Colin Lee (red.) 2024. The Oxford Handbook of Queer and Trans Music Therapy. Oxford University Press.
It is shocking to hear accounts of how queer and trans people, or those who fall under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, are subjected to mistreatment. This isn’t only happening in Russia, in many African countries, in Florida, or other MAGA-dominated states where queer and trans people face persecution. Even in Norway, there are groups of conservative Christians who struggle to adjust to a reality of gender diversity and alternative relationship models beyond the heteronormative norm. As I write this (November 8, 24), I open an online newpaper and read: “Helplines are flooded after Trump’s victory: A boost in anxiety. Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election has instilled fear among women, youth, and the LGBTQ community – also in Norway. The crisis hotline at the Church’s SOS is now experiencing an increase in calls.”
The gender diversity is also not well represented in music therapy, which is the focus of this anthology. Gender diversity has not been a subject in research, practice, or education until the very recent years. Now, music therapy is being challenged through this extensive anthology. Through 42 chapters, a total of 750 pages, we meet music therapists from all over the world who have a lot to share, much they wish to correct, and valuable input on how music therapists can support this vulnerable group through practice, education, and research.
An extensive presentation
The book is divided into six parts. The first part addresses the historical context, referring to the initial music therapy sessions with individuals living with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. The second part focuses on practice and evaluates the emerging practice of queer and trans music therapy (QTMT), which is beginning to blossom. Pedagogy and supervision are the themes of the third part, while the fourth part covers theory, philosophy, and musicology. Research is the focus of the fifth part, and the sixth part deals with identity and activism.
Terminology
Now there are probably more people than me who may have problems mastering the terminology that necessarily goes with it. Firstly, "queer" (which has many meanings) is easily translated into Norwegian as "skeiv". "Queering" has a somewhat broader meaning and is about questioning, criticizing, dismantling and destabilizing perceptions, normative discourses and other dominant beliefs about gender and gender diversity. LGBTQIA+ are abbreviations for a number of gender identities such as Lesbian, Male Homosexual (Gay), Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex (people born with both male and female chromosomes and gender characteristics), Asexual and a plus (+).
This plus sign refers to everyone who is not covered by the preceding letters. These can be so-called "two-spirit" individuals, non-binary, pansexual, demisexual, aromantic, individuals with fluid gender identity, asexual, and more. Read more at
A historical retrospective
The British music therapist, pianist and author Colin Lee, who has worked as a professor in Canada for many years, has previously made a name for himself through his publications. First with the book Music at the Edge (Lee, 1996/2016), which contained a case with exceptionally detailed transcriptions of improvisations with a man with AIDS. He published his music-centered theory under the title The Architecture of Aesthetic Music Therapy (Lee, 2003). Now he is back as editor and has contributed to several of the articles.
Colin Lee himself has taken responsibility for providing a historical overview in the introductory prelude: Creating Queer and Trans Therapy Spaces. We find the traces of queer and trans music therapy back to the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Examples are Lee's own book from 1996 and Ken Bruscia's work on GIM for people with HIV/AIDS. Lee has plenty of references to other pioneers in the field, including to the first music therapists who came out openly as queer, for example himself and Michelle Forinash, another prominent American music therapist.
Actors within music therapy education also began to recognize the need for more knowledge in the field. We received guidelines for "best practice" in working with queers and trans people, not least through an article in Music Therapy Perspectives (Whitehead-Pleaux et. al., 2012). Research was conducted into what it means to stand up and tell about one's identity and what role music has in this process. Sue Baines included this gender perspective in her 'anti-oppressive' therapy and a picture began to be drawn of a music therapeutic approach where queer and trans identity was safeguarded through music and text analyses, autobiographical representations and performances of song parodies. In 2019, we received the important research from Gumble, which was about gender-affirming voice work. In Norway, this has recently been followed up by music therapist Ruth Eckhoff, which has resulted in a Norwegian booklet in course arrangement and management in an interdisciplinary approach with music therapy and speech therapy (Eckhoff and Stensæth, 2024). It must also be mentioned here that the journal Voices in 2019 devoted an issue to trans and queer music therapy.
Queering
Lee inscribes this new perspective into other critical music therapy traditions, such as "Black and Trans Music Therapy" and anti-colonial music therapy. He also asks the question of what such a way of approaching music therapy means, i.e. queering, which in Norwegian has been given the somewhat strange name "tilskeiving", according to Store Norske Leksikon. The question is whether such a bias, a critical and destabilizing theoretical investigation leads to a more diverse, inclusive, equality-creating practice, where cultural humility, respect, social justice and a general 'anti-oppressive' attitude find their place?
