Meaning and Power of Medicinal Music

Meaning, Power and Exoticism in
Medicinal Music: A Case Study of

MusiCure in Denmark
Tore Tvarn Lind
This article offers a critical discussion of the use of music in a biomedical setting in
Denmark focusing on the specific medicinal music MusiCure based on research carried
out by the Musica Humana organization. The article explores how commercial music is
applied, experienced and conceptualized in the modern, Western hospital. The position of
the music in the market *it is profiled by the authority of medicine*is examined along
with the positive experiences of private users. In outlining aspects of the interfaces
between healing and biomedical treatment and caretaking, the article discusses how
medicinal music with its overt notions of the natural and universal aims at altering the
healing space of hospital wards and private homes. The power to define healthy sounds
and regulate bodily behaviour in relation to ideas of health is examined in the light of
postcolonial critique of social and institutional hegemony.
Keywords: Medical Ethnomusicology; MusiCure; Medicinal Music; Healing; New Age;
Semi-Spirituality; Exoticism; Otherness; Postcolonial Critique; Biomedical Hegemony;
Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark; Private Users
The creation and use of commercial medicinal music is entangled with issues of
power, biology, technology, spirituality and exoticism. However, music medicine, as it
overlaps with various healing music, New Age music and relaxation music, also plays
an important and meaningful role in many peoples lives. The contribution of this
article to the growing field of medical ethnomusicology centres around the use of
recorded music to facilitate healing; it offers a critical examination of the relations
between medical science and music, patients and doctors, the official health
Tore Tvarn Lind is Assistant Professor in ethnomusicology at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies,
University of Copenhagen. His primary areas of interest and research are: religious musics, Byzantine chant,
musical tradition, healing and medicine, and music and torture. Correspondence to: Tore Tvarn Lind, Section
of Musicology, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, Klerkegade 2, DK-1308
Copenhagen K, Denmark. Email: ttlind@hum.ku.dk
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/07/020209-34
# 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17411910701554039
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2007, pp. 209242
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
institution and popular healing culture. The article focuses on a biomedical setting in
Denmark to explore how recorded music is applied, experienced and conceptualized
in the modern hospital using MusiCure, a specially designed sound and music
environment (Eje 2003a; Heslet 2003a, 6). While examining the sound of MusiCure,
its aims and its position in the market, the article also considers positive healing
experiences of private users of MusiCure.
Based on scientific research, the MusiCure programme was created for use in
two different contexts: in hospitals, as a supplement to medical treatment, and
for private use, as a non-prescription drug sold exclusively at pharmacies. The
booklet accompanying the first MusiCure CD introduces the programme as
follows:
The creation of MusiCure is based on more than four years of scientific research in
the stimulating and curative effect of music on hospitalized patients *the
programme is produced in close collaboration with leading doctors and nurses
from the research organization Musica Humana. (in Eje 2003a, 3)
In approaching the music as medical intervention, and in how the healing work of
music is conceptualized, it is crucial to listen to those people who produce and
experience the healing power of music, as well as to examine how music and sounds
alter the healing space of hospital wards and private homes.
This article is based on fieldwork carried out in Copenhagen, Denmark (June
December 2004). It draws on multiple sources of information: observation in a post-
operative unit at the Copenhagen University Hospital (Rigshospitalet)
1
and interviews
with one of the doctors involved in the project, the composer of MusiCure and private
users. Other sources, such as the MusiCure CDs, articles and reports in the media and
Musica Humanas research reports posted on the Internet, are included as field
material.
MusiCure is the sole musical product ever, at least to my knowledge, to be
legitimized by doctors and biomedicine and to enjoy a state monopoly. MusiCure
CDs are sold exclusively at the pharmacy and thus are aimed at the medical market
rather than the music market *just as other healing musics are aimed primarily at
the alternative healing or therapeutic market. The aim of this article is not to discuss
whether MusiCure works or not. It is not an attempt to argue against the scientific
evidence put forth by the Musica Humana group showing that MusiCure helps many
hospital patients and private users. My own interviews with private users only verify
that relaxation music is a help in their daily life. It is important, though, from an
ethnomusicological perspective, to shed light on what MusiCure also is: a commercial
product profiled on the healing market by the authority of medicine. It is from this
perspective that arguments furthering MusiCure as a commercial product can be seen
in a critical light.
This article examines a complex of issues relating to the process of healing with
recorded music. Thus it takes a closer look at: MusiCure as a commercial medicinal
product and the arguments employed to support it; issues of the power to define
210 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
healthy sounds and regulate bodily behaviour in relation to ideas of health; the way
that MusiCure takes part in constructing healing spaces in hospital wards and
peoples homes; and how culturally specific sounds, metaphors and notions of the
natural and universal are put to work in the music.
Ethnomusicology and Healing/Medicinal Music
The musicological and ethnomusicological study of music as medicine is an
expanding field. Some studies have dealt critically with the history of music as
medicine; others have focused on music and healing in modern, urban settings. The
historical focus of Peregrine Hordens seminal anthology Music as medicine (2000)
is complemented by the anthology Musical healing in cultural contexts (2000) edited
by Penelope Gouk. Marina Rosemans study, The healing sounds of the Malaysian
rainforest (1991), provides a wealth of ideas useful in studying healing sounds
outside the rainforest as well. Thomas Csordas (1996) summarizes a range of
approaches, including phenomenology, hermeneutics, interpretive anthropology
and others, in the study of the performative and ritual aspects of healing. Much
along those lines, this article shares the hermeneutic or anthropological sense of the
importance of context, and attempts to formulate the performance or process of
healing with recorded medicinal music in terms of what it means for the
participants. As Csordas (1996, 95) argues, rather than viewing patients as
spectators to the healing process, just as one would view hospitalized patients
passively receiving the musical cure, we ought to consider the mode in which the
patient becomes engaged in therapeutic process as critical to the efficacy of the
healing. This is to suggest an understanding of the healing effect of recorded music
as one based on listeners participating or being engaged in an imaginal
performance of healing, to borrow Csordass term (1996, 95), taking place in
listeners minds.
Medical anthropology has studied the field of healing and medicine for nearly four
decades (see, for example, Lindenbaum and Lock 1993; Lock and Nichter 2002). An
increasing interest in cooperation between ethnomusicology, anthropology and other
areas of research is emerging (see, for example, Laderman and Roseman 1996;
Csordas 1996), also involving physiological experiments in what has been coined
medical ethnomusicology by Gregory Barz and Benjamin Koen (see Barz 2002; Koen
2005, 287, 308).
2
Medical ethnomusicology is fundamentally interdisciplinary and
builds on work from multiple disciplines within science and the humanities. Paul
Heelass (1996) work on the New Age movement and various works on religion and
the sacred in the Durkheimian tradition (for example, Durkheim 2001 [1912]; Berger
1969 [1967]; Miller 2002) are relevant to the study of musical medicine. As a number
of scholars have emphasized, the domains of medicine and spirituality or religion
often overlap (Burnett 2000; Janzen 2000, 47). Psychologist Peter Elsasss (1993)
comprehensive work on health psychology also provides useful knowledge on the
interface between humanism and hard science. Sociological and anthropological
Ethnomusicology Forum 211
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
studies of body, biomedicine and power relations (Turner 1984, 1987; Arnold 1993;
Williams 2003; Good and Good 1993), undergirded by postcolonial thought, provide
a critical framework for interpreting the role of medicinal music in relation to
hegemonic structures in society.
An increasing number of biomedical studies clinically examine the role of
spirituality and prayer in relation to health and recovery, though, as Koen has
noted, without critically considering the role of sound or music in prayer, or the
loaded meanings inherent in diverse cultural practices and belief systems (2005, 290).
Although MusiCure is not a devotional or sacred music as such, it explicitly takes part
in constructing a metaphysical space where it communicates with patients own
potential to heal. This article suggests that this belief in a metaphysical dimension in
fact frames the performance of MusiCure, and places it within the realm of a
popular New Age semi-spirituality.
Defining MusiCure as Medicinal Music
MusiCure is solely recorded music thought to heal by means of musical impulses
passively received by patients and private users. This is different from music and
sounds produced by participants themselves, who are actively engaged in musical
healing processes. The use of play-back music as a palliative form of musical
treatment is also distinguished from the more invasive kinds of music therapy (cf.
Horden 2000, 8), such as conventional music therapy and its emphasis on the
interpersonal relation between therapist and client(s).
The term music therapy can be applied as a more general term. Although the
terms music as medicine (biological effect) and music therapy (psychological
effect) clearly intersect in many ways, it is pertinent nevertheless to distinguish
between them. MusiCure is not intended to work in the context of conventional
music therapy (see Bunt and Hoskyns 2002; Wigram, Pedersen and Bonde 2002).
Horden distinguishes between heterodox and professional therapeutic territories,
where the latter refers to mainstream music therapy used in Europe and USA, and the
former consists of those therapies commonly labelled, more or less pejoratively,
alternative and New Age. MusiCure positions itself on the market within the
professional territory of biomedicine because it is explicitly produced, designed and
marketed as a medicinal treatment that produces both biological and psychological
effects (Heslet in Eje 2003b, 7) based on scientific evidence. As we shall see, MusiCure is
explicitly distanced from similar musical genres aimed at relaxation purposes on the
New Age music market, yet many of MusiCures sound components and discourses
about the properties of those sounds are found in many New Age concepts and
recordings. For example, both MusiCure and some New Age music genres draw on the
idea that reproduced sounds of nature and the human heartbeat have a positive
influence on stressed hospitalized patients and private users (cf. Horden 2000, 8).
Produced within the established health care system, MusiCure is one example of a
great variety of ways in which urban healing contexts have employed recorded music
212 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Crystal healing, channelling and Reiki
healing are other examples of alternative treatments where recorded music is often
used as an atmosphere-generating element or as a supplement to other elements in
the healing practices that partake in creating the spiritual or metaphysical space of
healing. MusiCure shares a number of ideas and underlying assumptions with many
other musical healing practices, both professional and heterodox. Among these are
the ideas that music can evoke an inner bodily potential to heal by influencing a
listeners mind; that music alters the environment by restructuring a listeners
perception of time and place; and that pure, natural and primal sounds are a vital
part of musical treatment, as opposed to the sound pollution of modernity deriving
from machinery and traffic. All musical healing genres appeal to history, looking to
the past for antecedents that may legitimize present practices. Finally, most genres
