Ableism and Colonialism in International Music Therapy Service-learning Settings:
A Critical Discourse Analysis

Vee Gilman, MT-BC (they/them)

Advisor: Susan Hadley, Ph.D., MT-BC (she/her)
Reader: Cindy LaCom, Ph.D. (she/her, they/them)
Reader: Alexander H.D. Crooke, Ph.D. (he/him)

A Thesis Submitted to
Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Master of Music Therapy
December 2021

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………4
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 6
Background: Unlearning Publicly ............................................................................................... 7
The Problem with “Help” .......................................................................................................... 9
Literature Review ....................................................................................................................... 12
Indigenous Studies and Disability Studies: Foundations and Intersections ......................... 12
Metaphors and Simplifications. ......................................................................................... 12
Defining Disability in Indigenous Contexts. ..................................................................... 14
Decolonization and the Dominant Center......................................................................... 15
Embodied Knowledges. ...................................................................................................... 16
Indigenous and Disability Studies in Music Therapy ............................................................ 18
Images and Representation ..................................................................................................... 22
Indigenous Representation. ................................................................................................ 22
Disability Representation. .................................................................................................. 24
Co-construction and Dominant Insecurity. ...................................................................... 25
Colonialism and “Voluntourism” ........................................................................................... 26
Methods........................................................................................................................................ 28
Critical discourse analysis ....................................................................................................... 28
Translation........................................................................................................................... 30
Materiality. .......................................................................................................................... 30
Actor Network Theory .............................................................................................................. 32
ANT and Indigenous/Disability Studies. ........................................................................... 34
Locality................................................................................................................................. 34
Emergence. .......................................................................................................................... 35
Analyzing Photographs ............................................................................................................ 35
Analysis ........................................................................................................................................ 36
The Images ............................................................................................................................... 37
Image A. ............................................................................................................................... 38
Image B. ............................................................................................................................... 38
Image C. ............................................................................................................................... 39
Image D. ............................................................................................................................... 40
Actants ...................................................................................................................................... 41

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Network Relations .................................................................................................................... 42
The Inner Circle. ................................................................................................................. 43
“Need” and “Help.” ............................................................................................................ 44
Image Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 44
Active Helpers and Passive Sufferers. ............................................................................... 45
Interference. ........................................................................................................................ 47
Individualized and Ahistorical. ......................................................................................... 48
Social Distance and Hierarchy. .......................................................................................... 49
Text Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 51
Themes. ................................................................................................................................ 52
Speakers and Audiences. .................................................................................................... 54
Top code groups. ................................................................................................................. 55
Local Deficit/Need vs. Local Knowledge/Resources. ....................................................... 56
Ideas of “Cultural Competency.” ...................................................................................... 57
Active/Passive Dichotomy. ................................................................................................. 60
Discussion .................................................................................................................................... 62
Music Therapist Sentiments Toward “Others”....................................................................... 63
What Can Be Done? ................................................................................................................ 68
Abolition. .............................................................................................................................. 68
Radical change. .................................................................................................................... 70
Degrees of Harm. ................................................................................................................. 71
Beyond International Service-learning Settings ..................................................................... 72
Conclusion: Becoming Unsutured ............................................................................................. 73
References .................................................................................................................................... 76

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Acknowledgements
For those whose lands I occupy –
The Kaw/Kansa, Osage, and Kickapoo peoples of my homeland, and the Snohomish and
Coast Salish peoples whose homeland I occupy now;
Those who were lost to the brutality of colonial genocide, those who survived, and those
who continue the good work of their people now;
The nonhumans and the land itself, in acknowledgement of the deep harms caused to
them through colonialism, capitalism, and other power-laden forces.
For those who have resisted and existed, who have created the space so that I might exist
authentically now, in this profession and this world –
My biological family, who literally created the space for my existence, and who nurtured
(and continue to nurture) me so that I might love all of who I am;
My queer ancestors, whose daring, insistent, and audacious existences paved paths for me
to follow with much greater ease;
Susan Hadley and her mentors, especially Carolyn Kenny – the music therapy lineage
into which I place myself, and through which I can envision myself in this field;
Sue, Cindy, Alex, and Leah, whose work provided foundations for me and who provided
direct feedback for this thesis;
My grad school classmates, who encourage, challenge, and inspire me, and through
whom I understand love in critique;
My coworkers, interns, supervisees, and clients, who have challenged, changed, and
shaped me on personal and professional levels; allowed me into sacred space; and trusted
me with beautiful vulnerability.

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For those who I have harmed, and in whose oppression I participate –
Each client who has faced direct harm at my hands, recognizing the lasting impacts of
each small interaction, and honoring the labor required to resist my perpetrations of
oppression without bringing about greater harm;
The people and communities whose oppression I participate in, whose oppression I have
specifically benefited from, and to whom I have unwittingly contrasted myself for selfbenefiting purposes;
People and communities who continue to face urgent, daily, and significant harm, even as
I receive accolades for and take precious time grappling with my own role in this harm.

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Overview
Music therapy settings are often marked by multiple power hierarchies, in which music
therapists hold privileged identities in areas such as race, disability, language, and class in
relation to clients who may carry multiple oppressed identities. In international service-learning
settings, these dualities can be even more pronounced. As international service-learning projects
market themselves to young music therapists and students, they emphasize these projects’ ability
to accelerate music therapists’ advancement in the profession. However, analysis of visual and
written discourse can reveal subtler and more insidious consequences of such projects,
particularly in the ways they uphold colonial and ableist paradigms. In this paper, I will outline
some foundational understandings regarding Indigenous studies, Disability studies,
“voluntourism,” and the relevance of representation. I will then analyze publicly available photos
and text from four international music therapy service-learning projects, using Actor-Network
Theory to identify colonial and ableist themes.
The analyses will demonstrate that these experiences align and prepare young music
therapists for broader music therapy practice mainly by reinforcing music therapy’s deeply
colonial and ableist foundations. Music therapy identity in these images is white, settler,
nondisabled, and aligned with Western music and culture; client identity is Indigenous,
colonized, Disabled, and represented without markers of local cultural resources. Beyond
identity, these images reveal relational patterns that align with colonial and ableist tropes. As
represented in these images and texts, music therapists purportedly give, help, act, distribute,
teach, and transform, whereas clients receive, wait, accept, assimilate, and “overcome.” The
representations are not merely neutral agents that reveal existing dynamics; they also perpetuate
problematic notions of music therapy as an assimilative and charitable agent, enacted by active
“helpers” upon passive “sufferers.” They both accentuate and perpetuate assumptions of Black

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and colonized people as needy or deficient, positioning Western music therapists conversely as
helpful and sufficient.
In analyzing and interpreting these representations, I will approach the following
questions: How much does music therapist identity depend on the construction of a needy other?
In representing ourselves as helpers, how do music therapists unwittingly create or emphasize
deficits in clients?

Background: Unlearning Publicly
As Hadley (2020) has explained, our work in a social justice-centered graduate program
is about not only learning, but in unlearning. As a nondisabled1 middle class, white settler
growing up Christian in the Midwest of the United States2, I learned a multitude of lessons about
the importance and meaning of being “good.” A “good” (middle class) person was financially
stable and self-made. A “good” (white) person was polite and conflict-avoidant. A “good”
(Christian) person was self-sacrificing and generous, giving to “needy” others. These and other
similar messages were repeatedly enforced, both explicitly and implicitly, and I understood them
to be normal or universal. It was not until much later that I learned the hegemonic roots of these

1

Throughout this paper, I will use the term “nondisabled” to refer to people outside the Disabled community. I have
chosen to use this term for its definitional clarity and for the way it centers Disabled identities. Alternative terms
here each carry particular connotations. For example, “ablebodied” centers the bodily experience of Disability or
impairment, whereas “enabled” underscores the social, political, and contextual nature of Disability. As Hall (2002)
wrote, “being ablebodied is made possible by the material, historical, social, and economic environment… those
whose bodily appearance and function approximate norms of embodiment are enabled, and those who deviate most
from those norms are disabled.” Because the nature of Disability includes both bodily and social-political
implications, “nondisabled” should be taken here to represent privilege along this axis in both senses.
2
This land is known by many names to many peoples, including the United States, North America, Turtle Island,
and scores of different names in various Indigenous languages. Each of these names holds unique political
implications, and each represents a culturally specific way of understanding and relating to the land (Wilbur &
Keene, 2019b, 2019c). I will use the term “United States” throughout this thesis in order to 1) reflect my own
primary way of relating to this land based on my own settler identity, 2) identify the power and privilege associated
with United States citizenship in music therapists traveling internationally, and 3) maintain clarity through consistent
shared language. My personal home growing up was Kaw/Kansa, Kickapoo, and Osage land, forcibly and violently
stolen through colonization.

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and other similar beliefs. My personal sense of “goodness” relied on constructions of
problematized “others” in order to prop me up, and these constructions were directly rooted to
racism, settler colonialism, ableism, and so on. I am still unlearning my dominant perspectives
and will continue to for the rest of my life. This unlearning process requires vigilance, as these
perspectives are deeply rooted and can ambush one at any time.
Therefore, I am engaging here in a public unlearning process. Indigenous scholar
Adrienne Keene (2019a) has described “learning publicly” as an important aspect of her process,
drafting and editing on a public blog so that her mistakes, learning process, and responses to
feedback are publicly available to a broad audience. In my case, I would like to unlearn publicly
here by retroactively examining harmful patterns that I have upheld in my own work,
communication, and self-presentation. My individual unlearning comes through the efforts of
many others: Sue Hadley provided direct mentorship and supervision in un-fixing my lens;
critical theorists referenced in this paper provided epistemological roots for the practice of
combating dominant beliefs; and my clients, peers, and community members invited me to
recognize everyday instances in which my whiteness and other dominant ways of being
“ambush” me (Yancy, 2016). My personal experiences of marginalization as a queer,
genderqueer, and neurodivergent person, as well as my communities within these identities, also
inform my understandings and investments in these processes.
By analyzing visual and written discourse by myself and other music therapists, I hope to
illuminate some problematic constructions of music therapy self-identity on an individual and
collective level, including my own complicity in these constructions. This piece serves as 1) a
public unlearning regarding my own harm, 2) an examination of subtle clues that reveal deeper
patterns of oppression in the construction of music therapy as a field and identity, and 3) an

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example of one process by which music therapists and others can engage in personal selfreflection to better understand their own participation in oppressive systems.

The Problem with “Help”
During my undergraduate work, I participated in international service projects over the
course of three summers. For each of these summers, I traveled to the same community in Kenya
with three to five other people affiliated with a small, grassroots organization based in the United
States. The mission of the organization was to provide access to educational and vocational
opportunities for women and girls through case management, relational supports, and
scholarships to boarding school. Although my experiences in Kenya never included music
therapy per se, my identity as a music therapy student was integrated into these experiences at
the time. One summer I received a grant from Arizona State University to bring instruments and
facilitate music therapy-informed experiences while in Kenya. My roles in this organization were
integral to my personal self-concept as a “good” white person and future music therapist.
I remained unaware of the colonial implications of my experiences in Kenya until a
Native American3 child I worked with pointed them out. The Native community where I have
worked since entering the music therapy profession is only two to three generations away from
tribal boarding schools, a cultural genocide project (Behrendt, 2016) in which the United States
government removed Native children from their families and sent them to boarding schools at
which all outward expressions of tribal identities were punished or forcibly erased. Living elders
in the community can still recall children’s long hair being cut for the sake of forced

3

Throughout this thesis, I will use the terms “Native” or “Native American” to refer broadly to North American
Indigenous people, and the term “Indigenous” to refer to Indigenous peoples globally. As Kim Tallbear (2016) has
noted, each of these terms – as well as others, such as “Indian” and “tribal” – are “contingent and contested,” applied
differently between speakers and contexts (p. 82).

