[Maggie Johnson]

I’ve worked with elders in a Black neighborhood community center where traditional gospel, jazz, and southern American roots music is common. With my clients in downtown Portland who have experienced houselessness, there are a lot of requests for classic rock music of the 60s through the 80s. I have had clients from China and Taiwan and was introduced to the music of artists such as Teresa Teng as well as folk music in Mandarin and Cantonese. One client often would sing Chinese folk songs in solfège. There are a lot of Latinx clients from many different countries who like mariachi, ranchera, banda, cumbia, and Spanish Catholic hymns. Eastern European clients have shared lots of traditional folk and classical music from their countries of origin. I had a dementia client from Sri Lanka who played really intricate Tamil drum rhythms. Have had many clients who love music from The Great American Songbook & former classical musicians who can/could really deep dive into the Western classical music canon. For traditional American folk music I turn to Pete Seeger, Sweet Honey In the Rock, and other artists who sought/seek to keep traditional music alive.

I recently I found a couple of apps for seeking out traditional music online beyond YouTube and Spotify. The Radiooooo app (you can search by country and decade), and the Radio Garden app which searches music stations from around the globe, some playing cultural and traditional music, and there’s also a very useful website called decolonizingthemusicroom.com which has some useful discussion on using music if it is not from your culture of origin, specifically indigenous peoples music.

[Maggie Johnson]

“Just Like Me”: I learned earlier this year that babies look at the eyes of the singer on the downbeat or pulse and for this song, the baby could be making eye contact on the words, “You” “just” & “me.” (Also “two”) I could see myself naturally moving my head forward and pointing on “you” and briefly nodding to the word “just” and pointing to myself confidently when singing the last “me.” Exploring the emotional content of those three moments in the song through facial expression. I love the “just like” being two beats for two hands!

I have a client who plays with discrete separation between very deliberate eye contact and then (delayed) beating on a drum…moving back and forth between those two states for long spans of time (the pulse and meter possibly changing from one measure to the next)… and this is making me think about ways to support our musical relationship. I would place his musical interactions in the Stage of Control. I could see a re-harmonization or arrangement of the song (e.g. in the style of The White Stripes) and changing the lyrics to be about things/ways we both like to play. “You are playing loud like me” “You are playing tambourine, just like me, just like me.”

[Maggie Johnson]

I loved hearing about the meaning-making the children are experiencing in these stages and being encouraged to see the world from their eyes. e.g. transition to head upright, language, perspective taking, imaginative play. Most of my experience with babies and children in these stages and particularly seeing them through all the stages has been, well, my own (ha!), as well as family and friend’s children. It’s fun to think back to these memories and contextualize them within this framework. I also see specific developmental similarities outlined this week in my developmentally disabled adult clients, though it’s important to emphasize that they have their whole lifetime of experiences, relationships, communities, and understanding of the self and their world beyond childhood that deserves to be honored and respected. I see the value of a shared language of a framework, and how having the checklist can help one design and advocate for developmentally appropriate experiences.

[Maggie Johnson]

To this work, I want to bring a “beginner’s mind,” in part, because I feel like a beginner in this work having relatively small experience with young children, but also because I think an intention to return to that mindset will help me be more child-focused and new-parent focused. I strive to bring a trauma-informed and intersectional feminist lens to my work, and lately I have been focusing more on the impacts of colonization on music education and music therapy education in the US and reconciling what that means for my experience, my practice, and in supervision.

I love leading groups and I try to bring lots of fun, dynamism, non-judgement, musical sensitivity, along with a confident leadership presence. I think my experience within a wide range of systems of care can help me speak up and advocate for children and families needs. I have the experience of building deep, long-term relationships with my disabled adult clients and their families. I have quite a lot of experience with non-violent communication, a little bit with dalcroze Eurythmics, and right now I am really interested in emotion theory as it relates to musical development and music perception.

[Maggie Johnson]

I have much more experience with adults clinically so I will mostly rely on those experiences in my responses. I had a client for many years who passed away at the age of 36 in the last year. She mostly presented in the awareness stage in our sessions. She preferred vocal music and we often improvised together in response to her breath and pitch. A lot of the responses I looked to her for were regarding attending to the sound source, it was a wonderful thing to see her eye brows move with interest or her head turn! I learned to become attuned to changes in breath—so I appreciate that reminder in the video— vocalizing pitch, trying to understand her vocal expression. She had a severe seizure disorder and in the span time I knew her she was often dealing with a lot of unmanaged pain that was very difficult to diagnose due to her not being able to communicate her experience other than through deep mournful groans and contracting her limbs into herself. I often sang circle songs/chants, but also incorporated guitar melody/bass, hand under hand kalimba, tambourine etc. I also learned from her to take seriously the need for no music at times and to advocate for plenty of quiet time in her daily routine. She had amazing parents who carefully curated a vast collection of music, as music was her whole world (labeling the CDs as upbeat vs relaxing—very much aligned with the awareness stage).

[Maggie Johnson]

That dream scenario does sound incredible! Nice to (virtually) meet you!

[Maggie Johnson]

Thanks Erika–Nice to (virtually) meet you too! Cool to learn that the online training has been around that long.

[Maggie Johnson]

Nice to (virtually) meet you, Kimberly. I too am looking forward to the family-centered techniques taught in this program, and am excited to hear more about how you will incorporate this into your work.

[Maggie Johnson]

Hello Everyone,

It’s great to join you all on here! My name is Maggie Johnson and I live in Portland, OR. I am taking Sprouting Melodies Training for several reasons. Beth and Meredith inspire me in so many ways, and I always gain so much from hearing them speak.

I work with developmentally disabled adults, adults with neurodegenerative diseases, community mental health programs, and hospice; and I would like to strengthen my understanding of the developmental model presented in this course and in Elizabeth’s book. I also hope to be inspired to jump into the world of early childhood music therapy. Most of my work with children has been in an intergenerational context where children from two local abuse-prevention programs were brought once a month to visit two adult day programs where I provided regular music therapy. I supervise other therapists as well as interns who work with young children, and want to be able to better support their work and training and the programs at the agency I work for. Most recently, I received a referral for an autistic child (my first individual young child client) who I will meet in about a month.

I have a chronic vestibular disorder called 3PD which might prove to be a barrier for my ability to comfortably do very active movement-based work involving complex visual stimuli, but I am hoping S.M. Training will help me stretch out of my comfort zone and see what is possible. 🙂

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