endorse a holistic cosmology, although the creators of MusiCure distance it from the
specific holistic worldviews of alternative practices preferring the term humanistic.
The Organization Musica Humana and the Scientific Documentation of MusiCure
The organization Musica Humana is based on a collaborative effort between
specialists in the areas of music composition, nursing, music therapy, medical
science and psychology. Since its founding in 1998, more than four years before the
public release of the first MusiCure CD, the organization has carried out scientific
research within the Music & Medicine Research Project on the reactions of
hospitalized patients to MusiCure, documenting the programmes effects. The project
is financially supported by the Egmont Foundation. However, everyone involved in
Musica Humanas research works on a voluntary basis. The composer gets his salary
from the sale of the MusiCure CDs to private users. The project runs at four Danish
university hospitals
3
specifically involving post-surgery recovery rooms and cardiac
intensive care units and psychiatric units (see, for example, Hansen n.d.; Hansen and
Nrregard 2003; Schou 2004; Srensen 2004; www.musicahumana.com). Musica
Humana also works with partner hospitals in Sweden, Norway, Canada and the
United States.
4
Musica Humanas research, involving more than 2,500 patients,
5
is focused
primarily on patients well-being and responses to MusiCure and has involved
comparisons with the ordinary sound environment in the hospital wards and other
kinds of music. The booklets accompanying MusiCure CDs provide selected
examples of Musica Humana research results. I have chosen to summarize briefly
the results of the investigation in a cardiac laboratory at Aalborg University Hospital
as presented along with the first MusiCure CD (in Eje 2003a, 245; see also
Thorgaard, Bitten 2003).
The purpose of the research was to investigate the effect of a specially selected music
[and] sound environment (excerpts from MusiCure) on the well-being of adult, lightly
sedated patients . . . undergoing invasive procedure (in Eje 2003a, 24). One hundred
and ninety-three patients were enrolled and divided into two groups, a music group
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
exposed to MusiCure and a non-music group exposed to the ordinary sound
environment of the hospital ward. The patients were then questioned about their
well-being and about their opinions of the sound environment experienced during the
invasive cardiac procedure. They were not asked if they liked the music itself. The
results of the patients responses show that 91% of the patients in the music group
found the sound environment pleasant whereas only 56% in the non-music group
found the basic sound environment pleasant. Of the results, the following is also
emphasized:
In the non-music group 34% of the patients were positive to a hypothetical offer of
listening to music, whereas 82% of the patients in the music group liked the
music. . . . 68% percent experienced that music was of major positive importance
for their feeling of well-being. 7% expressed that the music was of minor
importance. None experienced a negative correlation between music and well-
being. . . . The patients expressed that music made them feel less tense, more
relaxed and safe. (in Eje 2003a, 24)
On the basis of these results, the conclusion is as follows:
Specially selected music had a positive effect on the well-being of patients
. . . during invasive cardiac procedures. Based on the negative expectation and
the positive experience of the patients with regard to music environment, we
recommend that specially selected music should be a part of the sound
environment in the cardiac laboratory, without asking the patients for permission
beforehand. (in Eje 2003a, 25; Thorgaard, Bitten 2003)
The summary of the investigation does not reveal precisely what excerpts of MusiCure
the patients were exposed to. Bitten Thorgaards research also includes verbal
statements of patients reactions to the music. Patients were reported to describe
MusiCure as a nice experience, relaxing, diminishing surgery-related anxiety and
producing a sense of safety (Thorgaard, Bitten 2003, 3).
Although not accessed in this research, the specific reasons why certain patients do
not want to listen to MusiCure (or any music) are both interesting and important. It
could be that patients either dislike the music or experience listening to music as a
further sensual input which might work as yet another stress factor. In my view,
further research would be needed prior to any conclusive explanation.
Musica Humana researchers concluded overall that patients experience MusiCure
as relaxing, anxiety and pain reducing, which reduces the use of pain medication
requirements. However, this is not (yet) documented by Musica Humana for
MusiCure, but relies on substantial research conducted by others involving other
kinds of music (Heslet 2003b, 1213).
6
A number of biomedical studies based in
Sweden have clinically examined the relation between relaxation music and improved
recovery and find that music has some significant beneficial effects on post-operative
recovery, showing also a reduction in patients need for pain killers such as morphine,
ketobemidone, ibuprofen, and paracetamol (Nilsson et al . 2001, 2003; Nilsson, Rawal
and Unosson 2003). A combination of music judged to be relaxing and calming and
214 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
accompanied by soothing sounds of sea waves [music by Unestahl 1970] and
encouraging suggestions recorded in a male voice by a person with extensive
experience in hypnotherapy was used (Nilsson et al . 2001, 813). Also soft classical
music, reported to be relaxing and calming [Naxos 1997] was employed together
with hypnotherapy (Nilsson et al . 2003: 279, with a reference to music therapist Leslie
Bunt, 1994).
While biomedical research addresses measurable musical effects on patients
recovery, it totally lacks critical consideration of the music and sounds involved.
However, a few researchers emphasize that further investigation involving sound
phenomena (Good & Stanton-Hicks et al . 1999; Nilsson et al . 2001, 812), as well as
the relation between patients musical preferences and hormonal changes (Fukui and
Yamashita 2003), is necessary. Musica Humanas research differs considerably in the
sense that it aims at producing the ideal type of music (Thorgaard, Per 2003, 14) for
use at (among others) post-anaesthesia care units, although it draws on research
involving musical solutions beyond MusiCure, but equally well suited for the
purpose.
How is the intended effect of MusiCure on the listener described? MusiCure evokes
positive images and dream-like experiences and generally improves the level of well-
being of patients (Heslet 2003a, 6; conversation with Eje, 19 September 2004). One of
the founders of Musica Humana, Dr Lars Heslet, explains that the MusiCure CDs
attempt to concentrate these positive effects of the power of music (Heslet 2003b, 13).
MusiCure is thus described by its creators as a medicinal music containing healing
aspects of music in concentrated form. Such a mechanical optimization of musics
curing efficacy, however, would presuppose that the musical elements, such as timbre,
loudness, rhythm and pitch, can be defined and scrutinized independently.
7
A crucial
problem with this kind of research is how to determine the criteria for isolating and
measuring each musical element independently. So far, all documentation of positive
reactions to MusiCure has involved the musical design in its compositional whole,
that is, precisely as the music is meant to be listened to in everyday treatment at the
hospital or in private homes. Connections between listening and physiological
changes have been made between, for example, respiration and pulse rate. But, as
music therapist Leslie Bunt notes, this kind of physiologically based research is rather
inconsistent and based on short-lived effects using a restricted range of recorded
music (2000, 538; see also Arrington 1954; Rider 1987).
The term, Musica Humana, originates from the Pythagorean-Platonic analogy
between musica humana and musica mundana, in which audible music, or musica
instrumentalis, is believed to restore the harmonious balance of the human organism,
musica humana, through its sympathetic action on body and soul. This balance is an
imitation of the musical structure of the universe, musica mundana.
8
These thoughts
reappeared in the medieval works of Boethius, in the Ficinian magic of the
Renaissance (see Tomlinson 1993; Voss 2000; Gouk 2000b) and in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century New Age movements, such as theosophy and Rudolph Steiners
anthroposophy (Horden 2000, 328). Thus, historically, the term has considerable
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
spiritual and religious connotations, although the Musica Humana organization
stresses the humanistic rather than spiritual aspects of music in medical treatment.
The notion that MusiCure affects a patients body and mind may, however, be
inspired by this classical concept. Although positioned in a totally different musical
and historical context than present day MusiCure, as were the ancient Greek
philosophers before him, Boethius was already arguing in the sixth century that
music influences both somatic and psychic ailments (Horden 2000, 103).
The focus in Musica Humanas research on the physical effects of sound and music
does not correspond directly with the composers concern with the emotional power
of the music (conversation with Eje, 19 September). Moreover, the description of
MusiCure incorporates musical and historical elements that are not factual in any
scientific sense. Thus, although MusiCure comes in biomedical wrappings, the
arguments for its effect are not exclusively biomedical; they are also historical,
cultural and aimed at the listeners emotions with their wide use of metaphors. This
suggests that the different elements drawn on to endorse MusiCure as a commercial
product cannot be validated according to the usual standards of scientific research,
although this is what MusiCure postulates (Figure 1).
9
The booklets accompanying
the CDs include graphs showing research results and promote MusiCure through
terms like music science and biomusic (Heslet 2003b, 7), focusing on the
relationship between brain function, music and biology, patients well-being and
experience of pain.
Case Study: Intensive Care Unit 4131
Dr Lars Heslet (hereafter Heslet), one of the initiators of the Musica Humana project,
is the clinical supervisor of the intensive care unit 4131 at the Copenhagen University
Hospital (Rigshospitalet). During fieldwork, I was allowed to observe post-operative
patients and make limited sound recordings. In Heslets view, the hospital needs to
change; hospitalized patients should be treated as human beings and not as broken
mechanisms:
The hospital is offensive to health; in fact . . . patients often get more sick while they
are here. We . . . try to create a humanistic environment that respects people as
human beings. When patients leave the hospital, and have recovered, they should in
fact also feel well and healthy anew. (Conversation with Heslet, 20 October 2004)
Heslet (2002, 272) maintains that hospitalized patients should benefit from the best of
alternative culture. He dismisses the notion of holism in favour of humanism,
arguing for the importance of art, light, colours, aesthetics, hope, dawn, solemn
spaces and transcendent experiences in hospital wards (conversation with Heslet, 20
October 2004; see also Heslet 2002). Heslet has lately decorated the clinic with glass
art. Heslets engagement with the aesthetics of the hospital wards extends to
expressing his opinions in published articles (Heslet 2002, 2003a, 2003b).
216 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Figure 1 MusiCure poster 2006: Music as medicine.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
In a BBC World Service interview with Helset and his colleague, chairman of the
Musica Humana Organization, Dr Per Thorgaard, the MusiCure project is
described as a music specially composed to match bodily rhythm. Patients who
listened to MusiCure during operations recount that, although the pain they felt
was the same, the experience of pain was nevertheless different. Moreover, as both
doctors maintain in the TV programme, the designed sound and music
environment will awaken the hidden potential for self-cure and thus enhance
cure as a kind of music therapy.
10
At intensive care unit 4131 the MusiCure programme was played during patient
recovery. On each visit, I encountered sedated patients, who had just returned from
abdominal operations and were recovering with a combination of painkillers and the
sound of MusiCure.
The sun lights the room through the white curtains. There is a green plant in the
corner. The floor is clean, and the sheets just changed. Covered in bandages with
tubes sticking out from beneath the blanket and from his hands, and with a
respirator fastened to his face and head, lies a middle-aged post-operative patient.