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assimilation, as well as extreme punishments (even leading to children’s illness and death) for
speaking tribal languages or singing tribal songs. In 2021, the unearthing of thousands of
children’s bodies at colonial boarding school campuses in Canada and the United States brought
widespread attention to some of the atrocities committed in these institutions (Hood, 2021).
Despite the abolition of assimilative boarding schools in North America in the 1990s, forced
assimilation and ethnocide for Coast Salish people continue today in more implicit forms. Recent
and present examples include forced sterilization programs enacted upon Native people in the
United States; overrepresentation of Native children in the foster care system and subsequent
loss of Coast Salish children through state removal and adoption to non-Indigenous families; and
high rates of policing and police violence against Black and Indigenous people.
About four years ago, I was with a child outside of session, responding to another adult’s
questions about some of my experiences in Kenya. I mentioned staying with some of my Kenyan
peers in their boarding schools, and the child’s eyes became wide in horror. “I thought they
didn’t have boarding schools anymore,” he said. I began to insist, “It’s not like the boarding
schools were here,” but the weight of his statement struck me. I had personally witnessed these
overt ethnocidal practices in Kenya, and I had accepted them as part of “education” without
question. Contemporary boarding schools in Kenya are like boarding schools in Indigenous
communities in North America: They mandate cultural assimilation to British standards and seek
to eradicate tribal languages and expressions of identity. They enact cultural genocide upon
Kenyan people (Behrendt, 2016). This child’s response highlighted my complicity in the colonial
project through my support of such boarding schools in post-colonial communities.
My colonial complicity in Kenya was not limited to my acceptance of boarding schools.
Initiating Western music, applying U.S. music therapy ideals, and centering Western musical

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instruments all privileged Western Classical and popular musics above ways of musicking
indigenous to East Africa. By engaging now with representations of my experiences in Kenya, I
can apply tenets of Indigenous and Disability studies that I have learned since then to reflect on
real-time moments from my time there. For example, viewing the photos now, I recognize that
the photographs taken and shared from my trips to Kenya supported a colonial agenda by
depicting what Van Trigt and Legêne (2016) have referred to as the dichotomy between “active
(Western) helpers acting on behalf of passive (non-Western) sufferers” (p. 188), furthering what
Hutchison (2014) has deemed a “politics of pity” (p. 1). These images positioned me personally
as a “good” U.S. American and a caring student-professional, at the cost of the actual people and
communities I had visited.
My work here is motivated and informed by my interaction with this client and its
concomitant lesson. From this child, I learned that my “help” was not always needed and not
necessarily even helpful; that is, something I believed in deeply in the moment could perpetuate
both intimate and global levels of harm. This drives my critical curiosity regarding things
assumed to be “helpful” within my own music therapy work and in the music therapy
community writ large.
I am motivated to focus on international service-learning projects because this is the
context in which I was most directly faced with my own complicity. However, I do not wish to
present these contexts as an anomaly that contrasts with the overall discourse within music
therapy. Music therapists are not absolved of participation in hegemonic structures simply
because they work locally. Rather, I understand discourse regarding international servicelearning experiences as one extreme example within a much larger pattern in the field of music
therapy overall.

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Literature Review

Indigenous Studies and Disability Studies: Foundations and Intersections
Although Indigenous studies and Disability studies are widely considered species of
critical theory, both areas simultaneously align with and resist this categorization. Vehmas &
Watson (2014) critiqued critical Disability studies, noting that although drawing from other
critical disciplines can be beneficial, the Marxist/materialist current of critical studies does not
always reflect the unique position or needs of Disabled people. Tallbear (2016) suggested that
Indigenous studies take on a more “polyamorous” relationship to critical theories, noting that
Indigenous studies has “been aligned with [familiar knowledges within critical theory] for forty
years, usually as an object of study” (p. 81) and that this problematically monogamous
relationship with critical theories has caused Indigenous theorists to miss local, new, and
embodied ways of knowing. Hokowhitu (2016) similarly problematized Indigenous studies’ ties
to the Western academy, indicating that Indigenous scholars often must make their knowledges
palatable to the Academy even to do the work of resistance. He posited, “I question whether
resistance itself, especially as Indigenous scholars have framed it… is in fact the very framework
that makes Indigenous scholarship comprehensible to the taxonomies of Western thought, as we
strive to be fully human and as we fulfill the tradition of dissent inherent to the Western
academy” (p. 91). More to the point, he asked, “Do we… enmesh ourselves further by
corroborating the colonizers’ methods?” (p. 85).
Metaphors and Simplifications. Multiple scholars (Barker & Murray, 2013; Grech &
Soldatic, 2015; Sherry, 2007) have noted the tendency for Indigenous studies and Disability
studies to draw upon one another as metaphors without accounting for the material intersection
of Indigenous Disabled identities. Barker & Murray (2013) described Disability as “almost

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completely absent” (p. 61) from postcolonial theory, despite Disability’s status as “one of the
most significant and ever-present conditions in human history” and “a key site of colonial
administrative power” (Grech & Soldatic, 2015, p. 2). Grech (2015) conversely noted the
distinctly Northern4 optic in Disability studies specifically, stating that in Disability studies, “the
word ‘colonial’ is often little more than a metaphor for subjugation and domination, a metaphor
dissociated from its historical lineages and the discursive and material power that made it one of
the most important, destructive and lasting forces in human history” (p. 7).
Grech (2015) described particular silence and oversimplification in descriptions of
Disabled lives in the global South. He noted, “Disabled lives in the Southern context are often
simplified and generalised in a dynamic of homogenising, decontextualised and dehistoricised
discourse,” thus conflating Disabled experiences in the global South with descriptions of
disability in dominant global contexts – particularly Europe and Northern sites of settler
colonialism. Although settler and extractive colonialism are not cleanly split between the global
North and South, the relative silence regarding Disabled lives in Southern contexts intersects
with (post)colonial accounts that center settler colonial narratives and oversimplify the effects of
extractive colonialism. As a result, considerations of disability and colonialism together tend to
emphasize settler colonialism and ignore the impact of extractive colonialism upon Disabled
Indigenous peoples in the global South.

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“Northern” here refers to perspectives representative of the global North, i.e. people and cultures of the northern
hemisphere. Meekosha (2011) has more accurately described this dichotomous descriptor: “‘Southern’ countries are,
broadly, those historically conquered or controlled by modern imperial powers, leaving a continuing legacy of
poverty, economic exploitation and dependence [...] The ‘North’, the global metropole, refers to the centres of the
global economy in Western Europe and North America” (p. 4).

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Defining Disability in Indigenous Contexts. While physical differences and
impairments remain a significant condition present in communities across history and around the
world, the notion of “Disability” as an identity category is intimately linked with colonial
fetishization of bodily difference and forcible control of colonized bodies. Many Indigenous
languages do not include a linguistic equivalent to the word “disabled” or “impaired,” indicating
wholly different or absent means of categorizing such identities before colonial contact (Gilroy
& Donelly, 2016; Wilbur & Keene, 2019c). Grech (2015) outlined the systematic production of
the disabled body through colonization, including 1) the infliction of disease and illness by
colonizers upon Indigenous people, 2) the public physical mutilation of enslaved people resistant
to their oppressors, and the consequent framing of disabled bodies as deviant bodies, 3) the
fetishized process of concealing and discovering markers of disability within the slave trade, and
the consequent aim to normalize or assimilate Disabled bodies, and 4) the collaborative role of
medical professionals and missionaries in “correcting” Indigenous Disabled people as central to
the colonial project. Kazemi (2017) introduced the Transnational Disability Model to describe
the continued production of disabled bodies along imperialist and nationalist lines, highlighting
“the creation of disability by war in the ‘third world’ by the ‘first world’” (p. 33) as one prime
example.
Grech’s point regarding medical professionals holds particular relevance to Western
music therapists entering the global South as volunteers and health care professionals. As Grech
explains: “The empire… brought in charity not only to ‘heal’ and correct but above all to learn
about itself and develop its practices (medical as well as those of domination), by experimenting
on the body of the colonized” (p. 12). Thus, disability in postcolonial contexts can never be

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dissociated from the materiality of colonization, and Western healthcare professions must at a
minimum recognize the colonized bodies upon which their knowledges are built.
I use the terms “Disability” and “Disabled” throughout this piece to broadly reference
those people whose bodies are externally categorized as such by colonial forces. I capitalize the
term when specifically referring to Disability as a social identity category, beyond impairment.
In this language, some nuance regarding self-claimed identities and localized contexts may be
lost. However, the term “Disability” here (both capitalized and not) should be understood
complexly – imbued with the social construction denoted through Disability studies, the personal
and embodied experience of impairment, and the material colonial history inscribed into the
production of “Disabled” identities.
Decolonization and the Dominant Center. Several Indigenous thinkers (Driskill, 2011;
Hokowhitu, 2016; Whitehead, 2017; Wilbur & Keene, 2019b) have illuminated the problematic
tendency for de-colonial attempts at a “return to tradition” to tacitly leave behind subjugated
identities within Indigeneity, implicitly centering cisgender, heterosexual, nondisabled men with
financial and political power. As Hokowhitu describes, “Those subjectivities that have ‘lived’
(i.e., are given authority) often function to let alternative Indigenous subjectivities die, in the
sense of exclusion from communities and the will to definitionally exclude, often based on
markers of authenticity” (p. 86). Driskill (2011) noted that Two-Spirit people seek not only to
“archive and repertoire” what was lost in colonization, but also to “imagine and create a present
and future” (p. 110) that includes these subjugated identities. This simultaneous reclamation of
pre-colonial narratives and identification within unique, contemporary subjectivities may be
applied to Disabled Indigenous people as well, combining “traditional” understandings of
Disability in Indigenous contexts with current, embodied knowledges.

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While these discussions of reframing decolonization center upon contexts of settler
colonialism, they apply in sites of extractive colonialism as well. Colonial structures continue to
dominate sites of extractive colonialism, as partly evidenced by the ongoing presence of Western
music therapy interventions in these contexts. For cultural traditions to “live,” they must be made
profitable and palatable to the white/Western gaze. Take, for example, the survivance 5 of Maasai
music and dance through essentialized and stereotyped performances for Western tourists, as
well as through the Westernized system of performing Maasai dances in competitive, extracurricular school contexts (Bruner, 2001; Hodgson, 1999). In these ways, the colonial gaze
continues to mediate understandings of “authentic” Indigeneity in both settler and extractive sites
of colonialism, uplifting dominant subjectivities and subjugating “alternative” subjectivities.
Embodied Knowledges. Both Indigenous and Disability studies emphasize the body as a
key site of knowledge and meaning making. Clare (2001) noted that in one sense, separation
from the body and emphasis on social oppression have served Disability rights movements well
by challenging medical and charity-based tropes that localize disability to individual impairment
within the body. However, Clare additionally emphasizes the importance of embodied
knowledges: “Paired with the external forces of oppression are the incredibly internal, bodycentered experiences of who we are and how we live with oppression” (p. 361). Wilson and
Lewiecki-Wilson (2001) problematized the classical Western hierarchical body-mind split in
relation to Disability discourse. They drew from corporeal feminism to understand the body as a
site of “mutually constitutive interaction between discourses and materiality” (p. 3), in which

5

“Survivance” is a term central to Indigenous studies, coined by Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor. Vizenor
(2009) stated, “The nature of survivance creates a sense of narrative resistance to absence, literary tragedy, nihility,
and victimry. Native survivance is an active sense of presence over historical absence, the domination of cultural
simulations, and manifest manners. Native survivance is a continuance of stories” (p. 1).

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Disabled bodies are repeatedly framed as deviant. Further, these authors emphasized standpoint
and understood the production of knowledge as contextual to particular people, places, and
sociohistorical environments. This emphasis on standpoint is reflected in the ubiquitous rally cry
from Disability rights movements since the 1980s: “Nothing about us without us” (Charlton,
2000).
Hokowhitu (2016) similarly emphasized what he referred to as “body-logic” for
Indigenous people in creating Indigenous ways of knowing that are not defined by the
epistemological processes of the Western Academy. He described “body-logic” as referring to:
what culture ‘feels like’ as opposed to the production of Indigenous culture to be
viewed or Indigenous knowledge to be ‘preserved.’ I want to evoke the
immediacy and political nature of Indigenous bodily practices that evade
taxonomic capture… Body-logic is an insurrection of knowledge, a movement
beyond colonial capture, the colonizer/colonized binary, and encumbering
‘Indigenous’ ontologies, and toward post-Indigeneity. (p. 100)

Thus, Indigenous and Disability studies do not simply entail knowledge transmitted
through academic and taxonomic “research” practices. To the contrary, they underscore the
limits of such practices, emphasizing that theoretically mapping colonial and ableist realities can
never replace nor fully represent the deep knowledges produced by being in Indigenous and
Disabled bodies, lives, and contexts. The gap between lived experience and representation –
explained further in the methods section below – is important here. When music therapists with
dominant identities seek to represent experiences from within these communities without
relevant body-based knowledges and local understandings, their representations may (from a

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constructivist standpoint perspective) not align with client/participants’ interpretations, or even
(from a materialist perspective) present events that never really occurred (Jones & Jenkins,
2008a).

