music in society

[PsychToday] Inaugurations, Women’s Marches, and the Social Role of Music

January 19, 2017
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I’ve found myself wondering what type of music we’ll hear this weekend. In case you’ve missed it, there are some pretty big events happening over the next couple of days—a certain Inauguration ceremony Friday followed the next day by a Women’s March. The purpose of each is vastly different, as are the people associated with […]

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[PsychToday] Harmonicas, Social Connections, and Politics

August 4, 2016
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America has spent the last couple weeks learning about the Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate pic, Senator Tim Kaine. We’ve heard his life story—the mission trip to Honduras, his begin-local-and-work-your-way-up political climb—and we’ve discovered a bit about the man—his younger self “hotness,” his fluent Spanish, and his harmonica chops…

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Are Headphones Harming Us?

May 30, 2014
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I readily admit that I am guilty of aural self-isolation. Just the other night, while making dinner, I missed an entire meaningful conversation between my husband and children. I was completely oblivious, not because I was engrossed in the cooking, but because I was engrossed in a book being transmitted through two small, white earbuds […]

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Presentational vs. Participational Music: A Recap of the 2014 CMS Summit

May 22, 2014
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Music therapy is an inherently interdisciplinary field, which makes it all the more surprising that it has taken me almost 15 years to finally begin attending non-music therapy-specific conferences. The first was the Society for Music Perception and Cognition conference in Toronto last summer. The second was the 2014 Summit for the College Music Society […]

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[PsychToday] America the Not-So-Beautiful?

February 4, 2014
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Another year, another Super Bowl, another music-related controversy… The 2014 Coca Cola commercial that aired during last night’s Super Bowl stood out to me for its beauty and simplicity. The images, the angelic tones of the voices—it was one of the few commercials that caused me to pause, listen, and enjoy. A contemplative moment. Apparently […]

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[PsychToday] Music: It’s More Than “Feel Good”

December 12, 2013
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Every once in awhile a story like this emerges that that sings the praises (no pun intended) of listening to music. These stories expand on the therapeutic benefits of music, mostly those related to relaxation or mood induction (i.e., making one feel happy/calm/better). Although the New Yorker piece is better than most I read—it actually […]

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[PsychToday] Is Commonplace Creativity a Lost Art?

September 27, 2013
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“…every human being has a social and biological guarantee of musicianship and evidence (suggests) that everybody, regardless of social, educational, psychological or medical aspects can communicate through music.” (Hallam & MacDonald, 2009, pg. 472) I dare you not to smile as you watch this 3:44 minute video clip . . . (Read more)

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[PsychToday] WWI and Istanbul: Using Music to Bind Us

June 29, 2013
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The story goes that on Christmas Eve 1914, in the middle of a brutal WWI battle between the British and the Germans, the sound of gunfire was replaced by singing voices. It happened spontaneously, spreading slowly throughout the troops as the camps sang their favorite Christmas hymns. Sometimes they alternated songs, but . . . […]

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[PsychToday] Music, Adaptation, and Evolution

June 14, 2013
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One of the advantages of working on a PhD is that you get to do a lot of reading and re-reading. I find the re-reading more interesting than the initial reading as I read the article or book in a different way, with a different level of depth and understanding. This happened recently when re-reading […]

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