The smell of hospital is striking. There is music playing at low volume, MusiCure,
but it is hard to locate the loudspeakers at first. The nurse doesnt know about the
loudspeakers. . . . The ceiling consists of a number of quadrates patterned with
small holes a few millimetres deep. The holes of some of those quadrates are
perforated all the way through, each hiding a loudspeaker. The volume button is
placed on the instrumental board on the wall behind the bed, as in all hospitals
installed with oxygen, air, emergency electricity, etc. Perhaps the placement of the
music control button next to the vital emergency equipment symbolizes the
importance of the music in post-operative treatment? The patient seems to be half
asleep. (Observation, unit 4131, 20 October 2004)
During observation at the unit, MusiCure was not sounding constantly and in
some wards it would be turned off. This was partly due to the fact that the music is
not always wanted, partly due to practical circumstances: a few nurses did not know
where to find the volume button or whether the music system worked or not. At one
incident, I visited a room with a recovering patient who was apparently in great pain
after surgery and seemed very anxious about what was going on. The nurse noticed
that the music was not playing, she found the volume button on the panel behind the
bed and the music started flowing from the ceiling. This seemed to have an unwanted
effect on the patient, who groaned with pain and vomited. Immediately the music
was turned off again (observation, unit 4131, 15 November 2004).
Playing music in hospital wards may be understood as yet a further input to the
senses, which, as the example seems to show, was more than the patient could take.
I was not able to confirm this assumption as hospital ethical standards (to protect
patients rights and privacy) allowed me to observe but not speak with the patients
(who were heavily sedated, asleep or unconscious). These circumstances compel-
lingly mark the limits on access to patients experiences with the music at the actual
units.
218 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
The Sound of MusiCure
At the beginning of the first MusiCure CD, entitled The Journey (Eje 2003a), the
listener hears the sounds of insects and birds mixed together with synthesizers and
classical instruments like harp, cello and oboe on the first track called Dawn. One
harp plays a simple, rhythmic figure and another arpeggio chords. The synthesizers
create an acoustic pattern of slowly changing chords*a succession of tonal
harmonies. At the end of the track, sounds of waves and distant seagulls suggest
that something new is about to happen. Thus, the first track flows over into the next
with the wash of the sea. A calm rhythm played pizzicato on cello strings opens the
second track, Journey, creating an expectation of movement and direction in
the music. A cello plays a deep, slowly ascending melody. Shortly afterwards, the oboe
enters the soundscape, and the two instruments begin a musical dialogue, with a
continuous background of sonorous tonal clusters. The many layers in the
soundscape, created by a special three-dimensional mixing technique, invite the
listener, in the words of the composer, to experience new sounds in the music on
successive listenings (conversation with Eje, 19 September 2004). Aesthetically, the
MusiCure composition forms the circle of a day, beginning with the track or, indeed,
movement called Dawn and ending with the two atmosphere-inducing tracks
entitled Twilight and Night. The more dynamic movements are placed in the
middle, such as Journey, mentioned above, and Song of the Heart, which I shall
address in more detail below.
The Composer and the Sound of Nature
The composer and producer of the MusiCure programme, Niels Eje, lives in a house
at the edge of Geelsskov forest, a few kilometres north of Copenhagen.
11
Eje is well
known in Denmark as an outstanding oboist. Besides performing the works of
Quincy Jones, Paul Simon and others, with his Trio Rococo, Eje composes and
produces various kinds of music, such as film music and music for television and
theatre productions. Eje, together with his wife, Inge Mulvad, also owns and runs the
record company, Gefion Records, which produces and distributes the MusiCure CDs.
Mulvads cello and Ejes oboe are two of the prominent musical instruments on the
MusiCure albums.
Eje has personally recorded all of the nature sounds that appear on the MusiCure
albums. The high-quality recordings required an expedition to a primal place (in
Danish: ursted)*the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, where Eje recorded the sounds
of waves and birds (Eje 2003b) far from the background noise of Danish highways.
Eje: The islands are not volcanic, but part of the African continent. You find palms
and other plants which do not grow elsewhere, and there are indigenous bird
species.
Lind: But are you not playing on the exotic*recording the waves from a place
which only a few people will live to experience
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Eje: Of course, I do. . . . There is an exotic element. But these birds are fantastic!
And the sounds of the sea are unbelievable you wouldnt believe your own ears!
(conversation with Eje, 19 September)
Eje maintains that first-hand personal experience of the sounds of nature is crucial for
creating a reliable recording and necessary for meeting the responsibility of composing
for anaesthetized patients. Although Eje make use of natures own soundscape, as he
phrases it (conversation with Eje, 19 September), he is very well aware that composing
with nature sounds alters their meaning, as the following exchange of words shows:
Eje: It is of crucial importance to me not just to have a few sounds of waves
reappearing over and over again in my music. . . . It actually matters to have been
there. I can personally guarantee the quality . . . all the sounds are genuine.
. . . There are so many different sounds of waves in the Seychelles! I have carefully
chosen each and every wave that you hear on the record . . . I might use a wave
twice if its exceptionally beautiful. . . . On many New Age records, for example, you
do not know where, or by whom, the sounds of nature are recorded. It is not
trustworthy . . . I mean . . . think of the audience. When you play music for people
who are deeply anaesthetized, you have a gigantic responsibility, which is why the
music has to be well crafted and through-composed. For these patients, the music
is their anchor to the physical world. Many patients have described being
unconscious during surgery as a void, where they have lost something of
themselves. Months later, however, some patients actually recall having heard
music; it is somehow stored in the musical centre of the brain and recreates a
feeling of presence.
Lind: But, on your recordings, the sounds of nature are not mere natural sounds
they are manipulated, dont you agree?
Eje: Well, sure, they are manipulated! Thats what you do when you compose! The
sounds are carefully selected and put together to achieve the desired, optimal effect,
and sound sphere. (Conversation with Eje, 19 September)
According to Eje, not all nature sounds are equally well suited to the purposes of
MusiCure. Sounds of fire, barking dogs and angry bears are not likely to induce the
feeling of relaxation and peace in the listeners mind. In Musica Humanas research,
the reactions of listeners have played a considerable role in selecting sounds that have
the desired effects. Horsens Hospital reported responses from psychiatric patients
diagnosed with depression and personality disorder indicating undesirable effects
from the music. One patient reported not liking the strange animal noises (Srensen
2004). According to Eje, such negative experiences are reflected during the process of
producing and re-editing the MusiCure programme (Conversation with Eje, 19
September).
Specific sounds of nature are thus categorized as healthy and good, whereas other
sounds are perceived to be disturbing and frightening. Therefore, nature as such is
not the issue here; rather, it is a carefully selected part of nature, or, indeed, the selected
sounds of nature, which is valuable according to the purpose of the MusiCure.
According to Eje, sounds of nature are the primary source of inspiration for the
production of MusiCure (Conversation with Eje, 19 September), and in a photograph
220 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
he is portrayed between palm leaves holding his oboe (Figure 2; Eje 2003b, 14). Eje
points out that the oboe is an instrument with a fascinating natural sound, which has
been used for thousands of years because . . . it creates a sense of safety (Conversation
with Eje, 19 September). Eje describes the natural element in music on the first CD
thus: I believe that many of the fundamental elements in music are fundamentally
present in nature*the rhythm of life, the natural tones and the chords we can create
with them, the extraordinary melodies of exotic birds (Eje 2003a, 20). The
superimposition of nature suggests that the music is indeed natural, which the cover
photographs of astonishing nature support. Motifs such as waves from the Seychelles, a
northern boreal forest and the auroral drapery of the Northern lights all emphasize
MusiCures relation to pristine nature. The pictures of nature are juxtaposed with
graphic representations that have the rational appeal of scientific research on nature.
Thus the cover design, with the prominent pure white background that evokes the
colour of pills, strongly marks the MusiCure CDs as a non-prescription music on the
drug market.
Private Users
MusiCures curative space is both broadened and altered for private users. The
following account presents three private users of MusiCure and their respective
experiences. The composer, Niels Eje, and Gefion Records made my contact with
Figure 2 Eje among the palm leaves. Photo courtesy of Niels Eje/Gefion Records.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
private users possible. Thus, what follows represents testimonials of positive and
satisfied users, who, on their own initiative, wrote to Niels Eje and Gefion Records.
I chose to speak with private MusiCure users in lieu of interviewing patients about
their experiences with MusiCure. As noted above, it was impossible for me to
communicate with hospitalized patients. Two of the private users were interviewed
over the phone and the testimonial of the third is based on the public material
provided by Gefion Records and a newspaper article.
DAMP: Lone and Frederik
Lone lives in Northern Jutland, several hundred kilometres from Copenhagen with
her son, Frederik (age 5), who is diagnosed with DAMP.
12
She tells about her
experience with MusiCure:
I went to the pharmacy to get medicine for my son, and then, I was like drawn
towards that CD. Then I thought, why not? I believe there is more between heaven
and earth. . . . So, I went home, played the CD, and the music worked instantly, you
know, we both fell asleep, my son and I. It was totally great. . . . Sometimes, I rub
his feet, a common method to make DAMP children calm down. And sometimes
we do it to the music. It really calms him down! Its fantastic, dont you think? . . .
Frederik sometimes say: Mum, that sovemusik (sleeping-music)*yes, he
invented his own term*shouldnt we listen to it? So, he really likes it. He makes
his own pictures in his head while listening. The sound of the trickling water on the
CD, so he told me, makes him imagine that he is out sailing on a river and there are
birds in the trees above him. . . . You hear the heartbeat, and then the child relaxes.
It has to do with our primary instincts, Im sure. Also, its like the music distracts
him*it functions like a diversion when he gets locked on the idea that he doesnt
want to sleep. . . . So, I think it was kind of funny that I stumbled into that CD
intuitively, and then it had such an amazing effect. Pretty weird! (Conversation
with Lone, 14 December)
The Feeling of Lightness: Jette
Jette also lives in Jutland. She became aware of MusiCure via the TV programme,
Lgens Bord (Doctors Desk),
13
and then bought the first MusiCure CD at the
pharmacy. During our conversation, Jette recalls previous positive experiences with
recordings of nature music. She likes the sounds of nature, particular the sound of
water. She recalls having heard some rislevandsmusik (trickling-water music) that
gave her the same relaxing experience as the first MusiCure CD, The Journey
(conversation with Jette, 19 December):
The music gives me a sensation of lightness. There are some pearl-like things, light
things in the music. Yes . . . here I am, showing what I mean with my fingers, you
know, but, of course, you cannot see that! Its so lovely to be taken away to these
tiny, fine sounds . . . just like a tiny triangle. Perhaps it is the harp. Its like tones of
silver. . . . The music sends my thoughts wandering. I let go of thoughts, stress. . . .
And I relax. Its so simple. I strip off my work. I am far away and present at the
222 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