Indigenous and Disability Studies in Music Therapy
Indigenous and Disability studies perspectives are sparse in music therapy literature, but
not absent. These voices in music therapy present critiques to dominant practices, as well as
visions of anti-colonial and anti-ableist possibilities in music therapy.
Carolyn Kenny represents the most prominent voice of Indigenous studies in music
therapy, with much of her later career devoted to Indigenous studies research, writing, and
education. Kenny’s influential work, “The Field of Play” (1989), provided a comprehensive
theory for music therapy practice. Among Kenny’s assumptions were that 1) participants in
music therapy experiences are already whole when they enter, but therapists and participants can
grow into more expansive whole forms, 2) music therapy relationships are “self-organizing
systems” (p. 102), in which participants collectively and naturally move toward this expansive
wholeness, 3) music therapy happens via the intersection of power, creative process, ritual, and a
particular state of consciousness, and 4) the musical space is established at the intersection of
each participant’s unique aesthetic, including both therapists’ and clients’ histories, cultural
identities, beliefs, styles, preferences, and feelings. These axioms collectively indicate a vision of
music therapy founded in mutual relationships rather than colonial attempts to control or shape
clients’ actions. Kenny emphasized a principle of noninterference in music therapy practice,
especially in post-colonial contexts (Kenny & Hadley, 2013). She described,
Our approach was to just let the children be, giving them the conditions, the
resources, and believing that by doing so they would find a good life. That is the

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way the elders would talk about it as opposed to thinking in terms of clinical
outcomes. (p. 3)
Smith (2012) described a similar principle in his music therapy practice with
underhoused youth in Coast Salish and Strait Salish lands in and around Vancouver, British
Columbia6. He noted his aim to avoid replicating the colonial code of relations prevalent in
helping professions, in which therapists assert the right to “fix, diagnose, change, and intern”
those with whom they work (p. 276). Smith critiqued dominant alignments with so-called
“evidence-based practice” in music therapy, and he outlined the ways that evidence-based
practices commonly align with this colonial code. Further, Smith provided some examples of
times in which he inadvertently “replicated dominance” by “providing unsolicited advice,
making psychological assumptions, misinterpreting a young person’s intentions or lifestyle,
promoting heteronormativity, and so on” (p. 276). These examples indicate that anti-colonial
music therapy depends on an unflinching awareness and honesty about the ways in which music
therapists intentionally or unintentionally replicate colonial ways of being within our practices.
Although the vast majority of music therapy clients hold one or more diagnoses,
impairments, or Disabled identities, peer-reviewed Disability studies perspectives in music
therapy remain rather limited. Disability studies has been increasingly recognized in the field of
music therapy and included in music therapy literature within the past five years. These articles
critiqued music therapy’s dominant alignment with medical models of Disability as a state to be
mitigated or cured, and they proposed alternative understandings of Disabled identities (Bakan,
2014; Cameron, 2014; LaCom & Reed, 2014; Miyake, 2014). These writers grappled with the
duality of addressing impairments in therapy while celebrating Disability as a cultural identity.

6

Again, these lands are known by many names to many people, with each carrying particular cultural and political
implications.

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Bakan (2014) proposed an ethnomusicological perspective on neurodiversity in music therapy,
noting the gravity of this perspective as an epistemological shift to the foundations of the
profession. Comparing assumptions in music therapy with his experiences as an
ethnomusicologist in Bali, Bakan noted the problematic, implicit understandings tied to
understandings of Autism as a medical issue rather than a cultural identity:
It “goes without saying” that autism is a disorder, but that being Balinese is not; that the
behaviors associated with being autistic are symptoms, while those associated with being
Balinese are integral and inalienable expressions of cultural identity; and that diagnosing,
treating, and even eradicating autism are desirable goals, though even the thought of
diagnosing or treating, let alone eradicating, Balineseness is unconscionable. (p. 5)

LaCom and Reed (2014) noted the instability of bodily categorizations of disability,
complexifying concepts of fixed nondisabled/Disabled categories by grappling with their own
embodied experiences of Disability, impairment, and diagnosis. Reed noted her cultural
understanding of Disability through the lens of her own Autistic identity, echoing Bakan’s
themes; however, she contrasted this with the “decidedly medical” lived experiences with a
condition that was then diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis. In complexifying bodily
categorizations, these authors also complexify the notion of “health” and “help” in music
therapy, calling upon music therapists to destabilize binary categorizations often assumed in
therapy relationships.
In the past few years, Disabled voices in music therapy have gained increasing traction in
sharing anti-ableist messages outside the confines of peer-reviewed journal spaces. Discourse
related to Disability studies and neurodiversity in music therapy has become much more

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accessible in blog posts, conference presentations, online community forums, and affinity group
spaces. Several authors have critiqued music therapy’s alignment with problematic
understandings of Disability and neurodivergence, including its allyship with Applied Behavior
Analysis (widely considered abusive in the Autistic community) and the medical model of
Disability (Long et al., 2015; Straus, 2014). Reed (2019) outlined ableist tenets of music therapy
education by analyzing discourse about Disability in a common entry-level music therapy
textbook. Leza (2021) called out ableist practices in music therapy representation, questioning
the focus on professional advocacy through “world music therapy day” on March 1 , which is
st

also the Disability Day of Mourning. Overall, these arguments present a critical response to
dominant music therapy practices and paradigms that have largely gone without question. The
limited amplification of these arguments in peer-reviewed publications speaks to their political
position; they destabilize foundational theoretical lenses through which many music therapists
view their professional roles.
Related to each of these intersections (Disability, Indigeneity, and music therapy) is the
understanding of harm. Murakami (2021) presented a model for understanding harm in music
therapy practice, noting that music therapy literature frequently describes potential benefits but
rarely presents thorough or nuanced understandings of harm. Murakami noted that music therapy
clients can experience harm coming from the music therapist, the music itself, the therapeutic
application of music, or ecological factors beyond the setting of the music therapy clinic. This
model invites music therapists to not only consider clinical interactions themselves but also to
examine the broader cultural and ecological context that impacts and is impacted by each clinical
interaction.

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Images and Representation
As Duveen (2013) has noted, social representations form the external basis from which
social identities can be formed. They guide identity formation by beginning to answer the
question, “Who am I?” through the filter, “I am who the Other says I am” (p. 182). However,
researchers have persistently found that positive identity models for people of marginalized and
minoritized identities are comparatively nonexistent. Because the propagation of these points of
reference is largely determined by dominant groups, those representations that do exist often
illuminate dominant essentializations, stereotypes, and misunderstandings of marginalized
communities. DuBois (1920) described this as a persistent pattern of “emphasis and omission”
that, in his example related to anti-Black racism, subtly yet perpetually enforce a “religion of
whiteness” and global systems of white supremacy (p. 2). This pattern occurs along many axes
of oppression; some key themes in colonial and ableist representation are described below.
Indigenous Representation. For Native people in the United States, Fryberg (Fryberg,
2003; Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman, & Stone, 2008) and Merskin (2001) documented the
persistence of stereotypes in media and advertising representations. Keene (2015) further noted
that Native Americans are typically represented either in the historic past or as fantasy creatures - thus rendering contemporary Native identities extinct. Considering Indigenous people beyond
the US, Bruner (2001) described a similarly monolithic and ahistoric representation of
Indigenous Kenyans by the tourism industry, which evokes traditional/modern and
primitive/civilized dichotomies that position the Maasai people as either existing outside time or
representing a historic past. Myers (2001) also critiqued prevalent images of Africa in
introductory geography textbooks, noting the tendency to repeat misleading representations of
Africa as ahistorical and disaster-ridden.

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In each case, the authors noted that these stereotyped representations had the potential to
harm the marginalized group even more than would a lack of representation. For example,
Fryberg (2008) found that exposure to stereotypic images such as Chief Wahoo and Pocahontas
led Native American students to report lowered self-esteem, lower community worth, and fewer
achievement-related possible selves. Fryberg et al (2008) noted that with such few points of
access to relevant self-representations, even positive associations could yield negative impacts by
constricting the field of variability in individual senses of potential. Further, Myers (2001) noted
that stereotypic images of Africa had the potential to reinforce mistaken assumptions in Western
students, leading to false suppositions about “what went wrong in Africa” (p. 529) and
underscoring Western students’ sense of social distance from contemporary Africans.
Walter (2016) studied these patterns in data politics – specifically, representations of
Indigenous people in academic research contexts. She consolidated several problematic
understandings of Indigenous people into one category, called “5D data.” 5D data represents
Indigenous people in terms of disparity, deprivation, disadvantage, dysfunction, and difference.
She noted that limited representations and structural/geographic distancing between settler and
Indigenous communities make this data a primary site through which settlers and policy makers
“know” Indigenous peoples. Fryberg et al (2008) similarly described these types of data as
“stereotypical negative outcomes,” noting that most people receive little information about
Native Americans outside of these negative data points as described in newspapers and television
(p. 211). These points indicate that such data is not neutral nor objective; it actively shapes (and
is shaped by) the narratives by which settlers understand Indigenous people, and by which
Indigenous people understand themselves.

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Disability Representation. Similarly, multiple scholars (Cheng, 2017; Nako, 2018;
Rees, Robinson, & Shields, 2019) have identified the relative absence of Disabled people in
media representations and the prominent stereotype cues present in depictions that do exist. To
clarify these stereotype cues, Clare (2001) identified three dominant paradigms of Disability, all
of which localize Disability to individuals, define Disability by bodily impairment, and define
Disabled bodies as wrong: 1) the medical model defines Disability as a curable or treatable
disease or impairment, 2) the charity model depicts Disability as a tragedy to be mitigated
through helpfulness or generosity, and 3) the supercrip model frames Disability as a challenge to
be overcome. Grue (2011) summarized these attitudes toward Disabled people prior to the
acceptance of Disability as a sociocultural experience: “The person with the impairment was the
one to be patronized, blessed, left to die of exposure, institutionalized, cured, or rehabilitated” (p.
535).
These paradigms are reinforced through common tropes within media representations.
For example, Cheng (2017) highlighted the supercrip narrative present in depictions of Disability
in reality singing competitions in the United States, identifying the common portrayal of
Disabled contestants as “overcoming” their disabilities through their musical skills. Such
portrayals obscure and undermine the social and political implications of Disability, reinforcing
ableist hegemony.
Depictions by “helping” professionals tend to employ “deficit framing” – depicting those
served as needy and deficient – in order to position agencies positively for funding and
ideological support (Baldridge, 2014). Van Trigt and Legêne (2016) addressed such deficit
framing at the intersection of colonialism and Disability, observing that colonial depictions of
Disability represent a double “othering.” They noted that colonial history depicts colonized

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Disabled people as “silent sufferers” (p. 189) acted upon by active Western helpers, thus evoking
the charity paradigm along the axes of both Disability and colonization. They further pointed out
the consistent presence of nondisabled, white/Western agents in photographs otherwise depicting
daily life of Disabled colonized people. Such presence, they noted, communicates colonial
assumptions that Disabled colonized people “need supervision,” simultaneously activating
stereotype threats of both passivity and danger. These representations reinforce what Todd and
Wade (1994) have referred to as the “colonial code of relations” in helping professions:
1. You are deficient/I am proficient
2. Therefore I have the right (duty, privilege, responsibility) to perform proscribed
operations upon you, with or without your consent
3. These operations are undertaken for your own good (p. 45)
Co-construction and Dominant Insecurity. Colonial and ableist themes within
representation do not merely function to create essentialized colonized and Disabled subjects.
They sustain dependent, co-constitutive subjectivities of both settler and colonized, both white
and Black, both nondisabled and Disabled. As Fanon posited, “not only must the black man be
black; he must be black in relation to the white man” (1967, p. 110). Similarly, the colonized
subject is constructed in relation to the settler, the Disabled subject in relation to the
nondisabled, and so on. Racism depends not only on the construction of a problematized Black
subject, but on the contrasting construction of a white subject as normative and unproblematic.
Yancy referred to this pervasive contrast as “a semiotic field of axiological difference,” noting
that “the discourse and comportment of whites are shaped through tacit racist scripts, calcified
modes of being that enable them to sustain and perpetuate their whitely being-in-the-world”
(2016, p. 19). Such discourse then acts as not only a reflection of dominant beliefs but an active

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agent, propping up whiteness (or any dominant identity) by reinforcing its position of normalcy
in contrast to deviant “others.”
Dominant insecurities motivate these iterative representations of deviant “others.”
Achebe (1977) deconstructed the example of colonial reassurance through essentialized contrasts
to Africa:
For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry, the West seems
to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a
need for constant reassurance by comparing it with Africa. If Europe, advancing
in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in
primordial barbarity, it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the
grace of God. Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray--a carrier onto
whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go
forward, erect and immaculate. (p. 793)
As such, widespread discourse of deviance serves not only to weaken the oppressed, but
to reassure and falsely prop up the oppressors. Thus, the motivations behind constructions of
deviance are found in those who benefit from them (Trask, 2019). If someone is presented as
needy, who is being constructed as independent or helpful? If someone is presented as unruly,
who is being constructed as stable or protective? If someone is presented as primitive, who is
being constructed as fully actualized?

