Defined by composer Pauline Oliveros as listening which "digs below the surface of what is heard … unlocking layer after layer of imagination, meaning, and memory down to the cellular level of human experience" (Oliveros, 2005), the paper explores the methodological applications of such a dialogic, discursive approach with reference to a range of related listening stances - cultural, social and therapeutic. In so doing, it explores opportunities for multi-levelled and culturally inclusive health and well-being practices relevant to different localities in the world and aimed at the re-integration of self, place and community.
Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy, London, UK.
Mercédès
M
Pavlicevic
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, UK.
Angela
A
Impey
Community Music Therapy; applied ethnomusicology; deep listening; health and well-being practices; international development