same time. No other music gives me that feeling. Well, I do listen a lot to female
jazz singers with soft voices, like Billie Holiday and Norah Jones, and they do
similar things to me as MusiCure does, but, you know, its so much more
demanding to listen to Billie Holiday. She demands your attention in another way.
(Conversation with Jette, 19 December)
Post-Traumatic Stress: Klaus
Currently a staff sergeant working at the Army Operational Command in Denmark,
Klaus was stationed in Bosnia in 1994 where he was involved in direct battle action.
His unit was nearly blown away in crossfire (Jyllands-Posten 2004). Six years after this
event, Klaus had a blackout, and was suddenly overcome by severe anxiety attacks. He
has since been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress. He received help
from a psychologist, but was ill for long periods and unable to work.
In the booklet that comes with the fourth MusiCure CD entitled Northern Light ,
Klaus is quoted as saying that MusiCure enabled him to feel relaxed again.
One day while I was waiting to see the psychologist, I read an article in [a
magazine] that made reference to MusiCure, and I simply had to try it out to see if
it could give me peace again and enable to make me feel relaxed. The answer is yes!
In fact with quite dramatic effect, and Id spent so much money on treatment and
medication, where nothing else has had a better impact than this form of music.
(Klaus quoted in Eje 2004b, 8)
Since he started listening to MusiCure, Klaus has been taken off medication, and feels
like himself again. The available material does not reveal anything about what in the
music made Klaus react as he did.
Klaus and others have offered to help Gefion Records spread the word. Positive
testimonials from private users are important for MusiCures promotion strategy. As
Eje describes it, the mole strategy is about avoiding hit lists and to maintain an aura
of seriousness around the product (Conversation with Eje, 6 December).
All three examples show that for private users of MusiCure it is neither the music
and sounds in themselves nor the so-called biological effects of the music that cause
an altered state of health and well-being, but rather the already encoded mean-
ingfulness of visualizations, bodily feelings and ideas of natural music. MusiCure
does not cure DAMP, but when Frederik and Lone listen to MusiCure together, their
behaviour is altered and it is easier to cope with the childs illness. This is possible
only because the music and the sounds in MusiCure are meaningful to them and
because the sounds remind them of other things already known. Thus, they identify
with MusiCure. These properties are not physically objective, but culturally generated
in the listeners mind and relate profoundly to issues of identity, ideas of health and
the metaphysical. It is not the work of the music as such; rather, it is the power of its
cultural function. As Gouk phrases it, it is precisely because music communicates so
powerfully that it is used as a metaphor for, and expression of, other forms of human
experiences (2000a, 23).
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
On Medicinal Music and Related Genres
MusiCure is deliberately composed as an alternative to classical music, which is far
too dynamic for the anaesthetized ear. The tension of the ear drum is normally
adjusted by a small muscle in the inner ear, the musculus stapedius. However, this
becomes anaesthetized with the rest of the patients body. The patients sense of sound
is still functioning, but, according to Heslet, the anaesthetized patient is extremely
vulnerable to noise and dynamic changes in the volume (conversation with Heslet,
20 October). In its own use of natural pulses and sounds, MusiCure strives to
produce a sound filter that subdues the basic environment of hospitals, such as the
beep of alarms and hiss of respirators, as well as other stress-generating noises.
Another musical solution to the problem of stress-generating noises of hospitals is
the joint German and American music project, the Sound Health Series (www.nacd.
org; www.soundlife.de). In contrast to MusiCure, the Sound Health Series uses re-
orchestrated classical music as a basis for creating so-called effective sound filters,
which are compiled under titles like Concentration (5060 BpM), Relax (4060 BpM)
and DeStress (3060 BpM), to name but a few examples. Just like MusiCure, the
sounds and the music are subdued. Each CD is accompanied with a beats-per-minute
(BpM) rating and a title that clearly indicates the desired effect.
The subdued sounds and the emphasis on effect of MusiCure, the Sound Health
Series and other relaxation music albums strongly resembles the characteristics of
functional music and Muzak from the 1920s onwards, of which both the music
industry and music in medicine can be considered as separate subdivisions (Cardinell
and Burris-Meyer 1947, 1; see also Straarup 1975). As one of the leading characters of
the American Muzak corporation, Professor Harold Burris-Meyer puts it, Muzak
undertakes to employ music for the purposes of creating a predetermined desirable
emotional state in its audience (1946, 8). As a medical product, MusiCure may
clearly be identified with functional music, or musak (the general term in Danish),
although MusiCure is aimed for use in specific therapeutic or medical contexts
inspiring the listeners actually to listen to it, rather than merely hearing it peripherally
as anonymous elevator-music or mood song (Lanza 1995; Straarup 1977, 360).
MusiCure is also explicitly different from so-called arbitrary music, as Heslet puts
it (conversation with Heslet, 20 October). Here he is referring to musics such as
randomly chosen classical music or various New Age genres claiming a palliative or
healing effect that is not scientifically documented and therefore does not fulfil the
very particular quality requirements which take into account the changed perception
of sound that patients have (Heslet 2003a, 8).
Today, the concept of New Age practically embraces all kinds of music, styles and
sound environments produced and used for a wide range of healing, curative and
relaxation purposes. Each type of treatment has its own specific music. For example,
Midoris Feng Shui (2000) from New World Music companys Mind, body and soul
series is said to cleanse the energy of the listeners house when replayed on the CD
player*other albums in this series are targeted at yoga or aromatherapy (for
224 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
example, Llewellyn 1999). Another example is Aeoliahs Healing Music for Reiki
(1995) the function of which is to let the universal energy of life flow through the
client during Reiki healing treatment.
With its exclusive claim to scientific documentation, MusiCure is promoted on the
drug market where scientific documentation is a precondition and is sold only at
pharmacies, since 2003 in Denmark and since 2005 in Norway and USA as well. The
notion of MusiCure as serious music thus distances it from the music recordings
sold on the heterodox healing market, for example, in health stores selling ecological
products and alternative medicine, in bookshops with an alternative section. Despite
differences, MusiCure and alternative nature relaxation musics are both targeted at
the therapeutic market rather than the music market.
At Danish public libraries MusiCure is listed under the rubric New Age (there is no
rubric for drugs), next to best-selling classic New Age compositions such as Kitaros
Silk Road, and Forest Walk by Danish Peter Bastian (www.bibliotek.dk). In this public
domain, MusiCure escapes the immediate medical or therapeutic context even though
library users may actually use MusiCure in the same way as if they had bought it at a
pharmacy. As Heslet writes in the first CD booklet, MusiCure . . . can, of course,
simply be enjoyed for what it is, an exciting new form of music (Heslet 2003a, 10). A
comment on MusiCure CDs found in a Danish debate forum(chat room) describes this
paradox with a sense of humour: I can only recommend them!!!!! My mother listens to
one of them every night before she goes to sleep . . . and you do not necessarily have to
be sick to enjoy the music!
14
Healing with Medicinal Music in a Postcolonial Perspective
MusiCure played at post-operational units as a supplementary means to reduce
anxiety and pain is allowed to invade patients bodies, dislodging habitual hospital
recovery behaviour patterns. This is a specific kind of functional music, which is
meant to control or regulate bodies and bodily behaviour. Medicinal music is a means
to exercise medical power by taking control over patients bodies and emotions just
like any other treatment. The patients body has been the object for doctors work
and, in effect, possession. It is open to the mastery of the doctor, a site of the
performance and development of doctoral skills and scientific knowledge (cf. Gilbert
and Tompkins 1996, 203). David Arnold writes forcefully in his book, Colonizing the
body: State medicine in nineteenth-century India:
There is indeed a sense in which all modern medicine is engaged in a colonizing
process. The history of medicine in European and North American societies over
the past two hundred years has been a history of growing intervention and a quest
for monopolistic rights over the body. It can be seen in the increasing
professionalisation of medicine and the exclusion of folk practitioners, in the
close and often symbiotic relationship between medicine and the modern state, in
the far-reaching claims made by medical science for its ability to prevent, control,
and even eradicate human diseases. It has aptly been said that the position of
medicine today is akin to that of state religions yesterday. It has acquired an
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
officially approved monopoly of the right to define health and illness and to treat
illness. (Arnold 1993, 9, quoting Leslie 1976, 6)
In Helen Gilberts and Joanna Tompkins words, Colonisation is insidious: it
invades far more than political chambers and extends well beyond independence
celebrations. Its effects shape language, education, religion, medicine, popular
culture. Post-colonial theory applied to music and medicine is thus an engagement
with, and contestation of the discourse, power structure and social hierarchy of
medicine (cf. Gilbert and Tompkins 1996, 2). Monopolistic claims to define healthy
music with exclusive rights and licenses on the market are a part of this contestation,
and may lead to the suggestion that the use of MusiCure as a bio-medicinal music is a
means to colonize the body.
15
Exile and Postcolonial Heritage: The Natural Sound of Far Away Places
The construction of otherness and difference is central in imperialist and
hierarchical discourse, often resulting in stereotypes. Negative images of the West
are often employed as part of the rhetoric of authenticity, as a means to escape
Western rationality in order to penetrate to some deeper, more authentic
understanding of the human body and mind. The West referred to in this respect
is always the dystopia, the stereotype of the modern, alienating, technology-noisy
West. The other is double distant, double naturalized as an object: both as our own
primitive forefathers, our selves in the past tense and as nature people outside
civilisation (Hastrup 1999, 312). Ethnomusicology has long abandoned the
exoticist perception of culture and stepped away from agendas of our own
imperialistic nostalgia (Hastrup 1995, 6), from the the mourning of the
disappearance of what we, the imperialists, have our selves transformed (Hastrup
1995, 2).
16
The claim seems to be that the sounds best suited for healing purposes are
authentic sounds of undisturbed nature from remote pasts and places, sounds
unfamiliar to our daily, stressed, modern, urban life. Often no information is
provided about the origins of these sounds of nature, as if they indeed were timeless
pasts and no places. According to Clara Gallini (1996), it is precisely from this
masking of origins that exotic objects draw their symbolic effectiveness. Although
the composer Niels Eje actually marks the Seychelles as one source of origin for his
recordings, the exclusiveness and remoteness is nevertheless emphasized in the sound
of the wash of the sea and the unique birds. The exotic sounds thus signify medical
refinement and luxury.
According to Martin Stokes and Philip Bohlman, the use of sounds of nature
speaks of a politics not of radical inclusion but of distanciation and paternalistic
preservation whose neo-colonial overtones are hard to ignore (2003, 12). The
MusiCure programme, itself a cultural product, speaks to an audience for whom the
sounds of nature and musical landscapes are meaningful, that is, an audience to
226 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
whom MusiCures design, pictures, instruments, sounds and their symbolic referents
are familiar. The exotic sound of healing music is already encoded.
MusiCure owes a great deal to alternative treatments and New Age musics for