Colonialism and “Voluntourism”
“Voluntourism” describes a multi-billion industry in which travelers combine
international vacations with volunteer activities within the “humanitarian cloud” (Van Trigt &

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Legêne, 2016). Participants are most commonly white Westerners from middle-class
backgrounds, traveling from Europe and sites of settler colonialism to sites of extractive 7
colonialism. This industry has grown rapidly in the past few decades; however, it has also
garnered increasing criticism regarding both its material and ideological impacts (Popham,
2015). Materially, critics have questioned the impact of Western volunteers on local economies,
noting that Western volunteers often work on projects that would otherwise represent paid
employment for locals. In relational work, critics have noted the potentially harmful
consequences of volunteers entering communities, building relationships locally, and leaving the
community at the close of a project. Most direly, when Westerners’ knowledges are privileged
over those of locals, despite volunteers’ lack of training, these projects can result in physical
harm to vulnerable people – even death. Take, for example, the U.S. missionary with no medical
training who set up a critical care center for malnourished children in Uganda, killing more than
one hundred children through medical negligence (Aizenman & Gharib, 2019).
Ideologically, voluntourism has drawn criticism for the ways it upholds colonial
understandings of Indigenous and colonized communities. Voluntourism programs and
marketing have been criticized for employing misinformation and harmful stereotypes to
describe the sites of their projects. For example, in seeking support for her own volunteer and
charity projects in Malawi, pop singer Madonna falsely claimed that there were more than a
million children orphaned by AIDS in Malawi, and she further represented Malawi as a site of

7

Wilbur and Keene (2019a) have described extractive colonialism (e.g. colonialism in Kenya, Jamaica, and India) as
cases in which an outside nation state established a presence and took over in an extant community without
establishing a new nation-state as in settler colonialism (e.g. colonialism in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and
Australia). Shoemaker (2015) described extractive colonialism as one of many forms of colonialism outside of
settler states. “Extractive colonialism” here will serve as a shorthand for the colonialism experienced by Indigenous
people in each of the service-learning experiences pictured, although each community may also experience unique
intersections with other forms of colonialism, such as “post-colonial colonialism” or “missionary colonialism” as
described by Shoemaker.

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rampant kidnapping, abduction, and sexual assault (Freidus, 2017b). Madonna’s stereotypic and
biased representation of Malawi aligns with broader trends in Westerners’ perceptions of
Indigenous and colonized people after voluntourism experiences. For example, Freidus (2017a)
found that U.S. volunteers’ perceptions and experiences in Malawi orphanages were
characterized by “misrepresentations of a generic Africa;” stereotypes of “a racialized, needy
other” in contrast to benevolent Westerners; and oversimplified misunderstandings of poverty,
which mystified systemic causes of inequality and dismissed the effects of poverty in the United
States (p. 1306). These patterns reinforce Grech’s argument referenced above, that the function
of “charity” from colonizers is “above all to learn about itself and develop its practices (medical
as well as those of domination)” (2015, p. 12).

Methods
For this analysis, I was interested not only in international music therapy projects
themselves, nor only in the representations of them. Rather, I was interested in the whole system
that includes these projects, their representations, music therapists’ beliefs and attitudes within
them, and their relationships to larger systems such as music therapy, colonialism, and ableism.
Therefore, I drew on Actor-Network Theory to analyze these system relationships. Since I am
focused on the ways that large-scale power imbalances (e.g. ableism) play out into discoursal
microcosms (e.g. single images), my work here also falls within critical discourse analysis. I
describe the foundations of my methods further below.

Critical Discourse Analysis

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Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary research form that aims to
“[demystify] ideologies and power through the systematic and retroductable 8 investigation of
semiotic data (written, spoken, or visual)” (Wodak, 2013, p. 303). Discourse here refers not only
to texts, but to all forms of communication: photographs, monuments, conversations, and videos
are all discursive artifacts. However, discourse is understood not as these artifacts themselves,
but as the dialectic social practice that engages them. For example, a text is not simply a text; it
is shaped by the situations, institutions, and social structures that frame it. When a text is
reproduced and shared, it also has power to shape ideologies of those who read it. Hence, the
dialectic nature of discourse: Discursive events both shape and are shaped by their social
contexts (Wodak, 2013).
The “critical” aspect of CDA reflects understandings of social power, as well as the role
of discourse in sustaining, reproducing, and/or transforming dominant power structures (Wodak,
2013, p. 303). Discourse is intimately linked to hegemony, the process by which dominant
groups convince others to participate in inherently exploitative systems. Hegemony upholds
social power not through force or direct punishments, but through subtle, repeated events that
reinforce and materialize oppressive power structures (Jones & Jenkins, 2008a). Hegemonic
beliefs appear as “common sense,” views of the world that are “inherited from the past and
uncritically absorbed” (Gramsci 1971, p. 333, cited in Stoddart, 2007). Thus, part of the role of
CDA is to challenge that which typically goes unchallenged, to identify covert flows of power in
discursive events. Because hegemony operates subtly and repeatedly, CDA is not only relevant
to major flashpoints but to all discursive events. As Wodak noted, “Any social phenomenon
lends itself to critical investigation, to be challenged and not taken for granted” (p. 302).

8

In discourse analysis, the term “retroductable” refers to the clarity and transparency of an analysis. If an analysis is
retroductable, any reader should be able to trace and understand it.

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Translation. As Jones and Jenkins (2008) pointed out, all translation of real events into
accounts is qualitative work. The operative verb, translate, holds nuanced relevance here. As
Law (2009) explained:
To translate is to make two words equivalent. But since no two words are
equivalent, translation also implies betrayal: traduction, trahision. So translation
is about making equivalent, and about shifting. It is about moving terms around,
about linking and changing them. (p. 144)

This simultaneous equivalence and betrayal matters in CDA because social power
informs the ways that real events become translated into accounts. To some extent, an
image of an event provides a window into the “real” event, in the positivist sense.
However, an image also necessarily betrays the “real” event by setting and enforcing a
particular frame. Analysis of such an image can illuminate the hegemonic beliefs of the
translator, as well as the power-laden realities that stem from its propagation.
Materiality. I have mentioned the positivist concept of reality, meaning the ontological
belief in a neutral, unchangeable reality that exists “out there,” free from interpretation.
Conversely, interpretivists understand multiple realities, each created based on subjective
interpretations. Critical interpretivists might analyze accounts of past events to highlight
nondominant interpretations or realities, sometimes referring to these processes as “finding
voices in silence” or “reading against the grain” (Schwartz and Cook, 2002, cited in Jones &

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 31
Jenkins, 2008). Critical interpretivists argue that equitable accounts should integrate a rich,
diverse set of perspectives or interpretations.
Anticolonial historians Jones and Jenkins (2008) critiqued critical interpretivist analysis
and sought an escape from “its endless referentiality and deferral of representation, from its
political inertness, from its inability to escape the threat of relativism, and from the danger of
uncertainty in the face of those who claim to know” (p. 127). They noted that grounding in a
“truth” can be helpful for Indigenous people struggling to regain control of their past from
dominant white groups. However, Jones and Jenkins sought to access such truth without
“retreating to a simple-minded empiricism” (p. 127). They turned to Judith Butler’s concept of
materiality to account for translation and interpretation while maintaining grounding in the real.
According to Butler (1993), materialization is the process by which new realities are brought
forth through forcible reiteration of norms. Butler understood real sexed and gendered bodies to
be the materialization of “sex” and “gender” constructs. In other words, the reiteration of norms
related to these constructs does not merely produce “interpretations” of sex or gender; it
produces material realities in which people embody and perform a particular sex and gender.
Yancy (2016, p. 82) similarly described this concept of materiality in the production of white
normativity. He cited DuBois’s explanation of white “emphasis and omission” in representation
of Black folks, through which “myths harden into ‘empirical truths’” (p. 82). In this sense,
discourse goes beyond abstract power-laden beliefs to bring forth particular material realities.
Reinforced norms shape lived realities in every social encounter, including in materialities
related to colonialism, Indigeneity, and Disability.
Butler also emphasized that materiality is an effect of power: Dominant power structures,
through hegemonic processes, tend to reinforce norms that stabilize the status quo. However,

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Jones and Jenkins (2008) offered the possibility of materializing new realities through iterative
accounts that reflect Indigenous experiences and destabilize colonizer accounts. Similarly,
Manago, Davis, and Goar (2017) highlighted the power of certain discursive responses to stigma
to reinforce or destabilize ableist realities. Thus, one aim of CDA may be to aid in the production
of new material possibilities by demystifying and challenging the discursive practices that
uphold dominant norms. As Jones and Jenkins summarized, “Insofar as our knowledge and
memory of the past changes, the past changes” (p. 138). And as the past changes, new social
implications for present and future realities become possible as well.

Actor Network Theory
Actor Network Theory (ANT) is a framework within discourse analysis that focuses on
the web of relationships that connect material and immaterial actors to create an overall
assemblage9. Law (2009) defines ANT as follows:
Actor network theory is a disparate family of material-semiotic 10 tools,
sensibilities, and methods of analysis that treat everything in the social and natural
worlds as a continuously generated effect of the webs of relations within which
they are located. It assumes that nothing has reality or form outside the enactment
of those relations. Its studies explore and characterize the webs and the practices
that carry them (p. 141)

Law (2009) further described the following six central tenets of ANT:

9

MacLeod et al. (2019) define an assemblage as “a complex tangle of natural, technological, human and non-human
elements that come together to accomplish both intended and unintended outcomes in everyday life” (p. 178).
10 Materiality is described above. Semiotic refers to symbols and interpretation, especially widespread patterns of
such meaning-making.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 33
1)

Semiotic relationality. ANT focuses less on individual elements and more on

their relationships to one another. Elements in a network are understood to define and coconstitute one another. Although the whole system is necessarily affected by each part,
individual actants may have less social impact than the architecture of the network as a
whole.
2)

Heterogeneity. A system will necessarily include a variety of elements, including

human and nonhuman, material and symbolic.
3)

Materiality. Literal materials are important elements in ANT analysis. For

example, a school cannot be analyzed simply in terms of people, pedagogies, and
curricula; it must also include the physical materials such as the school building, books,
seats or desks, technology (e.g., physical computers), and so on.
4)

Process and its precariousness. Because each network is defined in terms of

relationality, each actant must play its part or the whole system may disperse. For
example, what is the network of a “music therapy session” without a music therapist?
Without a client? Without a container for shared physical or virtual space? Without
physical instruments or other materials with which to make music?
5)

Power as an effect. The configuration of networks is never socially neutral;

social power manifests from the architectural connections that constitute any network.
ANT attends not only to the mechanics of network configurations but to the social
implications of power that derive from them.
6)

Space and scale. ANT attends to the ways in which systems extend and convert

other actants into themselves. While the system can fall apart if actants do not play their
role, it can also expand in terms of space and scale as it incorporates new elements.

