"Compose oneself for compose": songwriting workshop. (1st June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Volpini, Andrea
• Is Part Of: Nordic journal of music therapy. Volume 25(2016)Supplement 1
• Page Start: 113
• Page End: 114
• Publication Date: 2016-06-01
• Subjects: Song-writing -- personal redefinition -- psychiatric illnesses; Music therapy -- Scandinavia -- Periodicals; Music Therapy -- Periodicals; 615.85154
• DOI: 10.1080/08098131.2016.1180131
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0809-8131

Abstract

Abstract : This workshop is about a technique of music therapy termed "collective songwriting", experimented by me for many years now in mental health settings to treat psychiatric illnesses including psychosis and autism in both adults and adolescents. The objectives of the experience are: to promote personal redefinition through the discovery of resources that become skills, to perceive themselves as an author, to realize songs as a communication tools with the external world. Collective songwriting is an articulated process whereby music and lyrics produced by patients help with teasing out their healthy parts which are stuck and not easily accessible. It is a space to discover how the authentic communication of music contains vital, powerful and liberating elements of poetry. "It is a work about something or someone inside us that wants desperately to be" (Marina Cvetaeva). It is organized in a structured setting in which a group of twenty observers is arranged in a circle around the circle of the group of ten composers. The process starts with the composing of music through a session of free vocal improvisation. This is followed by active-imagination production, associated with the articulation of the verses, and it ends with the elaboration and the choice of a title, guided discussion between participants and conclusion.