paving the way over the last decades, teaching Danes and other North Europeans that
it is healthy (and thereby meaningful) to listen to sounds of nature: the Relax with
Nature Series is an illustrative example of how, for example, the sound of the
Rainforest (1994a) or The Underwater World of Whales and Dolphins (1994b) is
marketed as authentic for relaxation and other purposes: the cover notes assure the
listener that these are authentic natural sounds (Relax with Nature 1994a).
The conception of nature in relaxation and medicinal music is paradoxical: on the
one hand, it postulates access to a pristine nature, while, on the other, it totally
ignores the crucial role of technology itself in the realization of reproduced sounds of
nature. The CD is ascribed the status of a transparent medium, as it were. This
blurring of the medium is crucial if the authentication is to work (see Kingston 1999,
344 with reference to Gell 1992). It marks an ambivalent attitude towards modern
society when identifying a pre-modern source of authenticity and health as the point
of critique of contemporary development. This view of the West is characterized as a
nostalgic view (Turner 1992, 133), since it is implicitly forced to identify with the past
as a source of values for the critique of the present; hence the narrative of loss of our
authentic or natural self is reproduced in healing music. What seems to be the issue
is not natures authenticity as such; rather, the sounds are meant to mirror the inner
authenticity of the listener: it is from the healing place within that we can reclaim
our natural self.
Bodies in the health business are musically circumscribed within an imposed,
imperialist calculation of otherness (cf. Gilbert and Tompkins 1996, 205). Relaxation
music, such as MusiCure and others, reproduces stereotypes of an exoticized other
which reinforces the process of a musical neo-colonialism. The exotic and authentic
are bestsellers in the West, and, as Steven Feld emphasizes, we are seduced by the
naturalness of the other: in popular culture subordinate social formations are always
the sources of fantasy and relaxation for the dominant classes or societies (Feld 1994,
288).
Colonial Hegemony and the Heartbeat
A central issue for the study of music as medicine is the link between musical sound
(and aesthetics) and musics biological effects (whether documented or assumed).
Both music and medicine are elements of social action and social contexts where the
human body acts as a nexus between science and culture, and between medicine and
music. Marina Roseman argues in her study of healing sounds: There is, of course, a
biological reality, but the moment that efforts are made to explain, order, and
manipulate that reality, then a process of contextualization takes place in which the
dynamic relationship between biology with cultural values and the social order has to
be considered (1991, 179).
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Turner supports this understanding of the relation between nature and culture:
human practice, according to Turner, involves the humanization of nature in which
nature is appropriated and forced to serve human needs (Turner 1984, 214). In
relation to musical medicine this means that the natural sounds are indeed
humanized, serving healing needs. While a biological response to music is obvious,
it does not make sense to speak about music and musical meaning without
considering the cultural domains that generate it. The act of making sense of music
never takes place in a cultural vacuum.
The sound of the heartbeat is an illustrative example of how biological and cultural
realities converge in the discourse on medicinal music. The heartbeat is prominent on
the track entitled Song of the Heart on the first MusiCure CD, The Journey (Eje 2003a,
track 3). In the booklet accompanying the CD, Dr Lars Heslet introduces the heartbeat:
[An] important fact is that since the dawn of the ages we have had the common
characteristic that the sound of our mothers heart was the first rhythm we
experienced*a basic primordial sound. During pregnancy, a mothers heartbeat is
relatively slow and peaceful. The link between the slow heart rhythm and the
security of the womb is maintained throughout life. Even in adults, a slow rhythm
of about 60 beats per minute will generate a feeling of security. (Heslet 2003a, 10)
Although the general context of the heartbeat is biomedicinal, the heartbeat
described by the doctor by far exceeds the limits of biology and medicine. The appeal
in the quotation to the universalism of the pregnant mothers heartbeat *note the
singular in the phrase our mother *is suggestive and romantic. It is suggestive of
the listeners perception of the sound of the mothers heartbeat as safe. But is this a
kind of desired security? It romanticizes pregnancy and pacifies pregnant women,
attributing, in an essentialist and sexist fashion, an exclusive sphere of calmness and
harmony to pregnancy.
How do doctors know that foetuses experience the womb as secure? And what
about the other sounds that foetuses (allegedly) experience, such as intestinal sounds?
Given that foetuses actually do hear the mothers heartbeat, there is no obvious
correlation between a mothers normal heartbeat at 60 BpM and, say, the heartbeat of
a 5-month-old foetus with its heartbeat beating at 140 BpM. Like the musical
instruments and sounds of nature on the record, the heartbeat is also carefully
selected: it is a carefully selected pregnant mothers heartbeat that beats regularly
with the mechanical precision of 60 BpM. Thus the Song of the Heart track features
an idealistic and symbolic heartbeat.
Moreover, it exemplifies the tendencies of the patriarchal medical world to
naturalize the power relations between the two sexes. For example, this is a strong
argument in Turners social analysis:
women are associated with nature rather than culture. . . . Women have not, as it
were, made the transition from animality to culture, because they are still tied to
nature through their sexuality and fertility. The universality of womens
subordinate status in society is thus explained by the universality of womens
228 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
reproductive functions. The subordination of women is not essentially a
consequence of physiology, but of cultural interpretation of female reproductivity
as denoting an unbreakable link with nature. (Turner 1984, 115)
Furthermore, the manner in which Heslet postulates a relation between the effects
of a CD production on a listener (or a patient) and something primordial in
mankinds biological past (cf. Horden 2000, 19) is misleading. Speculation about how
the heartbeat has been perceived throughout history is neither an historical fact nor a
scientific fact. Rather, the aesthetic value of the heartbeat is rendered authentic by the
rhetorical appeal to history. The mothers heartbeat functions as a universal and
sentimental metaphor for peacefulness and security. The same logic is used to explain
MusiCure as providing a lifeline to natures archetypal and basic sounds*such as
the sound of rain, birdsong, the wash of the sea, and the gentle breeze in the trees
(Heslet 2003a, 8).
MusiCure flirts with the exotic in both cultural and temporal terms. Caricatures of
culturally exotic and historically classical cultures are drawn on and inscribed in
MusiCure to legitimize the use of the product. Heslet writes:
For thousand of years, other cultures have known the use of sound for treating
illnesses. Arab cultures have used the sound of water. In many tribal societies,
medicine men were also musicians, since treatment and music were closely
connected. . . . What is new with MusiCure is that it now has been scientifically
documented that music helps the patients.
17
Connections and continuities between these timeless pasts and the present are
implicitly postulated. Needless to say, this is a way of naturalizing music and healing.
Even if we recognize musics transformative powers to be universal, then the way such
powers are directed are always cultural specific (cf. Gouk 2000a, 23).
Other healing musics, especially those identified with the New Age, have made the
same arcane claims for decades. Clifford Whites An Island Called Paradise (2003) and
Tim Weathers Sound Medicine Man (2003)
18
both combine different types of music
with the sound of the heartbeat either as sampled sound or as instrumental imitation.
They do not sound the same, yet the celebration of the heartbeat as an archetypical
symbol is a common trait.
Power and Musical Knowledge
The prestige and authority of medical science is used to promote and sell the
MusiCure CDs. This, of course, allows the composer to make a living. It also allows
the hegemony of medical science to be conflated with the hegemony of specific music
parameters and musical values. In Ejes own words, he is attempting to break down
conventional ways of thinking in specific musical genres. Thus Eje refers to MusiCure
as a genre-less or genre-free music (conversation with Eje, 19 September). It is
important that the music created for the hospitals sound environment is not just an
arbitrary, generic solution. For Heslet, it is crucial that the music is composed by a
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
representative of the virtues of the classical tradition of composing (conversation
with Heslet, 15 November). With the notable exception of the synthesizer, all
prominent musical instruments in the MusiCure programme are related to classical
chamber or orchestral music. Likewise, all instrumentalists on the CDs are serious
classically trained musicians. The authoritative aesthetics of serious art music
maintain and legitimate the musics quality, just as the authority of biomedicine
guarantees the efficacy to cure of MusiCure. The classical trained composer and the
biomedical doctor both occupy a high position in their respective professional
hierarchies. Penelope Gouk describes the relation between academic doctors of music
and medicine in a way very similar to the phenomenon of MusiCure. Gouk writes:
At this level of abstraction the therapeutic potential of music is most easily
conceived in terms of a transaction between the medical researcher and the
composer, both of them being qualified professionals. It is assumed that the doctor
understands how the mind and body work . . . while the composer supplies works
which will produce predictable responses in the patient. (Gouk 2000b, 182)
Furthermore, the dissemination of ideas about music and medicine does pedagogical
work. When listening to MusiCure (and reading the booklets), patients and users are
taught what music and what sounds biomedicine has documented as having a healing
effect. Thus, the powerful institution of medical science is using its exclusive authority
to generate knowledge on curative musical solutions and medication. Although the
curative aspects of the sounds in MusiCure remain undocumented by scientists, the
power of medicine serves to legitimate MusiCure as a functional and efficient means to
heal and relax. The institutionalized power of MusiCure, sounding from hidden
loudspeakers suspended in the ceiling, is hard to ignore. It is part and parcel of the
materiality of the hospital wards and tied to the doctors, the composers and Musica
Humanas claim to knowledge. Following the thoughts of sociologist Peter Berger, one
could argue that MusiCure is acting in a fundamental process of socialization and social
control, which is legitimized by knowledge that is both normative (hence the
pedagogical aspect) and cognitive (Berger 1969 [1967], 29ff.).
MusiCure becomes an actor in the transformative process of recovery; it is a
dynamic vehicle of transformation, linking illness and recovery, doctor, patients,
nurses and composer. The hospital unit becomes the scene of the musical and
curative musical performance, where the biological effects of the music are put to
work on patients bodies and the psychological effects on their minds. As far as the
psychological effect is concerned, it is working on/in the mind of the patient taking
him or her away from the hospital. Time and place are restructured by the music as it
relocates the patient or the private user in distant places. If patients symbolically
emigrate to parallel musical realities while listening to music, finding help to visualize
the suggested exotic or fairy tale-like places (Eje 2003b, 2004a respectively), then
place must be understood as an aspect not just of physicality and geography, but of
mental creativity as well.
230 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Musical Caretaking
The process of healing is often described metaphorically in various healing practices
as a path or journey. In Rosemans study of the Temiars healing practices in the
rainforest, spirit songs are seen as paths linking domains of travelling, knowledge
and healing (Roseman 1991, 6ff.). The path as a metaphor for ritual is central to New
Age cosmologies and widely employed on commercial products. The title of the
MusiCure album, The Journey (Eje 2003a), strongly suggests that the musical cure is
