MUSIC AND HEALING WITH SKIFFLE BUNCH STEEL ORCHESTRA

Abstract

” This dissertation is an examination of music and healing in the Skiffle Bunch Steel Orchestra in San Fernando, Trinidad. The potential roles of music in health and healing are explored through three perspectives. The first perspective explores the musical experiences of the group as optimal experiences that are intrinsically rewarding and facilitate healing. The second details how the meaningful embodiment of four important cultural values engenders a way of life, an outlook through which members of Skiffle Bunch ascribe meaning to their experiences that potentially encourages health promoting attitudes, behaviors, and states of well-being. The third perspective demonstrates how intense focus and strong emotion educed by the interrelation of optimal experience and the meaningful embodiment of cultural values induces a kind of trancing to which members of Skifle Bunch attribute extraordinary healing experiences. A broader goal of presenting these perspectives in the dissertation is to lay the groundwork for a concluding perspective that positions future research findings of this ongoing project to contribute to the development of practical applications. Ultimately, the relationships between music and healing explored in this dissertation indicate that musical experiences catalyze, and often are processes of healing for members of Skiffle Bunch. The research findings suggest that, while the relationships between music and healing examined herein occur within a specific cultural context, the principles that underlie such experiences are representative of a broader human potential for healing through musical means. ” Summarized Quotes from ‘Abstract’ of the Full Text.