Queer and trans music
Lee sees that this new space that opens up gives hope for a development of music therapy with new values and ways of making music, as well as a new space for research and education. As a profiled music-centered music therapist, he sees the creative potential in incorporating queer and trans voices and sounds, acknowledging the lives and musical histories of queer and trans composers, besides the cross-cultural queerness in music therapy that is central to such a philosophy of music.
Sound, video and weird taste in music
The book contains a number of audio and video examples, also taken from music therapy practice. It is of course the case that when people from LGBTQIA+ come to music therapy, they bring with them their own musical identity, shaped by experiences, musical tastes and values. Often the music the music therapists rely on has been characterized by heteronormative choices, whether from popular music, jazz or classical traditions. There are now a number of artists within, for example, popular music who provide gender-affirming musical answers for trans and queer people. Here you will find music and lyrics that form a good starting point for exploring your own identity, while the lyrics provide inspiration for your own songwriting based on autobiographical material.
As a musician and composer, Colin Lee has a number of examples of how we can approach composers, opera and musicals, queer jazz, country and western, gospel, etc. He himself refers to his own youth's participation on the dance floor to music by Bronski Beat and Pet Shop Boys. Today, the scene is expanded with artists from electronic dance music and acid-house musicians. Not least, we have gained a "queer musicology" and a new research effort on this segment of musical life. In many of the articles, precisely such tendencies and examples are highlighted and elaborated.
A transgender music therapist meets herself
It would take too long here to review all the articles in the anthology, not everything has so far been read either, apart from many of the shorter summaries that begin the chapters. Some examples from the various parts of the book will be given. First up is a transgender man, a Nordoff-Robbins graduate and here in improvisational music therapy with a seven-year-old autistic boy who also has problems organizing sensory impressions (Ch. 7).
In the description of the improvisation, a psychodynamic perspective is added which characterizes the interpretation. The improvisation produces musical countertransferences, it is said, uncomfortable feelings in response to transmissions from the patient. Such musical countertransferences are described by the Danish and New York-based music therapist Benedikte Scheiby, who with her analytical music therapy was influenced by Mary Priestley.
What is interesting in this case presentation is how the improvisation triggers gender dysphoric feelings in the therapist. This is about the repressed and locked-in feelings he experienced as a child, with the little girl who at the time felt it was forbidden to appear as a boy - "the buried boy", which he now refers to as such experiences. The musical interaction with the autistic boy, who otherwise seems to be met in a good way through his music, seems to create the necessary musical freedom for the therapist himself to develop his musical language. The music therapy becomes a means of personal reflection and development for the therapist, who can now create music that corresponds better to his identity experience.
Now some will certainly claim that this therapeutic personal experience could have been carried out in the education, through so-called "intertherapy", as is practiced in the music therapy education at Aalborg University. Here the students are given the opportunity to get to know themselves through the same musical format that they will later practice, as Mary Priestley also prescribed in her time.
Transmusical processes
How the choice of instruments and musical expressions should go hand in hand with gender identity is also the topic of the collaboration between jazz musician and music therapist Patricia Zarate de Perez and Wenjun Wu, a transgender male bass player of Chinese descent (Chap. 29). In this narrative, the instruments and the choice of jazz improvisation are central. Wu, who was born a girl but wanted and raised as a boy until puberty, when he is forced into girl's clothes, manages the transformation into a man with the help of music. First as an electric bass player in a heavy metal band, which gives the opportunity for protest and a facade. Then, in an encounter with jazz (Coltrane, Wayne Shorter), the acoustic double bass joins the way forward towards free jazz and a personal form of composition. How the double basses fulfill the need for a warmer and more bodily expression is well described. In his graduation project, Wenjun creates a complex musical work that reflects his newfound freedom in expression. Listen on YouTube:
Global Music Therapy (GbMT)
In a meeting with music therapist de Perez, who follows Wenjun's transformation over several years, as a supervisor and researcher, the term "transmusical" is developed. Here de Perez relies on Colin Lee's "aesthetic music therapy", a variant of the music-centred music therapy that emphasizes composition, musical form and structure, in addition to collaborative improvisations. Transformations thus happen through music, and in music-centred music therapy there is no reference to any therapeutic theories, be they psychodynamic or humanistic frameworks.
de Perez takes the opportunity to promote her global music therapy, which she brands "Global Music Therapy (GbMT). This is about taking world music seriously and opening up the improvisations to music from all the world's genres. In particular, jazz is given a central place, and it is the first time I have seen such a good defense for giving jazz improvisation a more central place in music therapy.
Queer listening?
A Norwegian contribution comes from Jill Halstead and Thomas Hilder, who write about the American composer Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) and her concept of "deep listening" (Chap. 25). Oliveros, we read, was concerned with giving the listener control over sound and created music with humanitarian and healing purposes. She is characterized by a 'lesbian musicality' that represents a marginalized sensibility and that builds a bridge between LGBTQIA+ and music therapy.