understood as a path leading from illness to recovery or healing. Countless recent
New Age records make use of the metaphor of the journey, or the path, as a way of
describing meditation or relaxation, for example, Llewellyns Reiki Healing Journey
(2001), and the opening track of Tim Weathers Sound Medicine Man (2003), entitled
The Great Journey, and that of Medwyn Goodalls Earth Healer (1991), entitled
Pathfinder.
Metaphors are part of the framework in which the experience of music takes place.
Cheryce Kramers study of music therapy in German psychiatry in the nineteenth
century points to an important aspect of the experience of music:
The efficacy of music therapy is a result not of the music alone but of its
apprehension in experience. Due to this dependency on experience, the therapeutic
influence of music is necessarily governed by an extant phenomenal framework
organizing the musical experience for its participants. That is to say the same
cultural conditions which legitimate certain therapeutic practices also render the
target audience susceptible to those practices. (Kramer 2000, 146)
According to Eje, pain is sensed differently by patients when they listen to music
(conversation with Eje, 19 September). Thus, recorded music played in hospital wards
restructures time and space, reconfiguring them as a healing space. Likewise, private
users tell how the music altered moods, bodily actions and mental conditions when
they played the music in the home. Users did not merely put MusiCure albums on the
CD player; they had specific expectations of the effect of the music: MusiCure is
promoted as musical medicine, and was purchased as such. In other words, the
experience of this music belongs to what anthropologists Good and Good refer to as
the lifeworld of medicine:
Within the lifeworld of medicine . . . the body is newly constituted as a medical
body, quite distinct from the bodies with which we interact in everyday life, and the
intimacy with that body reflects a distinctive perspective, an organized set of
perceptions and emotional responses that emerge with the emergence of the body
as a site of medical knowledge. (Good and Good 1993, 90)
Viewing the body as a site of musico-medical knowledge, the question arises as to
what extent peoples bodily and mental reactions to music can be controlled.
Sociologist Stjepan Mestrovics notion of the post-emotional society (1997) describes
a society where emotion is reified, rationalized and marketed. Post-emotionalism
understood as a manipulation of emotions to create harmony and avoid negative
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
feelings is relevant to some extent when considering the many nostalgic and
stereotypic expressions of New Age and relaxation music writ large (as if other musics
did not have their stereotypes). However, the pessimistic worldview of post-isms such
as postmodernism and post-emotionalism denies the value (indeed the possibility) of
creative and embodied meaning in late modern consumer society, although these
meanings, nevertheless, are generated in concrete lifeworlds. Consumers might well
have nuanced views of musical products on the market, as they might make sense of
mechanically reproduced and manipulated sound in different ways.
That relaxation music such as MusiCure and related processes of visualization
should be efficacious often leads to a consideration of the non-specific mechanism of
placebos (cf. Csordas 1996, 106). However, a so-called placebo effect does not
satisfactorily explain why and how music is experienced to work and as being
meaningful by the listeners in the process of healing. Whereas placebos are often
understood as pretend medicine that fool patients into feeling better, Gregory
Bateson has argued that:
The efficacy of placebos is a proof that human life, human healing and suffering,
belong to the world of mental process. . . . What is interesting is that the most
conspicuous techniques of healing by visualization now being developed outside
established medicine invite the patient to invent his or her own placebo. The
placebo cannot be a lie in such a case! (Bateson and Bateson 1988 [1987], 656)
The use of music in hospitals might be interpreted as indicating that biomedicine
has acknowledged the impact of the mind on the healing process. To summarize the
arguments of psychiatrist Peter Elsass (1993, 147), the efficacy of placebos grows with
the doctors positive interest and competence in the transfer of medicine. Therefore, a
high degree of professionalism in the act of medication is as important as the
medicine itself. As such, medicinal music may be understood in terms of ritualized
performance in which the doctor and patient are both actors (with distinct positions)
in a dynamic treatment performance, where the music signals humanity, optimism
and caring, thus supplementing the exercise of medical competence.
Elsass refers to three psycho-biological factors that relate to the somatic
transformation from illness to healing, functioning as pathways between mind
and body, and that they may be identified as attitudes and feelings that are
somatically transformed to create the physiological and biochemical prerequisites for
healing: (1) suggestion, (2) reduction of anxiety and (3) patients expectations of the
cultural and medical institution (Elsass 1993, 151 with reference to Rossi 1986). All
three factors could be seen as relevant to MusiCure: the natural image-generating
soundscape has a suggestive quality, the palliative sounds reduce anxiety by lowering
the pulse and blood pressure and, finally, positive expectations towards the medical
authority are increased when music is employed as supplement to conventional
medical treatment in that it mediates a strong message of caring. Private users had
similar positive expectations of MusiCure due to advertisements and positive reports
in the media.
232 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
It might therefore be instructive to look at MusiCure as a form of caring.
Lindenbaum and Lock argue that the concept of caring (in American medicine,
which is their subject) may stem from a contemporary recognition of the inability of
biomedicine to cure most prevalent afflictions (1993, 79). This means that a patients
general well-being is important for somatic healing and recovery. If a hospital
provides caring in a number of ways, such as having conversations with patients,
playing soothing music, making room for patients spirituality, patients will suffer less
and heal faster with less medication. The use of a designed sound and music
environment in hospitals is a new way of practising medical care, representing a
creative solution to what Heslet has termed dehumanized health factories
(conversation with Heslet, 20 October; see also Heslet 2002, 270; Andersen 2002).
In their analysis of the production of medical knowledge, Lindenbaum and Lock
(1993, 79) show that two key symbols of Western medicine*competence (associated
with natural sciences) and caring (associated with the humanities)*replicate the
cleft in Western culture between technology and humanism, or hard science and
culture. If music is perceived as a means to humanize a mechanized medical setting,
then it is implicitly contended that music relates to the domain of humanism, or
culture, and not that of biomedicine. However, it could also be argued that the
biomedical claim to musical knowledge is a means of medicalizing music. On the one
hand, MusiCure reinvokes the conventional, normative split by mediating between
the world of biological sciences and that of human suffering (cf. Good and Good
1993, 104); on the other, it blurs or contests these borders. MusiCure both challenges
and re-establishes the classical divide between hard science and humanism. Health
psychology, which itself overlaps with sociology, psychiatry, social medicine,
medicinal philosophy and doctor-patient communication, has also long challenged
the hard science/humanism-dichotomy.
19
MusiCure sets new standards for music
aimed at healing and relaxation purposes, playing with power relations between
established health care and heterodox treatments. The boundaries between estab-
lished medical science at the cultural centre and the marginalized alternative
treatments at the cultural peripheries have, in Denmark, become increasingly blurred
over the last decade. Indeed, as Peregrine Horden has put it, it seems that a more
sensitive, holistic conception of medicine is firmly back in fashion*no longer simply
the preserve of alternative practitioners. Music therapy can (it is implicitly
contended) return from the margins to the centre and reclaim its inheritance
(2000, 21).
Metaphysical Spaces at Hospitals
MusiCure is entwined in the creation of metaphysical spaces in hospital wards that
make room for contemplation and the non-physical, as Heslet (2002, 270) explains.
In designs for humanizing hospital environments, music is easily infused with
metaphysical proportions, as something that somehow exists outside the realm of
daily hospital action and technology, sounding from everywhere and nowhere in
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
particular, part of the walls, the ceiling or perhaps even the paint, mediating between
the worldly and intangible. Such notions of metaphysicality relate MusiCure to the
religious or spiritual sphere (Durkheim 2001 [1912], 26ff.) that surpasses the bodily
and behavioural. MusiCure thus invokes a sense of the sacred in the individual
listener. The shift of the centre of the sacred from deities to the human person implies
scaling down the sacred to what Miller describes as a world of the semi-sacred (2002,
28). This centring on the individual, Miller argues, is about the idea of a common
human dignity, which we all share (2002, 29).
Millers question Is there really something called secular religion? (2002) might
be relevant to consider in relation to the proliferation of metaphysical spaces in
hospital wards. The idea of humanizing hospitals with transcendent music may be
understood in terms of a sacralization of the profane, healing space. MusiCure can be
understood as a sign that indicates that spirituality and biomedicine are slowly
merging. As music therapist Harold Koenig maintains, a growing body of scientific
research suggests connections between religion, spirituality, and both mental and
physical health (2004, 1194). As Koenig explains;
The reason why physicians are being asked to inquire about and support patient
spirituality is because doing so is part of whole person health care. Simply treating a
medical diagnosis or a disease, without considering the person with the disease, is
no longer acceptable. Patients . . . are also people struggling with the meaning and
purpose of their lives, confronting potentially dramatic changes in quality of life,
independence, and well-being. . . . For many patients these issues are mixed with
existential and spiritual concerns, concerns that can have a direct impact on the
acceptance of medical care and the recovery process. (Koenig 2004, 1199)
As musicologists have shown in studies of various parts of the cultural landscapes
and histories of healing phenomena related to music, notions of medicine, therapy
and religion often seem to overlap (Burnett 2000; Gouk 2000c; Janzen 2000).
However, scientific research tends to approach music as belonging entirely to the
secular sphere, dealing with the natural rather than the supernatural world, in a
rational and scientific way as Penelope Gouk (2000b, 172) describes Schullian and
Schoens work Music and Medicine (1948).
The practice of whole-person medicine, as expressed by Koenig (2004, 1199),
seems to suggest a new way of understanding institutionalized health care and is
central for understanding the role that MusiCure is intended to play in the context of
healing. However, as attempted in this article, the question of how exactly the sounds
of MusiCure relate to the ideal of treating whole persons, need to be critically
addressed.
The notion of metaphysical spaces and the phrase a hidden potential for self-
cure,
20
create a strong link to the discursive territory normally occupied by heterodox
types of treatment and by personal development philosophies identifiable with the
New Age movement. As briefly defined by Schreiner, New Age is an ideology based
on the belief in the ultimate cultural evolution of human societies through the
transformation of individuals (Schreiner 2000, 800). This authority shift from
234 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
without to within, as Heelas characterizes it, is what ultimately characterizes New
Age healing (1996, 82). In New Age holistic assumptions there is a fundamental
belief in the bodys natural will towards health, and that the spiritual and
metaphysical has a positive influence on physical as well as emotional domains
(Heelas 1996, 82). This has a striking similarity to the ideology of the new paradigm
of medical treatment with its emphasis on the whole person and each persons
potential to influence the transformation of his or her own healing. As Heelas
expresses it, distinguishing between the self and the higher Self (with capital S): the
