Kate Robinson
Research Details
Thesis Name
Singing us home – how music supports building our relationship with self and opens our hearts to others.Thesis Abstract
Telling stories, and the act of storytelling, is imbued with meaning by the listener. Songs and their stories have therapeutic qualities and are used in medical settings to prompt memory, express emotions, and to soothe. Music tells our stories and actively shapes our understanding of and relationality with ourselves, our experiences, other people, and the world. We bond with others over our love of a musician, their musicianship, a musical style, or a specific song. Music is a cultural determinant of health for Indigenous people and can be considered a determinant of health for everyone.
Music helps to create social and emotional wellbeing and provide opportunities for engagement with homeless, disempowered, and vulnerable people. My own experience has borne this out. I am half of a duo that volunteers to play music weekly at The Community Pantry (TCP), a soup kitchen, and at Sargood on Collaroy (Sargood), a rehabilitation centre for people with a spinal cord injury. TCP is set up like a café, offering food, support and kindness to people who are living rough, are poor, or just lonely, with music in the background to provide privacy for difficult conversations. Sargood’s gig is a time for people to come together for socialisation and mutual support, we (the house band) supply music as a social lubricant. During our 10 years of playing covers and original music, listeners’ relationality has flourished through engagement with the music, with us, and with each other. People relate to particular lyrics making meaning of life events. They share with us meaningful moments or formative experiences attached to specific songs, and articulate thoughts, feelings, and experiences through music, communicating through song. Gifting people a song is an intimate gesture that creates strong bonds.
There are three gaps that this research addresses. The first, health services fail to leverage music’s power to create supportive, accessible experiences for vulnerable populations. The second is that community and individual strengths found in music and the arts are often neglected, and opportunities for health promotion and supporting improved health behaviours through music are lost. The third is documenting our lives through song, similarly to Photo Voice which documents people’s lives through photos and art (Allett, 2010). For convenience, and with an understanding that this will likely change, I will call this documentation Song Stories.
The research question is:
Listening to, hearing, and interpreting music: how does music generate relational experiences and unique meaning-making for singer-songwriters, and listeners at a soup kitchen and at a spinal cord injury rehabilitation facility?