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ANT and Indigenous/Disability Studies. I have chosen ANT for this analysis due to its
relationality, its locality, its fluid conceptions of power (emergence), and its integration of the
material and immaterial. In my own understandings, each of these elements of ANT aligns with
some aspect of critical Indigenous and Disability studies. For example, in ANT, the distinction
between material and immaterial elements is de-emphasized and is considered a fluid boundary.
This combats colonial human/nonhuman dichotomies, possibly aligning with more fluid
understandings of animacy as reflected in Cree and Blackfoot languages (Darnell & Vanek,
1976; Whitehead, 2017; Wiltschko, 2009). It integrates interpretation and the “real” in alignment
with Jones and Jenkins’ considerations for anticolonial research described above. It also aligns
with understandings of Disability as an embodied experience at the intersection of abstract social
structures and beliefs, physical experiences of impairment, and material access barriers. Two of
these understandings, locality and emergence, are described with greater detail below.
Locality. ANT differs from some other forms of discourse analysis in its locality to
particular systems, in particular places and periods of time. ANT research does not seek to
identify large-scale or universal semiotic fields (sometimes referred to as discourses or
epistemes). It does not seek to find universal philosophical foundations that explain why social
structures operate as they do. Instead, ANT seeks to find rich descriptions of the “strategic,
relational, and productive character of particular, smaller-scale, heterogeneous actor networks”
(Law, 2009, p. 145). For example, ANT would not approach questions related to the way
colonialism operates as a whole. Instead, an ANT approach might analyze a particular
tribal/colonial boarding school and examine the ways in which connections between material and

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 35
immaterial agents were structured to generate colonial hegemonic power in this context. In this
way, some particular nuances can be re-examined and contrasted with what is lost in
constructions of pan-Indigeneity.
Emergence. MacLeod et al (2019) describe emergence in ANT as the notion that “reality
is less stable and predictable than we typically acknowledge” (p. 178). This relates to the ANT
tenets of precariousness and space/scale described above. New social, ideological, and material
realities emerge from the shifts of particular networks. In other words, ANT does not seek to find
stable or universal descriptions of social phenomena as some social science research does; rather,
it understands the very nature of power structures as constantly changing and effecting change.
In ANT, social categories do not predetermine power relations. As Law describes it, “the social
is also being reworked” as a given network assembles, expands, or deteriorates (p. 147).
The concept of emergence allows for queer, unfixed takeaways in ANT analysis. It also
allows for the possibility and even eventuality that systems will change over time. As Law
described it, “In this non-foundational world, nothing is sacred and nothing is necessarily fixed”
(2009, p. 148). As a researcher, this brings some hope that critical analysis is not merely a
reflection of an unchanging and insurmountable reality of exploitative hierarchy. Greater
awareness and intentional changes in social networks’ actants or architectures can yield new,
more just realities.

Analyzing Photographs
As with all forms of discourse, photographs both reflect and produce realities. In
analyzing photographs, it is possible to unveil the “grand narratives” of power and hegemony
that permeate each image, while simultaneously allowing each photograph to convey “little

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narratives” that complexify and add nuance, in alignment with Disabled and Indigenous
considerations of specificity and embodiment (Edwards, 2001, p. 3). Simultaneously, the status
of the photograph must be understood as an agent itself rather than a value-neutral depiction of
reality. A meaningful analysis, then, will not only ask how power hierarchies are inscribed into
the interactions visible in the photographs; it will also ask questions regarding the purpose and
impact of the photo as a tool communicating various identities and relationships (e.g., What
narrative do these photos produce about who music therapists are and what music therapy is?).
Edwards described three defining moments in analyzing photographs: 1) the framing
(arrangement of the setting), 2) the making of the photograph, and 3) the circulation of the image
(p. 20). Van Trigt and Legêne (2016) applied this lens in addition to that of Actor Network
Theory (ANT) to identify a broader range of human and non-human actors’ agency within a
photo. In analyzing music therapy photos, I will draw from these concepts and center upon two
grounding questions to apply to several images:
1)

How do these images and texts reinforce and/or subvert dominant narratives of

colonialism and ableism?
2)

What do these images and texts indicate about the relationship between

nondisabled U.S. music therapists/students and Disabled Indigenous people outside the
U.S.?

Analysis
Interpretivist research is a cyclical, reflexive process in which new conclusions can be
drawn as one returns to the same data, rather than a set procedure with a prescribed beginning
and end (Creswell, 2014). It depends on the subjective constructions of the researcher, those
studied, and readers/reviewers. Alignment between these multiple perspectives validates

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 37
conclusions drawn in interpretivist research (Creswell & Poth, 2018). I sought breadth of
perspectives for this project by gathering data from four different international music therapy
organizations, and I sought depth of research by analyzing both visual and textual
communications, as well as by cyclically re-engaging with the materials over an extended period
of time. I assigned themes based on my readings of the images and texts themselves; however,
my codes were necessarily shaped by my personal biases. Therefore, I sought advice from my
academic advisor throughout the process, including in choosing images, identifying themes, and
reflexively engaging with the images and texts. Since visual analysis is not part of my training, I
also gained feedback from an art therapist with experience in critical analysis regarding the
images. My conclusions based on the analyses were informed by the Disability studies and
Indigenous studies readings with which I engaged in this literature review.

The Images
I have chosen four images to analyze as examples of common representations of music
therapy in international service-learning. All images depict U.S. American music therapists or
music therapy students11 engaging in music-based experiences with Indigenous people in sites of
extractive colonialism. While Disability remains a fluid identity category, participants in all
photographs here are at least externally defined by Disability, either through the setting in which
they are photographed (e.g., “special needs schools”) or through categorized “populations” or
“goals” listed in the surrounding texts. Images A-C are public marketing photos drawn from
international service organizations’ websites, obtained through a Google search using phrases
such as “music therapy,” “international service-learning,” and “abroad” (Maddock, 2017; Music

11

From this point forward, I will use “music therapists” as a shorthand for both professionals and students when
referring to subjects in the photographs.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 38
Therapy Without Borders, 2019; Wills, 2019). Image D was taken from my own trip to Kenya in
2011 and was posted on my personal social media page.
Image A. Image A was retrieved from the home webpage for Music Therapy Without
Borders, an organization that “specializes in leading music & creative arts centered volunteer
service projects around the Caribbean and the globe” (Music Therapy Without Borders, 2019). It
was posted with the caption, “Student plays guitar with music therapy volunteer at a school for
children with special needs.”

Image A - A child in the Cayman Islands wearing glasses and a school uniform strums a guitar and smiles at a young man, who
holds the guitar and smiles back. In the background are two other children wearing school uniforms, and two adults.

Image B. Image B was retrieved from a blog post on the Peace Corps Stories web page.
The Peace Corps is an international volunteer organization run by the United States government.
The post is titled, “Using music therapy techniques to teach holistic wellness classes in Fiji.” The
photo was posted with the caption, “Practicing turn-taking, decision-making, fine motor skills
and social skills through music.”

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 39

Image B - Photo taken from above shows Kelli Maddock (white music therapist) holding guitar as a Fijian child strums. The feet
and/or hands of four other children are visible in the background; one child holds a triangle.

Image C. Image C was retrieved from a music therapy photo gallery on the Jamaican
Field Service Project (JFSP) website (Wills, 2019a). The Jamaican Field Service Project hosts
short-term service-learning and study abroad trips for United States-based university students to
travel to Jamaica. The photo was presented with a caption simply reading, “Music Therapists.”
The photo is also posted on an informational page that reads, “Music therapists are able to assist
a wide variety of needy populations in Jamaica, including geriatric, homeless, children with
autism, and developmentally disabled populations” (Wills, 2019b).

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 40

Image C - Three young white women stand or crouch facing an elder Jamaican man, who is seated in a manual wheelchair and
facing away from the camera. Two of the women play guitar, and the other plays a plastic chiquita; all three women smile and
appear to be singing.

Image D. Image D was taken on my personal camera and posted to my personal
Facebook page in 2011, following my own trip to Kenya through Miriam’s Circle:
Compassionate Growth NGO. Miriam’s Circle was a United States-based organization focused
on holistic community development in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Kenya,
which has since disbanded. While the photo was uncaptioned, it was posted within an album that
I titled, “Umoja, Ubuntu, Upendo: Mzuri Sana,” which roughly translates from Swahili as
“Togetherness, Connection12, Love: Very Good.” The child’s face has been obscured in the
image below to maintain the child’s anonymity.

12

The concept of ubuntu popularized by Desmond Tutu can be more accurately translated as the belief, “I am
because we are,” or “I am who I am because of who we are.”

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 41

Image D – Vee Gilman (white music therapist) kneels and leans over a Kenyan child lying on a mat. Vee holds the child's hand,
whose fingers are curled inward, and appears to sing. The child smiles with mouth open and looks up at the camera. The child’s
face has been obscured to maintain anonymity.

Actants
In order to map the network of contemporary U.S.-based music therapy service-learning
depiction, I have identified several actants observable in the images and their accompanying
contexts. The purpose is not in categorizing or assigning relative value to particular actants;
rather, identifying these actants begins to enrich the description and clarify the boundaries of the
network as a whole. The observable and directly inferable actants are listed below:
Humans

13

Music therapists
Music therapy students
Music therapy supervisors/educators
Local13 children/students
Local teachers and classroom aids
Local elders; “care center” residents
Photographers
Web designers
Viewers/readers

In the analysis section, “local” will be used to designate people who live in the community where the experiences
are taking place.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 42
Materials

Instruments (guitars, plastic Chiquita, triangle)
Functional/mobility aids (glasses, wheelchair, strategically placed
mat/pillows)
Classroom and classroom elements (i.e., chairs, desks, mat, table)
Care centers
Facility structures (e.g., outdoor pavilion in Image C)
Clothing/attire (school uniforms, music therapists’ professional or casual
attire)
Cameras, including camera phones
Computers and photo/website editing software

Immaterial
actants

Music
Money (funding, donorship, cost of travel/participation, organizational
revenue)
Movement/posture/self-presentation/expressions
English language
Participants’ personal stories
Universities, music therapist training, project-specific training
Music therapy literature/research
Nonprofit organizations (e.g. Peace Corps, Music Therapists Without
Borders)
Internet, web sites, social media
Images
Website texts: captions, organizational descriptions, program descriptions
Governing bodies (local and state government, American Music Therapy
Association, accrediting boards)

Symbols/ideas

Volunteering
Service-learning
Study abroad
Music therapy
Cultural competency
Professional development
Goals and skills (e.g., fine-motor skills, social skills)
“Need” (e.g., “needy populations,” “special needs”)
Newness, change
Constructions of difference
Help, assistance, service

Network Relations

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 43
The diagram below broadly represents the flow and connections between various actants
in the system of international music therapy service-learning. I will highlight some key themes
and connections that become evident through the diagram.

The Inner Circle. The diagram demonstrates that local stakeholders – program
participants, local facilities, and broader local communities – are somewhat peripheral in the
network. There are multiple levels of communication among Northern/Eurocentric stakeholders:
music therapy students, non-profit leaders, universities, and donors. Eurocentric stakeholders are
the primary audience of the public images and texts, as evident in the texts themselves (see text
analysis). None of the selected texts include direct testimonies from local program participants as
they do from music therapy student participants, nor do they include any sections written for
local audiences. Thus, the direct programs themselves are one of the only points of access for
local stakeholders in the entire network.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 44
This flow of communication conveys and constitutes power. It demonstrates the function
of the network in upholding power for Eurocentric stakeholders, especially for the music therapy
student participants and for the non-profit organization leaders. The programs are not simply
happening unto themselves; they are being mediated by constant communication about them to
other Eurocentric stakeholders. The direct interaction between music therapist and local
participant is necessarily shaped by all the communications leading to that interaction (e.g., the
advertisements directed at students, the marketing done at local facilities, the ideas conveyed in
music therapy education, the direct training done by the organization), as well as by the
preparation for communications after the fact (e.g., the presence of a photographer, the assigned
journaling processes and public testimonials). The materiality of the project as “service” or
“music therapy” is repeatedly enforced through these communications.
“Need” and “Help.” Messages of local “need” and agency-led “help” drive the whole
network. These messages are enforced at almost every level: they drive donors to fund the
projects, universities to approve the projects, music therapy students to join the projects, local
stakeholders to agree to the projects, and the public to approve of the projects (and by proxy, the
U.S. Americans who participate in them). Emphatic belief in the competency of local
communities at any point in the system, or serious doubt about the helpfulness of U.S. music
therapists, would destabilize the entire network.