Self has a key role in healing the self (1996, 82).
MusiCure appeals to modern human beings. The music presupposes an imagined
pre-modern past, when human beings were in deep contact with nature.
21
The general
interest in and the forcefulness of holism, or humanism, can perhaps be understood as
an attempt to bring a halt to the Nietzschean antithesis of the subjective chaos of
modern human beings, the split between our inner lives, our bodies and the world
around us (cf. Jakobsen 2001, 18990, with reference to Nietzsche 1938 [1893]).
Holistic ideology presents the hope of re-establishing a connection between the human
body, mind and nature.
The idea of a hidden, healing potential in hospitalized patients bears a striking
resemblance to the New Age notion of the divine through which the transformation
of each individual is possible. Once this potential is located and reactivated, we not
only recover at the hospital, we become whole anew. Therapy and recovery literally
imply change or transformation from illness to cure. The connection between illness
and its cure has become meaningful and coherent, because we are not treated as mere
dysfunctional physiological mechanisms, but as whole human beings. This is one of
the messages MusiCure deals with, reconstructing the world of medicine, illness,
healing and health in a way each individual is able (and willing) to grasp. The
established health care system is, thus, catching up with popular, Romantic or
alternative ideas of health and holism.
Concluding Remarks
The story of MusiCure reveals complex interactions between institutional bodies and
individual actors: hospitals, the Musica Humana group, the market, doctors and the
composer, patients and private users, all variously involved in the realities of illness,
cures and well-being. I have critically addressed the positioning of MusiCure on the
market, showing that arguments beyond biomedicine are put to work in favour of the
MusiCure programme, masked nevertheless with biomedical authority. I have also
argued that there is a paradox in the nature concept employed in MusiCure between
the ideal of a pristine nature and the sounds as modern technological reproduction.
I have also shown, however, that many patients and private users respond positively
to Niels Ejes music and sound design by reference to the research carried out by
Musica Humana and in my own ethnomusicological account. For many listeners,
MusiCure eases pain, reduces anxiety and causes relaxation. Dismissing commercial
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
relaxation music such as MusiCure and New Age music as superficial *an Adorno-
esque condemnation of this part of mass culture is still often expressed within
musicology*would be a failure to understand how this music makes sense in
practice during the course of healing. To rephrase Csordass conclusion on ritual
healing in a charismatic context, I would claim that the healing efficacy of MusiCure
is predicated not only on scientific documentation of a healing effect or on a cultural
legitimacy that says healing is possible, but on an existential immediacy that
constitutes healing as real (cf. Csordas 1996, 108). Judging from the accounts of
private users with positive experiences, MusiCure is a help in their daily lives in
coping with difficulties with illness. The healing effect on private users, as described
in this article, results in a change in bodily behaviour and mental attitude to illness.
The biomedical presentation of the musical research on which MusiCure is based
unduly romanticizes the natural and misrecognizes its own cultural underpinnings
that foster the changes in its listeners.
It is valuable to understand the designed sound and music environment of
MusiCure as the product of a more sensitive, humanistic conception of medicine
that views patients as persons for whom illness and cure have meaning (cf. Horden
2000, 21; Koenig 2004). In other words, it is valuable to study music and medicine
as social interaction, and not just systems of knowledge and treatment practices
(Nichter 2002, 81).
A paradoxical characteristic of New Age is that it both rejects and embraces
modernity and the modern technology. Whether MusiCure be classified as New Age
music or not, it embraces a similar paradox: a return to nature and natural sounds is
implicitly a return to pre-modernity, yet the means to create and perform these
sounds of premodernity are highly modern and the argument itself is fostered by
contemporary modern desires.
To conclude with Heslets line of argument, the project of humanizing hospital
treatment heralds a new paradigm of whole person treatment in which hospitals are
conceived as healing centres rather than healing factories (Heslet 2002a, 272). This
has strong associations to Durkheims religion of humanity, or the ethic of
humanity, as Heelas has it (1996, 163), in which humanity is viewed as sacred. Ejes
MusiCure will accordingly play a central role in the formation of human healing
spaces and cures in these new centres. Not just any music*or any sound of nature*
does the trick when it comes to musical treatment. This seems to hold true for many
cultures around the world, including the established health care in Western society:
Copenhagen University Hospital and other hospitals in the Western world require a
specially composed sound and music environment to respond to the medical desire
to offer healing in a humanized hospital. MusiCure is thus a means of aestheticizing
the hospital environment audibly in concordance with prevailing ideas of healing and
meaningful sounds in Western healing culture.
With this article I hope to contribute to interdisciplinary reflection on the multi-
voiced and contested reality*or, indeed, realities*through which doctors,
composers, users and patients experience music as a real means to cope with illness
236 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
and a meaningful element in processes of healing in modern, Western culture. A
consideration of the benefits of collaborative cross-disciplinary and cross-institu-
tional research methodologies would seem to be the approach best suited to embrace
the various ways of producing knowledge about music, body and health. Culturalist
approaches by ethnomusicologists and others might contribute to a more critical
consideration of the role of music and sound, and help avoid gross exoticism and
naturalisation in medical discourses on music and healing.
There are different ways of producing and expressing knowledge about music and
healing and, as these are not always compatible with one another, we need not
necessarily form what Koen terms a holistic perspective (2005, 287), implying the
idea of music and healing necessarily constituting a cultural whole. Medical
ethnomusicology might equally well be understood as an attempt to grasp the
incoherence and disconnectedness between, for example, individual experiences and
statistical and biomedical research, and the disparate agendas between a market that
profits from popular beliefs in musics potential to heal and academic endeavours to
shed light on what we actually know and do not know about music and healing, and,
not least, how this knowledge is produced.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on the research project Mennesker, musik og healing i
Kbenhavn (People, music and healing in Copenhagen) in 2004 funded by the
Danish Folklore Archives. I would like to thank Director Palle O. Christensen for his
support and for making the project possible. I owe special thanks to anthropologist
Sally Anderson and musicologist Jens Henrik Koudal for commenting on earlier
versions of this manuscript, though I take full responsibility for the text. I am
indebted to all who participated in the project for showing me their trust and
enriching the project with their thoughts and experiences. Special thanks to composer
Niels Eje and Dr Lars Heslet.
Notes
[1] Rigshospitalet is known as both the Danish State Hospital and Copenhagen University
Hospital.
[2] Examples of this are the symposia Music, Healing and Culture: Towards a Comparative
Perspective, London, 201 August 1997 (see papers in Gouk 2000), and Music and
Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity, London, 245 April 1997 (see
papers in Horden 2000). The rst conference on medical ethnomusicology took place at
Florida State University, entitled Music, Medicine & Culture: Medical Ethnomusicology and
Global Perspectives on Health and Healing (910 October 2004).
[3] Hospitals involved include: Aalborg University Hospital, Skejby University Hospital, Odense
University Hospital and Copenhagen University Hospital (Rigshospitalet); Horsens Hospital
is also involved.
[4] More specically: Ulleval Hospital, Norway; University Hospital MAS, Malmo, Sweden; The
University Health Network*Toronto General Hospital, Toronto, Canada; and Northwest
Hospital and Medical Centre Seattle, USA.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
[5] Conversation with Eje, 19 September 2004, unofcial 2004 gures. More than 2,000 patients
and staff were involved in Musica Humanas research projects by 2003 (Eje 2003a, 16) and in
2006 more than 4,000 (correspondence with Eje, November 2006).
[6] Heslet refers, among other studies, to Nilsson, Rawal and Unossons (1998) research on
music and post-operative pain.
[7] For actual attempts to make such controlled experimental investigation of music, see
Penelope Gouks article (2000b) on the work Music and Medicine (1948) edited by Dorothy
Schullian and Max Schoen.
[8] See the articles by Horden, Gouk, Heather, Austern and Voss, all in Horden (2000).
[9] A similar advertisement distributed at pharmacies in 2004 and 2006 bears the same message
and has the following subheading: The worlds rst scientically documented music for
relaxation and experience (my translation). See also Per Thorgaard (2003, 16).
[10] Quotations from a BBC World Service programme broadcast on 21 January 2004, recorded
by Malcolm Brabant, December 2003; see also www.musicahumana.com
[11] My rst conversation with Niels Eje, took place on 19 September, the second on 6 December
2004, referred to in what follows as conversation with Eje, 19 September and conversation
with Eje, 6 December, respectively. I use the terms conversation and interview
interchangeably.
[12] Decits in Attention, Motor Control and Perceptual Abilities; DAMP is accepted in
Scandinavia and Australia as an umbrella term describing children with a variety of motor
control and perceptual problems and attention difculties; for further information, see, for
example, www.chw.edu.au/parents/factsheets/dampj.htm?print&colour&sch.
[13] TV programme, Lgens bord, Danmarks Radio DR, 19 February 2004. See also www.dr.dk/
laegen/artikler/2004/190204/MusiCure.asp
[14] Tawanda, female (38), conversation from chat room on www.fyldepennen.dk, dated 2 June
2004; translation mine.
[15] See, for example, Bhabha (1994), Chakrabarty (2000, 44), Williams (2003), Gilbert and
Tompkins (1996) for critical studies of the hegemony of medicinal authority and
institutionalized power structures.
[16] The concept imperialistic nostalgia was coined by Renato Rosaldo (1989, 68ff.).
[17] Helse, 12, 2003, the rubric Tro, hab og mirakler, www.helse.dk/artikler (translations mine).
[18] Both records from the New World Music Company; track 4 on each record, Amazonia and
Healing the Earth respectively.
[19] Elsass (1993); for English texts, Elsass refers to, for example, Taylor (1986, 1991) and Stone,
Cohen and Adler (1979).
[20] See note 11 and the section Case Study: Intensive Care Unit 4131 above.
[21] Cf. Jakobsens arguments with respect to modern shamanism (2001, 16, 1834, 189ff.).
References
Primary sources
Field diary with interviews and eld notes and sound recordings, September December 2004.
Hansen, Vibeke. n.d. Musikprojekt Kolibri . www.musicahumana.com
Hansen, Vibeke and Annie Norregard. 2003. Musik til patienter I intensiv-og opvagningsafsnit pa
Odense Universitetshospital . Available at: www.musicahumana.com
Heslet, Lars. 2002. Rigshospitalet. In Med hjlp fra . . . Ny Carlsbergfondet i dag. Humlebk:
Forlaget Rhodos, 26873.
***. 2003a. Medicine and music: The use of specially designed music in intensive care section
4131, Danish State Hospital (Medicin og musik: Anvendelse af specialdesignet musik pa
238 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Intensiv afsnit 4131, Rigshospitalet). In MusiCure, Vol. 1, The Journey. CD booklet. Niels Eje,
611.
***. 2003b. Our musical brain (Vores musikalske hjerne). In MusiCure, Vol. 2, Equator. CD
booklet. Niels Eje, 613.
Musica Humana. n.d. Available at: www.musicahumana.com
MusiCure. n.d. Available at: www.musicure.com; see also www.geonrecords.com
Schou, Karin. 2004. Resume af projekt Ataraxia. Available at: www.musicahumana.com
Srensen, Torben Egelund. 2004. Behandling af angste psykiatriske patienter med MusiCure*
et pilotprojekt . Horsens Sygehus. (See www.musicahumana.com; also MusiCure, Vol. 4,
Northern Light . CD booklet. Niels Eje, 25.)
Thorgaard, Bitten. 2003. Musik i forbindelse med hjerteundersgelser: Effekt pa patienter og personale .