Oliveros has designed a series of questions the listener can ask themselves during this deep listening. For example: “What are your first memories of sound? How do you feel about this now?” "How can you not listen when you can never close your ears?" "Are you sure you hear everything there is to hear?" "What does the sound mean to you?" “What are you hearing right now? How does it change?”
Such listening processes are also known from intermodal expressive art therapy. I myself remember a session with gestalt therapist Isabelle Frohne at a seminar in integrative therapy in Germany in the nineties. Here we listened to a sound collage, freely associated backwards in life, came up with key words to which we wrote poems. Such awareness-raising processes based on sound dig deep into the psyche and should probably be characterized as "deep listening".
Ambient and cyclic listening
Michael Viega continues to make strong contributions to music therapy in the fields of music technology, hip hop, anti-colonialism and now also as an ally with the LGBTQIA+ movement. In his contribution to the anthology, he writes about a work with a trans person and analyzes two comprovisations (i.e. a mixture between composition and improvisation) that they collaborate on over Zoom.
Before we get to know how this musical or music-centred music therapy unfolds, Viega gives an introduction to some critical currents of thought that affect the view of music on which this work rests. First, he outlines some ways of listening to music which he calls "ambient" and "cyclic". As far as I can understand, the ambient listening is about bringing to light the cultural narratives that are transmitted through listening, and here particularly applied to electronic dance music. Since many of these narratives disappear during the product-focused production, it's about listening so that you find your way back to original contexts. The cyclical listening should ensure that the therapist puts aside any preconceived socio-political and cultural attitudes in order to ensure an empathetic understanding and the relational dynamics between the therapist and the people they work with. Nicknamed "queer listening", cf. Olivero's deep listening above, it is about creating a biopolitical resistance that means a health-oriented resource for minorities and oppressed groups.
Posthuman digital "queering"
Viega sees music technology as a particularly important resource in creating an alternative music that is identity-creating for LGBTQIA+ people. Sampling provides opportunities for "digital queering", which remix culture provides plenty of examples of. Cyberpunk is highlighted with opportunities to explore and create a "post-gender identity" to break the cycle of patriarchal dominance in music. Reference is made to Robin James' cyberfeminism about how gendered biopolitics are transmitted via sound, a theory that has inspired the new "post-Internet generation" of queer electronic musicians to explore the diversity of gender identities by merging with digital media.
We are really talking about, to my ear, radical musical and gendered identity drafts. Listen to the Venezuelan artist Arca, a transwoman who on the album Xen portrays a genderless being surrounded by a mixture of bodies. Watch the video Nonbinary on YouTube:
A sonic episteme
In the book The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism, and Biopolitics and through several articles, philosopher Robin James has formulated the idea of a "sonic episteme". Episteme is a philosophical term that deals with a form of knowledge and understanding that is recognized as valid at a specific time within a specific historical and cultural context. The French philosopher Michel Foucault has used the term to describe the underlying structures of ways of thinking and discourses that shapes and defines how this knowledge is understood in different historical eras. Such epistemes have their own rules for what is considered truth and what kind of knowledge is valid. Knowledge is not just an accumulation of facts, but is also deeply rooted in the social, cultural and historical contexts from which it arises.
The notion of a ‘sonic episteme’ is about music and sound reproducing social practices that maintain a hegemonic neoliberal biopolitical agenda. The notion is derived from black feminism, musicology, queer sound studies, and philosophy. The theory should help music therapists to increase their reflexivity about how sonic structures in music therapy can recreate rigid systems of white, patriarchal hetero/cisnormativity, even though they claim to stand for diversity and equality. As a counterweight to the dominant sonic episteme, the term "phonography" is proposed, which implies a different musical expression.
Now it is probably the case that the majority of music therapy rests on a traditional Western European classical sonic episteme, something we have difficulty getting out of. With his case presentation, Viega shows how a new musical expression can arise via his virtuoso music technology guidance. With such a music-centred approach, music therapy really becomes a good support for the queer person. But Viega sees that we cannot get rid of the dominant sonic episteme we live under and use on a daily basis. The point is that not all of our users feel comfortable under this episteme and that there are alternative forms of expression, not least with the help of music technology.
The pedagogical responsibility
There are several articles that touch on the teaching of music therapy and the responsibility for studies, the subject and not least queer and trans students. Jane Edwards and Sue Baines (chapter 14) adapt pedagogy based on anti-oppressive practices. Here it is about undressing capitalism, patriarchy and Eurocentrism, rejecting all racist, binary and derogatory terms. They want to eliminate all discrimination against people of colour, queer people, trans people or people with different abilities. They will support research that shows how transphobic attitudes create minority stress among LGBTQIA+. They refer to research that shows how exclusion and marginalization lead to trauma and want a pedagogy built on social justice.