Image Analysis
With the whole network in mind, image analysis can unearth the photos’ relationships to
colonial and ableist structures. I will ground this analysis in the first guiding question: “How do
these images reinforce or subvert dominant narratives of colonialism and ableism?” Having

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 45
analyzed each photo’s framing, making, and circulation individually, as well as the actors
indicated in each photo, I will share themes evident in the four images collectively.
Active Helpers and Passive Sufferers. All four images present music therapists as
active helpers “giving” music to Indigenous participants, aligning with dominant colonial and
ableist accounts of the “humanitarian cloud” in relation to colonized and Disabled people (Clare,
2001; Van Trigt & Legêne, 2016). They contribute to essentialized images of Indigenous people
in the global South as sufferers, and they uphold the charity model of Disability, positioning
music therapy as the helpful or generous force that can mitigate Disability as an individualized
tragedy (Clare, 2001; Myers, 2001a). I will describe this theme in greater detail, while also
noting moments and elements of subversion where they appear.
First, we must consider the mere presence of nondisabled, U.S. American music
therapists within the framing of each photograph. As Van Trigt and Legêne (2016) have pointed
out, the presence of Western healthcare workers in images documenting activities of Disabled
Indigenous people “limits our ability to see [the colonized subjects] as independent, to see their
agency” (p. 191). When the photograph’s framing emphasizes the visibility of music therapists
within the image, cutting faces of Indigenous participants out of the image (as in Images A and
B) or facing Indigenous participants away from the lens (as in Image C), the Western music
therapists’ roles as active subjects in relation to passive objects (Indigenous participants) are
even further emphasized. The comparative visibility of each group underscores the intended
audience for these images. These images are not posted so that, for example, local participants
can share with friends and family about their experiences; they highlight the white, helping faces
for white, “humanitarian” viewers.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 46
Music itself is an actor evident in each image. If music was represented as a shared
resource, the interaction and image could subvert the active/passive dichotomy. However, when
music is presented as something given by therapists and received by Indigenous participants, it
upholds the colonial and ableist active/passive dichotomy. Each image above represents music as
a resource being given unidirectionally, from music therapists to Indigenous participants. Images
C and D represent this unidirectionality the most extremely, with music therapists singing and/or
playing music to Indigenous recipients in each photo, and with the music therapist in Image D
additionally enacting physical movement upon the Indigenous subject. Image A represents the
greatest subversive quality in this area, as both child and music therapist actively play the same
instrument with similarly animated expressions. However, the framing of Image A represents the
music therapist as a mobile actor giving each participant access to music, one at a time; children
and staff in the background passively wait, watching the active musicking take place until the
music therapist presumably presents the guitar (and thus, the musical experience) to them.
Similarly, the music therapist in Image B presents the guitar to one participant as other children
look on; the photograph’s distribution with the caption emphasizing “turn-taking” further
positions music as a resource to which participants must passively wait to be given access.
While Disabled Indigenous people are consistently represented as passive in these
photographs, they resist stereotypic categorization as “sufferers.” When non-music therapists’
faces are visible (Images A and D), they are found smiling and looking directly at others. In this
way, these subjects may be understood as resistant actors influencing their own portrayal in
images for Western audiences. However, the impact of these positive expressions cannot be
understood as strictly subversive. In the context of the active/passive dichotomy already
established, they may feed dominant narratives of music therapy as a mitigating force in

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 47
response to the “tragedy” of Indigeneity or Disability. Further, the captions used in distribution
impact the message as well: Image C’s adjacent text indicating that music therapists “assist
needy populations” (Wills, 2019b) frames Indigenous people’s positive expressions as a function
of Western “assistance” rather than as one aspect of rich, contemporary lived experiences.
Interference. Depictions of music therapy as a positive interferent in contexts of
Indigeneity and Disability emphasize assimilative potentials of music, aligning with ethnically
genocidal lenses such as “kill the Indian, save the man” and with similar ableist expectations of
performative able-bodiness (McRuer, 2016). Such representations uphold the colonial code of
relations by implying that music therapists’ role is to “fix, diagnose, change, and intern”
Disabled Indigenous people “for [their] own good” (Todd & Wade, 1994). They ring dissonant
to Kenny’s ethic of non-interference in music therapy with Indigenous people (Kenny & Hadley,
2013) and uphold problematically individualistic models of Disability, approaching Disability as
something to be treated, cured, mitigated, or overcome (Clare, 2001).
Instruments in photos A, B, and C convey the assimilative project and reveal whose
musics “count” in international music therapy service-learning. These three photographs contain
four acoustic guitars, one plastic Chiquita, and one metal triangle. None of the photos contain
local instruments or instruments that align with folk musics indigenous to the site; all instruments
represent common and commodified tools within dominant music therapy structures in the
United States. Western music is thus visually communicated as the shared musical space,
positioning the music therapist not only as an active agent acting upon passive recipients, but
also as an assimilative agent introducing “real” (Western) music to Indigenous and colonized
people. The institutional contexts framing each picture can also be understood as actors revealing
the implicit assimilative project. For instance, the school uniforms in Image A and the

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 48
Westernized special education context in Image D covertly ally music therapy with larger
institutional sites of cultural genocide through assimilation.
In Image D, the music therapist acts as a literal interferent in the physical movements of
the child. The music therapist is physically positioned above the reclined child, moving the
child’s arm using a hand-under-hand movement. This movement not only literally interrupts the
child’s own natural movements; it also aligns with assimilative, taken-for-granted “goals” related
to performing normative movements in a Disabled body (Gibson & Teachman, 2012). Unable to
physically escape the music therapist, the child in Image D may be considered a resistant actor
enacting their agency to socially escape the forced encounter by directing their eye gaze away
from the music therapist, toward the photographer.
Similarly, the caption presented with Image B – “Practicing turn-taking, decisionmaking, fine motor skills and social skills through music” – reveals an explicit medicalized
paradigm that defines the role of the music as a positive interferent. The goals implied in this
caption assume an assimilative “achievement” of compulsory able-bodiness (McRuer, 2016)
through participation in Westernized musicking.
Individualized and Ahistorical. Do the images of international music therapy servicelearning situate the music therapy process within broader contexts of culture, community, and
colonialism? A situated representation would acknowledge unbalanced power in the therapy
relationship, especially as compounded by race, class, citizenship, ethnicity, and Disability. It
would represent health relationally and ecologically, and it would acknowledge local resources,
histories, and understandings of music and health (Stige & Aarø, 2011). Without this
situatedness, representations risk upholding simplistic and stereotyped representations of
communities, as well as falsely individualized representations of problems, health, and solutions.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 49
In one sense, Images A and B suggest communal connections in that they depict musical
interactions taking place in a group setting. In fact, all four images showcase relational
connections of some kind. However, the framing and making of each image emphasize the
dyadic relationship between music therapist and individual participant, even cropping other
participants’ faces out in Images A and B. Images A, C, and D are all situated in institutional
settings, but the framing of each photograph positions the music therapy experience as separate,
individual, and de-contextualized from the rest of the setting. Further, the institutional settings
themselves represent a siphoned, Westernized setting within the larger community, positioning
Disabled participants as separated “others within” (Van Trigt & Legêne, 2016).
Such individualized and decontextualized representations, paired with charity and
medical paradigms described above, allow music therapists to conceive of their work in
simplified terms that keep them from grappling with the complexities of colonialism and ableism
that inform such relationships. As such, culturally salient agents (such as instruments, songs, and
language) are falsely represented as value-neutral. Without acknowledging colonialism’s
presence in these interactions, music therapists inevitably repeat and reinforce it.
Social Distance and Hierarchy. While lack of representation may cause
underrepresented groups to be viewed as foreign or dangerous, representations that highlight
social distance and hierarchy can exacerbate this issue by solidifying underrepresented and
marginalized people’s position as “other” (Mahadeo & McKinney, 2007; Myers, 2001b; Van
Trigt & Legêne, 2016). These images of international music therapy service-learning ultimately
reinforce such social distance and hierarchy.
In all images except Image A, music therapists and non-music therapists can be identified
and categorized strictly based on racialized bodies. Similarly, in all four images,

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 50
nondisabled/Disabled dichotomies separate music therapists from Indigenous participants
through visual markers of physical impairment (the child’s glasses in Image A, the wheelchair in
Image C, and the child’s body positioning in Image D) and through accompanying texts
describing participants in terms defined by diagnosis (Image A, Image B, Image C).
Music therapists’ physical positioning in relation to Indigenous participants in each
image also indicates distinct role separations between music therapists and other participants. In
group settings (Images A and B), the music therapist is positioned independently in the middle of
a circle or arc comprised of Indigenous participants, whereas in Image C, the Indigenous subject
is surrounded by an arc of music therapists. Social separations are compounded by the guitars in
each of the first three pictures, which create a physical barrier between therapists and participants
even when played jointly. While these inverse positions carry differing implications for who is
“at the center” of the music therapy experience, the physical locations in each case separate
music therapists further from Indigenous participants and compound the visual “us/them”
categories already present based on racialized and impairment-defined bodies.
Hierarchies can be read visually through both the photograph angle and the subjects’
physical height in relation to one another. Image A spatially presents a relatively equal
relationship between the music therapist and the featured child, with therapist and child facing
one another at about the same height and the camera oriented on the same plane. In contrast, the
elevated camera angle in Image B presents participants as “below” the dominant gaze, and in
Images C and D the music therapists themselves are physically positioned above Indigenous
participants. These physical hierarchies align with the multiply inscribed social hierarchies
between therapists and participants in these settings, reinforcing paternalistic understandings
central to the charity model.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 51
As a whole, social distance and hierarchy as represented in these images define music
therapist identity in contrast to client identities. Music therapist identity here is white, Western,
U.S. American, settler, nondisabled, and dominant or paternal; this identity is solidified in
contrast to “client” or participant identities as Black, globally Southern, Indigenous/colonized,
and oppressed or dependent.

Text Analysis
Three of the four images (Images A, B, and C) were published or posted with significant
bodies of accompanying text. Analyzing these texts provides context for the images and provides
a richer understanding of the overall representations of international music therapy servicelearning. Image A is posted on the Music Therapists Without Borders (MTWB) homepage,
alongside a general description of MTWB, a letter from the organizational director, and several
testimonials from past music therapy volunteers. Image B is posted on the Peace Corps website
as part of a blog entry about one music therapist’s experience in the Peace Corps. Image C is
posted on multiple pages of the Jamaica Field Service Project (JFSP) website, which includes a
page of general information and a page of testimonials from past volunteers. I analyzed the first
six testimonials out of seventy-five that were posted.
As mentioned above, the only accompanying text to my personal photo was an album
title: “Umoja, Ubuntu, Upendo: Mzuri Sana.” My personal caption differs from the other texts in
that, because it is written in Swahili, its audience is limited to those who participated in the
service-learning project with me (both U.S. American colleagues and Kenyans with whom I had
connected on social media). However, since this caption provides limited written material to
analyze, I also included the narrative portion of a grant application that partially funded one of
my trips to Kenya. This trip was funded by the university through a “Discovery Grant” meant to

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 52
enrich my academic studies by allowing me to apply music therapy ideas outside the university
setting.
For this analysis, I derived codes and themes from the text itself rather than
superimposing categories onto the texts. I marked common messages or “codes” in the program
Atlas.ti, identifying 41 codes across the four texts. I condensed these codes into ten code groups,
which I will refer to as “themes.” The narrative analysis below will mainly relate to these themes
and their prevalence.
Themes. The ten themes are described in the table below. They are listed in order of
prevalence, meaning the number of instances in which they occur. The top seven themes were
present in all four texts.
Name

Occurrences Description

Positive impact on MTs

45

MTs and organizational leaders describing benefits to
participating MTs. Examples include describing the
experience as fun or challenging, crediting the experience for
increased cultural competency or other skills, and noting
increased employment opportunities because of the
experience. Many sections under this theme are direct
testimonials from participating MTs.

Local deficit/need

34

MTs and organizational leaders’ descriptions of local
communities and participants in terms of deficit or need.
These descriptions include an emphasis on “third world”
status of communities, personal trauma narratives of
program participants, and descriptions of program
participants in terms of deficit-oriented “population”
categories.

Beliefs about music

32

This theme reflects MTs’ beliefs about music through the
lens of their international service-learning experiences. The
main ideas here are about the “power of music,” either in
general or in terms of its particular significance for the local
community, and the idea that music bridges cultural gaps in
the service-learning experience.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 53
Cultural "competency"
ideas

30

Sections with this theme credit international service-learning
experiences with increasing MTs’ cultural competency.
Sometimes “cultural competency” is named directly; other
times particular ideas are valued, such as colorblindness,
universality, or understanding the local community.
Discourse related to “cultural competency” is analyzed
further below.

Positive impact on
locals/community

29

Most messages under this theme are general statements
about “service” or “making a difference” in the local
community. Others include descriptions of local participants
as engaged or grateful for MT experiences, and descriptions
of specific goals/purposes in MT such as helping local
participants cope with trauma or providing music as an
additional form of recreation. Contrasting with the “positive
impact on MTs” category, this category does not include any
direct testimonials from local participants.

Music therapy
beliefs/language

28

This category mainly consists of participant goals framed in
the language of music therapy, as well as general statements
crediting music therapy education with MTs’ preparedness
or programs’ successes. It also includes two quotes that I
coded as “MT evangelism,” which reflected a desire to
“introduce” or “expand” music therapy as a discipline in new
geographic areas.

