Discuss with the board the traditional and cultural music in your home community.

[Meredith Pizzi]

[Kerry Cornelius]

Because I live in between three large cities (Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Annapolis), my home community truly is a mixing pot of cultures and traditional music. Closer to Baltimore, there is a strong presence of gospel and religious music, while D.C. has many families from Mexico and Latin America who prefer traditional music and instruments from their home countries. Due to the wide variety of cultures, I often leave myself open to my clients’ preferences and go where they want to take me. I have learned beautiful Spanish children’s songs and lullabies to use with a young bilingual child with whom I work, but I’ve also had clients sing their preferred songs and hymns to me in more of a “jam session” fashion. I frequently try to use a variety of musical styles, idioms and instruments in my sessions to expose my clients to the exciting array of music found in our home community and beyond, as well as to help my clients from all cultures and walks of life feel valued and comfortable in my sessions.

[Katherine Sestrick]

I am just starting to get to know the culture of the area I live in now (suburban Philly). I work in 0-3, and I have found that most cultures still do the “traditional” baby/pre-school songs with “Twinkle, Twinkle” and “The Wheels on the Bus” being the favorites. This is a very diverse area and I currently have families from American, Indian, and Taiwanese cultures on my caseload. I have encouraged the mother of the Indian family that I work with to demonstrate Hindi songs that she sings to her daughter, but she prefers that I teach her “American” songs as she really wants her daughter to learn English and be a part of American culture. The Taiwanese family that I work with is just starting to teach me songs from their culture, but I am finding them hard to learn because of the dialect.

[Katie Bagley]

There are also many different traditional music types and cultures surrounding Greater Boston. I have worked with Dominican, French Creole, Korean, and Indian clients throughout my hospice internship, in which most families shared music that was important to them from their home countries. I have not yet had the experience of learning children’s songs from these cultures. In my current pediatric palliative work, I have predominantly American clients who enjoy the traditional nursery rhymes and popular songs (Frozen, of course!).

[Shonda Malik]

I work in the greater Cincinnati and Dayton areas. With my adult clients I often have groups with a wide age range. Traditional folk songs like “She’ll be comin round the mountain” are big hits with all the ages. However, personal music preferences among the adults range from country, to popular, to classic rock and rhythm & blues. To assure that I provide the preferred music for all the tastes and ages I select different ‘song collections’, most of which I borrow from the library, so that there is a never ending variety of styles and eras represented. With my hospice clients hymns are a important aspect for many of them so I have to be sure to check the client’s religious preference.

[Stephanie Tassos Wohlsifer]

Tallahassee and its surrounding areas has been nicknamed “South Georgia” because of its deeply rooted southern traditions. I have friends and family in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa that jokingly tell me I live “up south” since everything about Tallahassee – its terrain, flora, climate etc. – is very different than the Florida south of Orlando.

Culturally, Tallahassee and the Panhandle in general, supports southern preferences in music, food (fried, fried, and fried, and of course, grits), speech patterns and idioms (my favorite is “dutton” which is a contraction of the contraction “doesn’t), and entertainment and past-times (tubing the Ichetucknee River). For example, Gospel music – both African American Gospel and Country Gospel – are commonly cited as “preferred genres” by many of my students and MT clients. These include songs by the Gaithers, Elvis Presley, Mahalia Jackson, Christy Lane, Lynda Randle, and many others.

This is not to imply that other genres are not welcome and appreciated – FSU and FAMU are both known for their phenomenal music departments. It’s just I have found in my own practice that when working with clients who for whatever reason cannot articulate their musical preferences, I can usually get a client to respond positively to a Gospel song.

[Jonni Fogerty]

My practice is situated in South-Central Indiana in a small town with a large university. There is a diverse musical culture present. Each fall there is a world music festival that celebrates music from many different ethnicities. The university has band, orchestra, and choir concerts as well as recitals, operas and musicals throughout the year. The traditional music of the area centers around Bluegrass and Country music. Additionally, the city sponsors a summer music program each year in which it invites different local artists to perform in the city parks 3 times per week.

[Katie Romano]

Living in Chicago, I have been so lucky to be exposed to so many different types of music. There is always a music festival going on and free music in the park. The type of free concerts vary from symphonic music to jazz and hip-hop. Its wonderful. There are so many opportunities to be exposed to music, especially in the summer. There are free concerts in the park and street performers everywhere. It is very easy to be exposed to many different types of music at a young age..

[Kasey Sollenberger]

There are two parts to the cultural music from what I consider my home communities. I live and work in Texas, but I went to school and grew up in southern Louisiana. So in Dallas, country western, folk songs, and a few Texas-specific songs are well known. I really enjoy embracing the cultures of different regions. Being from New Orleans, with its rich music culture, I find myself always sharing those experiences with my clients and find great joy in educating them about the music culture there.

[Christina Wensveen]

Calgary is quite a multicultural city. There are so many summer festivals for the different cultures living in the city- i.e.: Latino fest, Afrikadey, Reggae fest.. I try to hit a new one each year! I find many of the older adults I work with have European backgrounds. I try to use songs they can connect with such as Edelweiss, Lilli Marlene. I have also used traditional First Nations music in my sessions with a variety of clients and we have spoken about how music marks life events in many cultures. And of course, country music is a big part of Calgary’s culture. So I have learned many tunes from Canadian cowboys like Wilf Carter, Ian Tyson and Gordon Lightfoot.

[Nicole Sanabria]

Since I relocated to Hartford, CT several months ago, I must admit that it is difficult to call it “home” just yet. I’m becoming more accustomed to the way of life here. Being from New York, nothing is quite like the city there where musical expression is given so much life from the various cultures and traditions. The music is rich, and tells stories. From the perspective of my work with various populations in CT, the aspect of music telling stories remains true. Majority of the older clients I work with prefer American folk music, Jazz standards, rhythm and blues, and 1950’s rock and roll. At times, during sessions we will we speak briefly about the lyrical content of certain songs, which leads to the group reminiscing about their past experiences. For the clients that cannot reminisce verbally, it seems as though when these songs are played in an interactive manner, they begin to exhibit awareness, and express the joy that various songs bring to them by either physically moving parts of their bodies, smiling, and or course singing. Either way, they are acknowledging a part of their musical history, which is certainly a part of how they identify themselves socially and culturally as a person.

[Kathryn Costanza]

I work in Colorado Springs, CO which has some odd dichotomies. It is, for the most part, largely conservative and very christian. For that side of the city, worship music, country music, folk music, and bluegrass are all very popular here. There is also a part of town close to the clinic where I work that is more of a liberal reaction to the rest of the conservative city and classic rock, chillstep/dubstep, and heavy metal is more popular. I see quite a variety of preference in my caseload from Katy Perry to Fleetwood Mac to Queen to Tool to chillstep to Elvis to nursery rhymes and Disney.

[Adrienne Salmon]

I can relate with Nicole saying that I recently relocated about a year ago, and it is hard to call New Haven ‘home’ yet, although it is starting to feel that way. I also don’t work specifically in the city that I live in, so I can’t say that the ‘cultural’ influences of my ‘home’ community have begun to affect my practice yet. My home community growing up was very diverse, and that inspired me to continue to diversify my repertoire, so that has definitely helped my practice. However, the communities I serve and have served in my time here, I am finding, request a lot of Christian music and Country music, which I had not been very familiar with before my move. However, some of the clients also request John Denver and The Beatles, Johnny cash, some prefer Disney classics and children’s music, my caseload is pretty diverse, as is my original home community, so it all comes full circle.

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