Starting off with the preschool kids, I mean, how can you not love 'em? Everything you do and everything the therapist pulls out of her bag is so exciting and fun to them they can barely stay in their seats. Then you have a group like we saw this morning, a very high functioning high school group, with some major "cool issues," meaning "I'm not going to participate unless I deem this cool enough."
And that's not to say I don't enjoy those groups as well. I do, very much so in fact. Teenagers are a lot of fun. They like cool music, it's easy (for me at least) to speak on their terms. I just kind of feel like it adds a whole other facet to your activity planning. Not only are you having to think about your goals and how you can use music to meet these goals, but you also have to think about "are they going to buy into this?" It's a great challenge.
I thought one of the therapists we saw today had a great activity for her middle school EBD group that nailed both of these challenges. The students were making a soundtrack to their lives. They had to think of songs and music they listened to as little kids, what their parents like, what they like right now, even their 1st musical memory. They used a website to find and listen to the songs before writing them down (learning functional computer skills through music therapy? Check.)
I love hip hop and rap, so I was deemed our resident expert for this genre today in the group. I helped a 7th grade boy find some of the music he had picked out for his soundtrack, including one of my current favorites, "Lemonade" by Gucci Mane. Nothing like nodding heads with a 7th grader to some Gucci Mane to make you think "Dang, this is an awesome career field (and I'm just getting started)!"
However, the musical choices of some of the students raised a question that has interested me for awhile. What do you do about inappropriate content in the preferred music of your clients?
It's easy to find edited-for-radio songs or just edit out the questionable content on your own using Audicity or a similar program, but curse words aren't always the only problem. A lot of popular music these days deals with themes or have allusions and innuendos to violence, sex, or drug use.
You certainly wouldn't want to encourage these things, but at the same time if you put a blanket ban on ALL music containing any kind of questionable material, you may find yourself with a very small amount of client preferred music to work with. Then you risk alienating your client, or using music they don't enjoy. And as I mentioned with the teenage groups, this can do some serious harm to your all important "cool factor."
One solution I've found helpful is the instrumental tracks of songs. Then you still have the beat and music, just no words. This can actually lend itself to all new activities, like writing new lyrics to the song (maybe discussing why the previous lyrics were inappropriate and what a better solution is). These instrumental tracks are especially easy to find in the hip hop genre, as artists frequently remix songs, creating high demand for instrumental/a capella tracks.
As the therapist running the group today told me, sometimes the group doesn't even put together the innuendo. Sometimes they just take it for face value, and if you don't make a fuss about it, they'll never know. I had a teacher at FSU once who told me they were surprised to hear "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" by The Beatles was about drugs. Did I just blow some of your minds too? I always thought that one was pretty obvious.
I suppose it all comes down to the group you're working with. If you work in hospice, my opinion would be to go for it. If someone wants to cuss like a sailor towards the end of their time on this Earth, I say have a blast. It is palliative care, after all. Or maybe you have an adolescent group that possesses the emotional maturity to know that just because Lil Wayne says something in a song, doesn't mean they need to emulate that.
That's all I've got for now on that. What are your thoughts? Any seasoned MT's want to share their thoughts and experiences? Lay some knowledge on us newbies and leave some comments!
By the way, this was way longer than intended.
I worked with psych for 2.5 years. I did have a few artists blacklisted, like plies with some exception (runnin my mama crazy). There were cursing ground rules as well, basically no f bombs. I let my adolescents select songs for lyric analysis, but they had to come up with discussion questions. Hope that helps!
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