Connection/bond
between MTs and
participants

13

In all four texts, MTs speak to the relationships and
connections that they felt with local participants. Some
describe an “instant bond” or connections forged through
music. Others describe lessons learned from local
participants or speak generally about “meaningful
connections.”

Audience

8

I used this theme to code narratives and passages clearly
directed toward a particular audience. While many sections
are written for the general public (with a strong Eurocentric
bent), some sections specifically address prospective
volunteers, organizational leaders, or funders.

Participant/MT
compare & contrast

8

Comparisons and contrasts are made through lenses of race,
class, and community; none in these texts relate to Disability.
Some contrasts note dichotomies between “first world” and
“third world.” Some comparisons emphasize universality and
colorblindness. Some simply name cultural differences, e.g.,
noting that local participants were curious about U.S. culture.

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 54
Local
knowledge/expertise

2

Only two instances of local knowledge and expertise are
present, both in Text 4 (my grant application to Arizona
State University). One notes the need for assessments done
by and for locals; the other notes that locals would be paid
for their expertise and contributions to service projects.
Contrasting discourse between local need and local expertise
is discussed below.

Speakers and Audiences. Before discussing the content of the texts, I want to first
establish the context of this discourse. This context establishes whose voices are present in the
discourse, whose voices are notably absent, and who the messages are directed toward. In this
case, the texts mainly serve to represent the organization and projects to the “general public” – a
term which I use loosely here. While most of the texts are publicly available online, their content
indicates that they are aimed at English-speaking readers within the United States. In some cases,
the audience was more specific (e.g., passages using second-person such as “I encourage you to
volunteer” directly address prospective volunteers).
Five communicative relationships were present in the texts. They are listed in order or
prevalence below. The abbreviation “org.” refers to organizations as a whole; it also includes
organizational leaders when they are addressed or speaking directly in the texts. The arrow
points from the speaker to the audience.
1.

Org.  volunteers general public

2.

Org.  prospective volunteers

3.

Volunteers  org. or org. leaders

4.

Org./volunteers  funders/donors

5.

Volunteers  co-volunteers and local participants

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 55
As already mentioned in the overall network description, these texts demonstrate that
local participant perspectives are somewhat peripheral to the whole communicative project in
international music therapy service-learning. Local participants are only addressed in the brief
photo caption in my Facebook post – only five words in the whole of the texts. Local participants
are not quoted in the texts at any point. Compare this to 75 testimonials from music therapists
posted by JAFSP alone. The emphasis on music therapists’ voices in the texts compounds a
similar emphasis on dyadic MT/participant connections in the images (see image analysis
above).
Top code groups. The most prevalent theme throughout the four texts is the positive
impact that international service-learning experiences had on participating MTs. This indicates
that while these projects may have many functions, their primary function is to provide a positive
experience for music therapy students and young professionals. Based on the texts, music
therapists were positively impacted because they found the experiences to be fun, meaningful,
and personally or professionally challenging; because they felt that they gained insight or
knowledge from the trips, especially knowledge related to culture; and because the trips in some
cases provided professional advantages after music therapists returned home. The “fun,”
vacation/voluntourism aspect of the trips, mentioned directly in two out of forty-five quotes in
the category, is understandably unique to travel-based experiences. However, music therapy
students presumably have opportunities to be challenged, to gain clinical experience and insight,
to build professional resumés, and to interact with clients of different cultures within their usual
academic and practicum experiences in the United States. What sets international servicelearning experiences apart from these other opportunities for so many students and volunteers?

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 56
I believe the second-most prevalent category, Local Deficit/Need, begins to answer this
question. Several quotes in this category construct the level of need for participants and
communities in these projects as more dire than the needs of clients or communities in the United
States. The construction of participants and communities as high-need concomitantly elevates
music therapy volunteers and their work. The assumption is that if the community or participants
need music therapy more, the music therapy itself is more effective or valuable, and the music
therapists themselves thereby become more effective or valuable as well. This assumption is
outlined in the following quote from Text 4: “Because the need in [local Kenyan community] is
so great, I believe that music therapy practices will pay off even more there than they typically
do here. By seeing the full positive power that music can have for people, I will be re-inspired in
my studies once I return to the United States.” Thus, of the benefits that MTs and organizational
leaders claim to belong uniquely to international service -learning projects, the majority rely on
the construction of an Other with elevated needs, elevated risk, and elevated potential for
transformation.
Local Deficit/Need vs. Local Knowledge/Resources. The reliance on deficit framing
throughout these texts is evident in the contrasting prevalence of two codes: Local Deficit/Need
(34 quotes) versus Local Knowledge/Resources (3 quotes). Terms emphasizing deficit are found
in all four texts, including the following phrases:


“needy populations”



“less fortunate”



“extreme poverty”



“severe trauma”

RUNNING HEAD: ABLEISM AND COLONIALISM IN IMTSL 57
When local community members are characterized or complimented, descriptions of their
strengths ultimately return to themes of deficit and need. For example:


“how strong these people are and how content they’ve learned to be with what
they have”



“[community member] epitomizes compassion in a context of extreme
marginalization”

Other constructions of need appear more covertly, through descriptions of participants
and communities in terms of clinical populations – especially in descriptions of disability – and
descriptions of local cultural norms in problematizing terms. The texts exemplify Walter’s
(2016) description of “5D data” commonly used to describe Indigenous people and communities:
they emphasize disparity, deprivation, disadvantage, dysfunction, and difference.
Local knowledge and resources are referenced in two of the four texts. The quotes here
refer to local musicking as a resource, the need for local voices in assessment processes, and
plans to pay local stakeholders for ongoing labor related to the music therapy projects. Each
ultimately relates back to ideas about project efficacy. For example, the paid local stakeholder is
presented as someone to be taught/mentored who can then continue work done during the music
therapy project.
Ideas of “Cultural Competency.” 14 One common theme was related to cultural
competency, occurring sometimes as direct claims that trips built MTs’ cultural competency and

14

Several authors in music therapy and elsewhere have critiqued the concept of “cultural competency,” arguing that
the term “competency” misleadingly suggests the possibility of a final and complete state of “competency” in all
cross-cultural relations. Some have suggested alternative goals such as “cultural humility.” I have chosen to keep the
term “competency” here not based on my own agreement with it as a point of arrival, but because it aligns with the
ideas presented in the texts that I analyzed.

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other times in MTs’ reflections about what they learned related to culture. However, as Freidus
(2017a) found in other “voluntourism” experiences, volunteers’ sense of increased cultural
competency sometimes actually coincides with shifts toward reductive misrepresentations of
visited communities and oversimplified misunderstandings of poverty. Similarly, in the field of
music therapy, Tang and Schwantes (2021) found that music therapists who participated in study
abroad experiences did not consistently increase their cultural competency, as assessed by
themselves one or more years after the projects. I sought thicker descriptions in the texts to
understand what constituted volunteers’ self-assessed increases in cultural competency after their
service-learning experiences.
Overall, I found that the concept of cultural competency was ill-defined and connected to
many varied, sometimes conflicting ideas about culture in the texts. Central to codes in the
Cultural Competency theme was a sense of finality and confidence, as evident in statements such
as, “Now I am familiar with the community,” and claims that service-learning experiences
“broaden [MTs’] multicultural competency.” The term competency is operative here, because it
reflects the writers’ sense of an arrival point in cross-cultural relations – the idea that such a skill
can be built through one cross-cultural experience and held by the music therapist from then on,
translating universally into future cross-cultural interactions. While such “competency”
represents a variety of beliefs, it is presented in the texts as one thing that music therapists can
gain more of through participation in these projects.
Music is presented throughout the texts as a sort of lubricant in cross-cultural
interactions, easing social friction that is presented as inherent to cross-cultural interactions.
Sometimes this relies on the construction of music as a sort of “universal language,” such as in
the quote: “I may not speak their language, but everyone loves music.” At other times music is

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presented as more of a tool that MTs employed intentionally to reduce such tensions. For
example, “music provides a beautiful barrier [in discussing taboo topics],” and “music was a
major tool that helped me connect with people.” One text (Text 2) mentions the importance of
finding culturally integrative music, such as reggae remixes of songs that were popular in the
United States. As it is discussed in these texts, part of cultural competency might be the music
therapist’s intentional use or application of music to reduce social tensions. However, this
definition retains the music therapist as the agent in the interaction, the one controlling and
manipulating the music for such purposes. It also centers music therapists’ music as universal or
easily translatable, rather than reflecting an open stance of learning local musics and their
purposes. Finally, it solves a problem that is also defined from the MTs’ perspectives: the social
tensions described relate more to MTs’ sense of discomfort in navigating a new cultural
environment than to clients’ experiences of discomfort in music therapy contexts.
Other cultural themes in the texts relate to sameness and difference between local
communities and MTs’ home communities, generalizing these comparisons to more global
us/them dichotomies. Some reflected a “colorblind” attitude, as in the quote, “I now have a more
universal view of the world, and how similar people really are.” Others made sense of the local
culture through comparisons with MTs’ home cultures, as in the quote, “People in the [host
community] face many of the same problems as people here in the States, but their challenges
are magnified by the context of extreme poverty.” In other cases, MTs took away insights about
their own cultural selves through comparisons with their experiences in the new environment –
for example, “I just learned as much about my own culture as I did about the people of
Jamaica.” Prevalent throughout characterizations of the local culture are ideas that the
impoverished and needy areas are the “real” version of the culture – for example, the references

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to experiencing life in the “third world,” or specifically contrasting the “real Jamaica” to the
Jamaica experienced by many tourists. These essentializing contrasts align with Freidus’s
findings in other voluntourism experiences, indicating that MTs may come away from
international service-learning projects with more simplistic understandings of theirs and other
cultures, global problems, and large-scale systems of inequity.
Active/Passive Dichotomy. As mentioned above, one hallmark of the “humanitarian
cloud” is discourse presenting privileged actors (settler/colonizer, nondisabled, wealthy, etc.) as
active helpers and targeted actors (Indigenous/colonized, Disabled, poor, etc.) as passive
recipients of care. The words and phrases used to describe experiences in international music
therapy projects overwhelmingly aligned with this dichotomy. The list below shows words and
phrases that MTs used to describe their actions in these settings:
Verbs

Other phrases

Teach

“whose lives I touched”

Serve

“what we did for them”

Assist

“a miracle and a gift”

Volunteer
Influence
Help
Support
Intervene

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Provide
Allow
Broaden access

Each of these words and phrases conveys a dynamic in which MTs act and local
community members passively receive the MTs’ actions and their related benefits. By contrast,
local participants’ actions are only described in two of the texts (Text 2 and Text 4). Participants’
actions are most commonly presented in passive voice. The list below shows words and phrases
describing local participants’ and community members’ actions as discussed in the texts:
Verbs

Other phrases

Practice

“are inclined to answer [the MT]”

Swarm [the MT]

“get really into it”

Misbehave
Change
Take care [of another community member]
Volunteer

Aside from descriptions of one participant’s service to her community (described with the
verbs “take care” and “volunteer” listed above), community members’ actions are either not
mentioned in the texts or are described in terms of their reception and response to MTs’ actions.
This erases local community projects and intra-community self-reliance, presenting outside

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volunteers – specifically music therapists – as the agents in solving local problems. Other
descriptions locate problems within participants themselves (e.g. “misbehave”), and the verb
“swarm” depicts community members in language commonly used to describe insects. Thus,
when community members are portrayed as active, the descriptions evoke multiple stereotypes
leveraged against Disabled and Indigenous people.

Discussion
Overall, the visual and textual discourse regarding international music therapy servicelearning projects constructs the music therapy experience as a decidedly unequal exchange
between “haves” (music therapists) and “have nots” (local participants). As portrayed in this
discourse, the music therapy experience positively impacts local participants by giving them the
“miracle and gift” (Text 3) of music therapy and its associated skills or resources, and it benefits
the music therapists by “accelerating [their] growth” (Text 1) through structured engagement
with a needy and receptive Other. These representations may not reflect the “real” events that
occur in such projects, and they are certainly not the only possible interpretation of the events;
for example, local participants may not even be experiencing their engagements with the
volunteers as “music therapy” per se. However, from a critical materialist perspective (Butler,
1993; Jones & Jenkins, 2008), the repeated enforcement of this lens creates a materiality that
makes such depictions real. While the network of international music therapy service-learning
discourse has many functions, the parameters of the network and the contents of the discourse
reveal one primary purpose: to substantiate the worth of music therapists with dominant
identities. This benefit is directly experienced by the individual music therapists who participate
in such service-learning projects; however, the conveyance of power as an effect of this network
also points to the continually generated, broader construction of music therapists as helpful,

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healthy, skilled, resourced, and so on. This network shapes the materiality of music therapy as a
whole – the parameters, power dynamics, and values inscribed into it – both within and beyond
international service-learning experiences.