We also meet three queer and trans Canadian music therapists who talk about their own experiences in the face of studies and practice (Ch. 16). We get to learn about how they have navigated their queer identity in the face of studies and not least during internship placements. The stress that comes with having to hide one's identity in the face of prejudice is something most people in this group are familiar with. How much of oneself and to whom one should reveal one's identity becomes a recurring theme. What they want is primarily security, authenticity, to avoid shame and isolation, to experience pride and strength and to be “othered”.
Critical pedagogy and binary categories
A group of music therapists from the master’s program in music therapy at Slippery Rock University in the USA have co-authored their article on music therapy education with Susan Hadley. Hadley leads this education and is known as the editor of Voices and has a prominent voice in the ‘anti-oppressive’ music therapy (Chapter 15). The starting point for queer music therapy didactics is the critical pedagogy of the Brazilian pedagogue and philosopher Paulo Freire, in addition to Franz Fanon’s anti-colonial message. In general, the critical pedagogy will create awareness of inequality, criticize capitalism and colonialism, economic inequality and reveal hidden power structures that affect people’s everyday lives. The queer pedagogy will go further and question the fixed identity categories. It is questioned whether working towards greater social justice is not in itself a way of confirming the system. This is a point of view we also encounter in an article from Elly Scrine (Chapter 33) who, in her criticism of neoliberalism, points out that almost whatever we do, we are helping to maintain the system.
The criticism is more specifically about the fact that we need to get out of binary thinking and binary categories. Such binary categories, such as male/female, white/black, teacher/student, therapist/client, male/female, straight/queer, healthy/sick, normal/abnormal, etc. carry with them a power relationship. Such binary relationships must be perverted, critically examined and deconstructed. Reference is again made to Foucault, who demonstrates the connection between knowledge and power. The phenomenon of “hizome” from the French philosophers Deleuze and Guattary is also drawn in as examples of a non-hierarchical way of thinking and knowledge production.
‘Queering’ of Norwegian music therapy education
When the criticism becomes more concrete, some unpleasant feelings always arise in me. Have I helped to build up and maintain an oppressive Norwegian music therapy tradition? In a good 'queering' tradition, we will have to ask ourselves such questions. This criticism from the American students is aimed both at oppressive social structures, and at the power that lies in the American music therapy organization that creates certification rules and decides what an education in music therapy should contain. The criticism is also aimed at the local universities and in particular the criteria for admission of new students, admission criteria based on musical background and diversity in gender, cultural background, and ethnicity. In addition, the criticism goes against monological forms of teaching with a clear hierarchical separation between teachers and students.
I will not answer for everything we have done and are doing in this country concerning music therapy training. But it is clear that major cultural and social differences between the USA and Norway come into play here and influence legislation, welfare and attitudes. The American students are critical of the fact that a western classical musical background is required for admission to the music therapy study. Here at home, on the other hand, we would like to have students with a background in popular music, rock, folk music, jazz, country and western and of course classical - as long as the musical quality is in place. Admission tests are not subject to any general admission requirements from the educational institutions, but are adapted to the purpose of the music therapy study. When we started the music therapy studies in 1978, we were allowed to decide for ourselves what kind of musicality and what skills we would require. I would also argue that the entrance audition does not filter out people with a different sexual orientation, ethnicity or functional ability. We have trained both queer, blind and autistic music therapists. I don't even know if such a debate is desirable or necessary in our country?
When the criticism is directed at the teaching being dominated by ethnically white men, which can certainly be true in many places, I miss the point out that four or five of the most high-profile male music therapists in the world I know or have known, both personally and collegially, are queer – which of course has not been a topic for me or them. But it is queer music therapists who have raised the level of music therapy, both with regard to practice and method development, theory and research. I would have liked to see some thought about this. Maybe, when I read further and report on in Part 2 of this book review.
Referrals
Eckhoff, R. and Stensæth, K. (2024). Gender incongruence – voice, communication and expression. A Norwegian supervisor in course arrangement and management in an interdisciplinary approach with music therapy and speech therapy. NMH Publications 2024:6. CREMAH and the Norwegian Academy of Music.
Lee, C. (1996/2016). Music at the Edge: The music therapy experience of a musician with AIDS. Routledge.
Lee, C. (2003). The Architecture of Aesthetic Music Therapy. Gilsum: Barcelona Publishers.
Whitehead-Pleaux et. al., (2012). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning: Best practices in music therapy. Music Therapy Perspectives 30(2), 158-166.
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