Music Therapy in Brazil

Abstract

"Music Therapy: International Perspectives", a book organized by Cheryl Dileo Maranto, then professor and coordinator of Music Therapy at Temple University (USA), was published in 1993. Aiming to produce an overview of the world situation of the career, the work was divided into three parts: the first part brings information about the 36 countries that responded to the invitation to participate in the book, the second part discusses the World Federation of Music Therapy and other international initiatives, and the third part is entitled Global Perspectives. Maranto sent the people invited to write about their countries a set of categories that should structure their respective chapters: 1) Definitions; 2) Historical perspectives (significant people in the field, associations, publications, conferences, training courses, professional standards, labor market); 3) Theoretical perspectives; 4) Cultural influences; 5) Areas of practice; 6) Research; 7) Future trends. The text that follows is chapter 5 of the book, titled "Music Therapy in Brazil", written by Lia Rejane Mendes Barcellos and Marco Antonio Carvalho Santos. Music therapy in Brazil presented, almost thirty years ago, a very different picture from the one we see today, and the conditions for conducting a survey of data of this scope were quite diverse. In the first place, there was not yet a national entity, since the Brazilian Union of Music Therapy Associations (UBAM) was only created in 1996, and education was limited to graduate courses in three Brazilian states and two post-graduate courses (lato sensu). The production of the chapter began with a request to the associations and courses for data on the categories indicated by the organizer of the book. It is important to register here that without the collaboration of the music therapy courses and associations this text would have been an impossible task. We would not have been able to list all those who contributed to the construction of this framework for music therapy in our country without running the risk, even listing many names, of failing to mention fundamental contributions. We would like to emphasize that the following text is a picture of music therapy produced by dozens of hands, and that, we believe, can help situate the birth and development of the career in our country. When we were invited to publish it in the Revista Brasileira de Musicoterapia (RBM) we were happy with the opportunity, thinking that doing so would give access to a text that has never been translated, and therefore difficult to find, even if only for consultation. On the other hand, its publication posed a number of questions. In the first place, many terms current at the time - such as street children, today street children, blind and deaf, today visually and hearing impaired, and "intellectually disabled" instead of mentally disabled - are no longer used, which may cause some strangeness to readers. Trying to update terminology would imply producing a new text, sacrificing its character as a dated document. On the other hand, if published by the RBM, it will have a new publication date, far removed from the original. With this, it may run the risk of having passages quoted as if it had been written today. Therefore, it would be convenient that whoever is going to quote it, indicates not only the current publication date, but also the original one. We hope that this publication will stimulate music therapy associations and courses to update and deepen the picture presented here. After almost thirty years since the text was written, the scenario for Brazilian music therapy has changed profoundly. There have been many achievements to be registered. Among them we can mention, without claiming to exhaust them, the creation of new courses (including in federal teaching institutions), of new associations, the multiplication in the number of trained professionals, the existence of the Brazilian Union of Music Therapy Associations, national and state scientific events, and the Brazilian Journal of Music Therapy, which has been consolidated since its creation in 1995. Music therapy in Brazil is still engaged in the regulation of the profession, and certainly in facing new challenges posed by the growth of the category itself, and of its insertion in the complex context of health in Brazil. An updated analysis of this trajectory will contribute to new advances, as it stimulates reflection and strengthens the collective consciousness of the category about the historical process of its performance in the country.