Aalborg Sygehus. (See www.musicahumana.com; also MusiCure, Vol. 1, The Journey. CD
booklet. Niels Eje, 245.)
Thorgaard, Per. 2003. The Musica Humana Research Organization (Projektorganisationen Musica
Humana). In MusiCure, Vol. 1, The Journey. CD booklet. Niels Eje, 1417.
Secondary sources
Andersen, Christian. 2002. Hvorfor sa grimt? Ugeskrift for Lger, August 5, 2002: n.p.
Arnold, David. 1993. Colonizing the body: State medicine and epidemic disease in nineteenth-century
India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Arrington, G. 1954. Music in medicine. In Music therapy, edited by E. Podolsky New York:
Philosophical Library, 25287.
Barz, Gregory. 2002. No one will listen to us unless we bring our drums! AIDS and womens music
performance in Uganda. In The aWake project: Uniting against the African AIDS crisis , edited
by Jenny Eaton and Kate Etue. Nashville: W. Publishing, 1707.
Bateson, Gregory and Mary Catherine Bateson. 1988 [1987]. Angels fear: Towards an epistemology of
the sacred. New York: Bantam.
Berger, Peter L. 1969 [1967]. The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. New
York: Anchor Books.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Bunt, Leslie. 1994. Music therapy: An art beyond words . London: Routledge.
***. 2000. Music therapy. In The New Grove dictionary of Music and Musicians , Vol. 17, 2nd
edn, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 53540.
Bunt, Leslie and Sarah Hoskyns, eds. 2002. Handbook of music therapy. London: Routledge.
Burnett, Charles. 2000. Spiritual medicine: music and healing in Islam and its inuence in Western
medicine. In Musical healing in cultural contexts , edited by Penelope Gouk. Aldershot:
Ashgate, 8591.
Burris-Meyer, Harold. 1946. Functional music. Muzak Corporation.
Cardinell, R. L. and Burris-Meyer, H. 1947. Music in industry today. Journal of the Acoustical Society
of America.
Chakrabarty, Dipandesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference .
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Csordas, Thomas J. 1996. Imaginal performance and memory in ritual healing. In The performance
of healing , edited by Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman. London: Routledge, 91113.
Durkheim, E
mile. 2001 [1912]. The elementary forms of religious life. A new translation by
Carol Cosman. Introduction and notes by Mark S. Cladis. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Elsass, Peter. 1993. Sundhedspsykologi: Et nyt fag mellem humaniora og naturvidenskab. Copenhagen:
Gyldendal.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Feld, Steven. 1994. From schizophonia to schismogenesis: On the discourse and commodication
practices of world music and world beat. In Music grooves , edited by Charles Keil and Steven
Feld. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 25789.
Fukui, H. and Yamashita, M. 2003. The effects of music and visual stress on testosterone and
cortisol in men and women. Neuro Endocrinology Letters 24 (34): 17380.
Gallini, Clara. 1996. Mass exoticisms. In Post-colonial question: Common skies, divided horizons ,
edited by Ian Chambers and Lidia Curti. London and New York: Routledge, 21220.
Gell, A. 1992. The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. In Anthropology,
art and aesthetics , edited by J. Coote and A. Shelton. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gilbert, Helen and Joanne Tompkins. 1996. Post-colonial drama: Theory, practice, politics . London:
Routledge.
Good, Byron J. and Mary-Jo Del Vecchio Good. 1993. Learning medicine: The constructing of
medical knowledge at Harvard Medical School. In Knowledge, power, and practice: The
anthropology of medicine and everyday life, edited by Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 81107.
Good, M., M. Stanton-Hicks, J. A. Grass, A. G. Cranston, C. Choi, L. J. Schoolmeesters and A.
Salman. 1999. Relief of postoperative pain with jaw relaxation, music and their combination.
Pain 81: 16372.
Gouk, Penelope. 2000a. Introduction. In Musical healing in cultural contexts , edited by Penelope
Gouk. Aldershot: Ashgate, 125.
***. 2000b. Sister disciplines? Music and medicine in historical perspective. In Musical healing
in cultural contexts , edited by Penelope Gouk. Aldershot: Ashgate, 17196.
***, ed. 2000c. Musical healing in cultural contexts . Aldershot: Ashgate
Hastrup, Kirsten. 1995. A Passage to anthropology: Between experience and theory. London and New
York: Routledge.
***. 1999. Viljen til viden: En humanistisk grundbog . Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Heelas, Paul. 1996. The New Age movement: The celebration of the self and the sacralization of
modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Horden, Peregrine, ed. 2000. Music as medicine: The history of music therapy since Antiquity.
Aldershot: Ashgate.
Jakobsen, Demant Merete. 2001. Shamaner: Mellemander og mennesker. Copenhagen: Forum.
Janzen, John M. 2000. Theories of music in African ngoma healing. In Musical healing in cultural
contexts , edited by Penelope Gouk. Aldershot: Ashgate, 4666.
Jyllands-Posten. 2004. Musikterapi: Musik mod krigstraumer, by Dorte Kuula, 29 November.
Kingston, Sean. 1999. The essential attitude: Authenticity and primitive art, ethnographic
performances and museums. Journal of Material Culture 4 (3): 33851.
Koen, Benjamin D. 2005. Medical ethnomusicology in the Pamir mountains: Music and prayer in
healing. Ethnomusicology 49 (2): 287311.
Koenig, Harold G. 2004. Religion, spirituality, and medicine: Research ndings and implications for
clinical practice. Southern Medical Journal 97 (12): 1194200.
Kramer, Cheryce. 2000. Soul music as exemplied in nineteenth-century German psychiatry. In
Musical healing in cultural contexts , edited by Penelope Gouk. Aldershot: Ashgate, 13748.
Kyle, Richard. 1995. The New Age movement in American culture. Lanham, MD: University of
America Press.
Laderman, Carol and Marina Roseman. 1996. Introduction. In The performance of healing , edited
by Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman. London: Routledge, 116.
Lanza, Joseph. 1995. Elevator music: A surreal history of muzak, easy-listening, and other moodsong .
New York: Picador.
Leslie, Charles. 1976. Asian medical systems: A comparative analysis . Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
240 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Lindenbaum, Shirley and Lock, Margaret, eds. 1993. Knowledge, power, and practice: The
anthropology of medicine and everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lock, Margaret and Mark Nichter. 2002. Introduction: From documenting medical pluralism to
critical interpretations of globalized health knowledge, policies and practices. In New horizons
in medical anthropology: Essays in honour of Charles Leslie, edited by Mark Nichter and
Margaret Lock. London and New York: Routledge, 134.
Mestrovic, Stjepan. 1997. Postemotional society. London: Sage.
Miller, W. Watts. 2002. Secularism and the sacred: Is there really something called secular religion?
In Reappraising Durkheim for the study and teaching of religion today, edited by Thomas A.
Idionopulos and Brian C. Wilson. Leiden: Brill, 2744.
Nichter, Mark. 2002. The social relations of therapy management. In New horizons in medical
anthropology: Essays in honour of Charles Leslie, edited by Mark Nichter and Margaret Lock.
London and New York: Routledge, 81110.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1938 [1893]. Untimely meditations . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nilsson, U., N. Rawal and M. Unosson. 1998. Music effects on postoperative pain. Adolescence 33
(129): 10916.
***. 2003. A comparison of intra-operative or postoperative exposure to music: A controlled
trial of the effects on postoperative pain. Anaesthesia 58 (7): 699703.
Nilsson, U., N. Rawal, L. E. Unestahl, C. Zetterberg and M. Unosson. 2001. Improved recovery after
music and therapeutic suggestions during general anaesthesia: A double-blind randomised
controlled trial. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica 45: 81217.
Nilsson, U., N. Rawal, B. Enqvist and M. Unosson. 2003. Analgesia following music and therapeutic
suggestions in the PACU in ambulatory surgery: A randomized controlled trial. Acta
Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica 47: 27883.
Rider, M. S. 1987. Treating chronic disease and pain with music-mediated imagery. The Arts in
Psychotherapy 14: 11320.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1989. Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis . Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press.
Boseman, Marina. 1991. Healing sounds from the Malaysian rainforest: Temiar music and medicine.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Rossi, E. L. 1986. The psychobiology of mind-body healing: New concepts of therapeutic hypnosis . New
York: Norton.
Schreiner, Diane. New Age. 2000. In The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians , Vol. 17, 2nd
edn, edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 800.
Schullian, Dorothy and Max Schoen. 1948. Music and medicine. New York: Henry Schuman.
Stokes, Martin and Philip V. Bohlman, eds. 2003. Introduction. In Celtic modern: Music at the global
fringe . Lanham, MD, and Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 126.
Stone, G. C., F. Cohen and Adler, N., eds. 1979. Health psychology: A handbook. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey Bass.
Straarup, Ole. 1975. Funktionel musik. Aarhus: Publimus.
***. 1977. Om funktionel musik. In Musik og samfund, edited by Finn Gravesen. Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 35472.
Taylor, S. E. 1986. Health psychology. New York: Random House.
***. 1991. Health psychology: The science and the eld. In Stress and coping: An anthology,
edited by A. Monat and R. S. Lazarus. New York: Columbia University Press.
Tomlinson, Gary. 1993. Music in Renaissance magic: Toward a historiography of others. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Turner, Bryan S. 1984. Body and society: Explorations in social theory. Oxford: Blackwell.
***. 1987. Medical power and social knowledge . London: Sage.
***. 1992. Max Weber: From history to modernity. London: Routledge.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9
Voss, Angela. 2000. Marcilio Ficino, the second Orpheus. In Music as medicine: The history of music
therapy since Antiquity, edited by Peregrine Horden. Aldershot: Ashgate, 15472.
Wigram, Tony, Inge Nygaard Pedersen and Lars Ole Bonde. 2002. Comprehensive guide to music
therapy: Theory, clinical practice, research and training. Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley.
Williams, Simon. 2003. Medicine and the body. London: Sage.
Recordings
Aeoliah. 1995. Healing Music for Reiki, Vol. 1, Mandala of purity: Music for reiki, massage, healing,
relaxation. Oreade Music, ORB 52102.
Bastian, Peter and Stig Mller. 1986. Forest walk. CD. Fnix Musik, FMF 1027.
Eje, Niels. 2003a. MusiCure, Vol. 1, The journey. The Music & Medicine Research Project/Musica
Humana. CD. Geon Records, GFO 20132.
***. 2003b. MusiCure, Vol. 2, Equator. The Music & Medicine Research Project/Musica
***. 2004a. MusiCure, Vol. 3, Fairy tales . The Music & Medicine Research Project/Musica
***. 2004b. MusiCure, Vol. 4, Northern light. The Music & Medicine Research Project/Musica
Goodall, Medwyn. 1991. Earth healer. CD. New World Music, NWCD 218.
Kitaro. 1980. Silk road, Vols 12. 2 CD. Kuckuck 120512.
Llewellyn. 1999. Aromatherapy: Music for aromatherapy and relaxation. CD. New World Music
MBSCD 907.
***. 2001. Reiki: Healing journey, Vol. 1. CD. New World Music, NWCD 517.
Midori. 2000. Feng Shui . The Mind, Body and Soul Series, Vol. 2. New World Music, MBSCD 911.
Naxos. 1997. Lugna Bla Timmar (Relaxing blue hours). Naxos, HNH International.
Relax with Nature. 1994a. Rainforest, authentic natural sounds. Relax with Nature Series, Vol. 10.
CD. New World Company, NWCD 274.
***. 1994b. The underwater world of dolphins & whales, authentic natural sounds. Relax with
Nature Series, Vol. 7. CD. New World Company, NWCD 271.
Unestahl, L.-E. 1970. Avslappningsmusik: Traningsprogram for krop och sjal (Relaxation music:
Training programme for body and soul). O
rebro, Sweden Veje International AB.

Wheater, Tim. 2003. Sound medicine man. CD. New World Music, NWCD555.
White, Clifford. 2003. An island called paradise. CD. New World Music, NWCD551.
242 T. T. Lind
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
T
B
T
A
K

E
K
U
A
L
]

A
t
:

1
5
:
3
0

3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
0
9

Meaning and Power of Medicinal Music

Diunggah oleh

Informasi Dokumen

Deskripsi Asli:

Judul Asli

Hak Cipta

Format Tersedia

Bagikan dokumen Ini

Bagikan atau Tanam Dokumen

Opsi Berbagi

Apakah menurut Anda dokumen ini bermanfaat?

Apakah konten ini tidak pantas?

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

Meaning and Power of Medicinal Music

Diunggah oleh

Hak Cipta:

Format Tersedia

Meaning, Power and Exoticism in

Medicinal Music: A Case Study of

rebro, Sweden Veje International AB.

Anda mungkin juga menyukai