This is something I've been mulling over recently, and I finally have written some thoughts on it. But it is late and I haven't gone back to proofread, so I apologize for repetition or grammatical errors. Just would like to post before I lose my train of thought.
I belong to several social media sites, and within those social media sites I belong to several groups that are professional groups for Music Therapists to pick each other’s brains and throw ideas around. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of postings that are very short and very open. “I need song ideas for people with dementia.” “I am leading a group with clients ages 30-75. What songs should I use?” I think we as professionals need to pause before automatically responding “Here are a list of my favorites that I think would work for you: list of songs." We are Music Therapists. We aren’t Radios. Stop for a minute. If you were planning your own session, would you pick your songs first? Would you pick any songs without first considering your population, not just age but intellectual abilities? Would you just pick songs that have proven beneficial for other people you’ve worked with before you consider what your goals are for the clients with whom you'll currently be working? Most reputable Music Therapists would hopefully have answered no to those questions. When I plan a session I start by looking at who my client is. So in above scenarios “I need song ideas for people with dementia” all I know is that these are people with dementia. How many people with dementia? Is this a long-term care setting or a community MT group? Will there be care givers or family there or normative geriatric population mixed in with the individuals with dementia? What type of dementia? In what stage of dementia are the clients in your group? How old are these people with dementia? Do they have military experience? If you have a group of 4 individuals in a community setting who are in early stages of dementia and also have early onset dementia they may be in their 50s and still relatively in control of their mental faculties. If you have a group of 15 long-term care residents at varying degrees of mid-late stage dementia of the alzheimer’s type who are all over the age of 80, then my recommendations are going to be very different than they would be for the four 50 year olds. That’s only looking at basic client information. Then taking it a step further than that… What is the purpose of your group? My guess is that as a Music Therapist you don’t just intend to play music at them, at least I hope not. So is this group of people with dementia focusing on maintaining or improving attention? Are you trying to use music to facilitate range of motion exercises and if so what exercises would you like to use? Are your clients fairly low functioning and are you doing sensory interventions and gauging appropriate response? Are you trying to facilitate memory recall? Are you trying to do lyric substitution/songwriting? Do you want to do lyric analysis? Do you want to improve mood? Reduce Behaviors? These are all things that should be taken into account before we decide what songs we should use. Why are these clients receiving music therapy? Is this a new group you've never done before and most of the clients are non-verbal and you are planning to present a bunch of different songs or genres in the hopes of analyzing responses to find a starting point because you have no information on their past preferences? Because then a list of songs to start with might be exactly what you need, but if I don't know that, can I really make adequate recommendations?
Every time I see a posting that says, “Help me, I need song suggestions for a group ages __-__?” Or “I need song ideas for a group with this diagnosis.” My first reaction is to ask, what do you hope to do with them? What purpose is the music going to fill? As Music Therapists we need to remember to focus on the goals first. The music is our medium in which to facilitate improvement, change, or healing. I don’t know your clients. I don’t know the purpose of your group. I can tell you that my clients with dementia really like the song “In the Garden” when I use it in sessions. But is that going to be helpful if you are working with clients with dementia who are buddhist and facilitating range of motion exercises? Probably not. Music is very important, and the choices do matter. But in most cases I’d be willing to bet you don’t pick your songs and then decide what your goals are going to be just so you can use that song. Granted there are moments when I hear a song, and immediately think, “This would be great for lyric substitution” or “This would be great for lyric analysis to improve self image and focus on positive attributes in the face off loss of abilities” and those moments the song definitely gives me the idea for the group. But in general I plan my interventions and find songs that will best facilitate the goals I set based on assessment of the client. I'd be willing to bet that's true for many of you as well.
I want to close by saying every client is going to be different. If you tell me you have a 90 year old client with mid-late stage dementia of the alzheimer’s type and you are working on memory recall, I could suggest You Are My Sunshine, or Sentimental Journey. But I have a 90 year old client with dementia whose favorite songs are by the Beatles. Now her generation, favorite songs of formative years should be the late 1930s, early 1940s. Beatles are 1960s. Her kids loved the Beatles and she had many good memories dancing and singing with her kids to their favorite music in their formative years. The Beatles make her happy. She knows Sentimental Journey, but she’d much rather hear Blackbird or Hey Jude. I had an 80 year old man who liked the Dixie Chicks. They are from the 90s and 2000s. His granddaughter bought him a CD of them because she really liked it and wanted to share it with him, and those were his favorite songs because they meant so much to his granddaughter.
I just hope that we as music therapists aren’t too quick to jump in with our go-to song choices without asking some questions first. To give an educated response, you first have to have all the information about the question. So next time you see a “I need song suggestions for whatever group” posting, I hope you stop a minute and then remember to ask, “What are your goals, or what is the purpose of their time in Music Therapy?” Make every song count, know it’s purpose first.