Music Therapist Sentiments Toward “Others”
Representations of international music therapy service-learning projects reflect a broad
range of possible sentiments, beliefs, and relational stances from the participating music
therapists, and each of these individual experiences is situated within complex networks of
colonialism, ableism, and so on. Myriad writers and theorists have described a variety of
sentiments that white settlers and nondisabled folks take toward oppressed Others, including
fear, desire/attraction, infantilization/patronization, disinterest or avoidance, embarrassment,
fury, pity, experimentation/objectification, moral superiority and satisfaction, tokenizing
enthusiasm, idealization, curiosity, and disgust (Alloula, 1987; DuBois, 1920; Morrison, 1994;
Yancy, 2016). Many such sentiments were evident in the images and texts that I analyzed, such
as in music therapists’ elated expressions in several photographs (tokenizing enthusiasm), their
physical positioning above and bodily manipulation of local participants
(infantilization/patronization), and their repeated accounts of growth and transformation through
participation in international music therapy experiences (experimentation/objectification). Given
this broader context, I would like to highlight one pattern that is less evident at the surface but
may inform many of these encounters: the construction of problematized Others to assuage
anxieties and fears of those in power.
Fear, Desire, and Constructed Otherness. While overt expressions of fear were not
prominent in the images or texts that I analyzed, the themes that I found combined with critical
discourse regarding dominant motivations indicated that fear and desire may be at the root of

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these and many other colonial/ableist encounters. Music therapists’ discourse regarding their
experiences in international service-learning contexts indicates that they depend on
problematized Others to fix, change, study, and compare to themselves. Indeed, in the texts
analyzed here, the increased (constructed) “need” in international service-learning settings
professedly elevates the value of music therapists who participate in them. As I repeatedly came
across these themes, I wondered why dominant music therapists so predictably created these
contrasting dichotomies in relation to clients and participants. Fear was a fascinating answer –
something I never expected, that was not obvious in the discourse that I analyzed, that I never
was aware of driving my own international service-learning participation, but that ultimately lay
beneath the surface in each of these examples.
Critical theorists recognize that such repeated constructions of otherness belie the fears
and desires of those in power, those most invested in their construction. Baldwin spoke to this
dynamic in his analysis of white people’s need for the problematized constructions of Black
people:
What you say about somebody else, anybody else, reveals you. What I
think of you as a being is dictated by my own necessities, my own
psychology, my own fears and desires. I’m not describing you when I talk
about you; I’m describing me… What white people have to do is try and
find out in their own hearts why it is necessary to have a 'n*****' in the
first place, because I'm not a n*****. I'm a man. But if you think I'm a
n*****, it means you need it. (Baldwin, 1963)

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These projections onto constructed Others do not simply occur as isolated and individual
sentiments. Baldwin’s description of individual fears projected onto problematized Others
applies to the white gaze on a structural and communal level. As Yancy (2016, p. xxx) described,
“The Black body is constructed as antithetical within a binary logic that points to the white
body’s own signifying [and material] forces to call attention to itself as normative.” In other
words, white folks aim their own fears into the construct of Blackness, constructing an opposite
to which they can contrast themselves and an Other from whom they can distance themselves.
Thus, analyzing the ways that white folks present Blackness reveals whites’ anxieties and fears
about themselves.
Such othering as a response to individual and collective fears is not limited to
white/Black racial relations. Nussbaum (2004, p. 219) described similar projections of
nondisabled folks’ fears onto Disabled people and bodies: “Normals know that their bodies are
frail and vulnerable, but when they can stigmatize the physically disabled, they feel a lot better
about their own human weakness.” Kaplan (1997) similarly noted that colonizers’ depictions of
Indigenous people as s*v*ges and cannibals likely represented guilty projections of colonizers’
own violence and rapacity in the context of North American genocide. In each case, the
aggrandized and problematized portrayals of marginalized individuals and groups can be
understood as a mirror that reflects individuals and groups from dominant groups -- their
anxieties, fears, and traits from which they wish to separate themselves.
This dynamic brings to mind multiple meanings of the word “foil”: Dominant groups and
individuals foil (prevent from succeeding) marginalized groups by repeatedly presenting “others”
as a foil (a contrasting person/group that emphasizes the traits of its opposite) in supposed
opposition to themselves. However, these presentations function more like literal foil (i.e.

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aluminum foil), reflecting back a diffuse and distorted image of the dominant groups and
individuals who set them up.
In this case, music therapists’ understandings of clients, participants and communities
may reflect the fears and desires of music therapists, both individually and as a collective. In
international service-learning settings, why is it important to music therapists that their clients be
Indigenous? Disabled? Located in the Global South? Cash-poor? Just as Baldwin described
white people needing the construction of Black people as “n*****” in order to justify and
elevate themselves, international music therapy service-learning discourse demonstrates that
music therapists in the United States need the construction of a high-need, highly othered client
or community in order to justify their roles and assuage their own fears. The specifics of these
constructions may point to particular underlying fears held by participating music therapists. For
instance, constructions of clients as needy may assuage fears related to dependency, allowing
therapists to view themselves contrastingly as self-sufficient. Construction of clients as passive
and grateful may mitigate personal or vocational feelings of futility, allowing music therapists to
understand their work to be powerful and transformative. Thus, the acknowledgement of this fear
unsettles the baseline assumptions and ignorances that generally go unquestioned in music
therapists’ problematic and harmful self-representations, facing the mirror back toward music
therapists themselves.
Opportunities for Personal Reflection. For music therapists who wish to critically
examine the biases and drivers behind the harms we produce, Baldwin’s analysis introduces a
tool for self-reflection that moves beyond the intellectual. Identifying patterns of harm (e.g. “I
know now that presenting my clients as passive and needy is a symptom and propagator of
colonial and ableist harm”) is an important first step. Just as Trask (2019) suggested that

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oppressors can be found by asking, “who benefits?”, oppressors may engage in this first step by
asking the inverse: “Who is harmed?” For example, music therapists examining presentations of
their own work may ask: If I am presented as helpful here, who is framed as needy? If I am
presented as healthy and normative here, who is framed as broken or deviant? If I am presenting
myself or my work as a solution here, who or what is framed as a problem?
However, the next step is to examine why we feel the need to create problematized Others
to “fix” or “help” in the first place. Otherwise, we may find it easy to distance ourselves from the
harms we cause. For example, I often (especially in the process of this thesis project) feel
compelled to distance myself from my experiences and stances in Kenya, positioning myself in a
“before/after” dichotomy that absolves me now from harm I caused in the past. I can create such
a distance by emphasizing the particular context of international service-learning, with which I
have not engaged in several years. I can create a distance by positioning myself now as “after”
having engaged in more critical theory, Disability studies, Indigenous studies, and so on.
However, a more honest examination places greater accountability upon me, acknowledging the
perpetual tension of defaulting to colonial and ableist patterns even as I seek to unlearn them.
Yancy (2016) describes this process as an examination of the times in which white folks are
“ambushed by whiteness,” the ways in which “whiteness waylays the white self even as one
fights against racism with all good intentions” (p. 20). This type of reflection seeks the patterns
behind the particulars – patterns of harm that I have replicated onto my clients, both
internationally and locally, both then and now. This deeper reflection, which much of my thesis
work and graduate work overall have consisted of, includes questions such as: Why have I so
frequently sought clients who I could frame as “high need” or “high risk”? Why do I overemphasize and aggrandize my own impact upon my clients, both in Kenya and locally? How

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would it change my own self-conception, personally and as a clinician, to deeply and
consistently understand my clients and communities as extremely capable, full of expertise,
highly resourced, and active agents in their own liberation?

What Can Be Done?
The discourse that I analyzed revealed repeated, multiple layers of harm conveyed both
intimately and broadly, through both the representations of international music therapy servicelearning and the projects themselves. These revelations beg the question: Can international
music therapy service-learning ever be anti-colonial or anti-ableist? Or even, Can music therapy
as a field ever be anti-colonial or anti-ableist?
Abolition. Overall, I personally find myself with quite an aversive stance toward music
therapy service-learning projects at the close of this research. Even knowing the positive
experiences that I had in Kenya, and even maintaining some relationships with friends (based
both in the U.S. and in Kenya) who I met during those experiences, I recognize that those
positive aspects still ultimately fit as cogs within a larger, more robust network that perpetrates
both intimate and global levels of harm. This harm acts against the very people and communities
who I came to know and care about within my experiences in Kenya.
International service-learning projects are so rooted in colonial and ableist notions of
saviorism, pathology, exploitation, and pity, that an anti-colonial, anti-ableist version is difficult
to imagine. As Van Trigt and Legêne (2016) noted, the very presence of white/settler,
nondisabled “helpers” (or guests, or interferents) can falsely suggest that Disabled Indigenous
people needed to be helped, managed, studied, or controlled. Is there a possibility of these
projects that does not draw on music therapists’ desire to do one of these things – to help,
manage, study, or control a problematized Other? With such a robust history of missionaries,

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volunteers, and healthcare professionals operating as colonial and ableist agents, is it possible for
these projects not to (albeit unwittingly) replicate these same conveyances of power? I cannot
firmly answer “yes” to either of these questions. Thus, for well-meaning music therapy students
and professionals wondering what can be done about these projects, one answer might be to
simply not go. For music therapists working in such projects and wondering how to change them
to be less ableist and colonial, the first question might be: Should this work continue at all?
Just this discourse analysis carries ramifications beyond the strict context of international
service-learning settings, these questions also generalize to the field of music therapy more
broadly. Does music therapy persist as an entity without leaning on notions of “help” and
control? Without multiply inscribed power dynamics between therapist and client? Without
music therapists’ individual and internal desires to disrupt, interfere, or (more broadly) enact
change upon another? Similarly, in a field rooted so heavily in medicalized and ableist notions of
disability, as well as in colonial structures, does any music therapy or music therapist ever fully
avoid replicating these conveyances of power?
I do not have firm “yes” responses to any of these questions either. Yet, I continue to
work liminally, continuing my work as a music therapist while critiquing myself and the field –
knowing that I will never completely escape my own epistemologies of ignorance, ambushes of
whiteness (and other dominant stances), and perpetration of harm. It may be that the field of
music therapy – and more intimately, my own work right now – perpetrates more harm than
good; it may be that the only way to genuinely achieve anti-colonial and anti-ableist goals is to
abolish the field entirely. It is possible that my tolerance for this field (and my belief in my own
work) right now is driven not only by a lack of awareness, but a refusal to recognize all the

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layers of harm in which I participate. Here again, I must actively resist the impulse to situate
myself dichotomously, as an “outsider” or an “exception” within the field.
Radical change. An anti-colonial and anti-ableist version of these entities, if it exists,
would necessarily shift the assumptions and boundaries that currently define both international
service projects and the music therapy field. It would radically shift the schema associated with
“international service-learning,” and even with “music therapy” more broadly. For instance, the
idea of “service” signifies the dynamic in which music therapists and volunteers assume to know
the problems of a community, assume to hold the solutions to those problems, and proceed to act
upon these ideas with the expectation that community members will passively receive and
benefit from them. The idea of “therapy” conventionally points to ideas of broken or suffering
participants, receiving care/help/healing from healthy, unproblematic, and unproblematized
healers. If music therapy was definitively anti-colonial and anti-ableist, many things that are
currently considered “music therapy” would no longer “count” as music therapy. Many things
that are currently definitionally excluded from “music therapy” would be incorporated, perhaps
even centered. The identity and role of “music therapist” would necessarily stretch, contract, and
become fluid – less static and dichotomous than its current in/out status and its definitional
checklist of (mainly academic) requirements. It would not only consider, but celebrate and center
the times in which folks who I currently consider “clients” teach me, heal me, move me, and
connect to me. It would celebrate and center the times in which folks who I currently consider
“clients” teach, heal, move, and connect with their own families, friends, and community
members – beyond institutionalized settings, at unscheduled and unprescribed times, and without
the presence of dominant outsiders.

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Degrees of Harm. As beautiful as these radical changes would be, these visions often
feel far-off and idealistic. As Martin Luther King, Jr. explained, justice work requires “audacious
faith” in radical change paired with diligent work within the now – a constant wrestling with both
the “is-ness” and the “ought-ness” of the world. Postcolonial feminist theorist Mohanty (1988)
described “degrees of harm” as one way to conceptualize important changes within ultimately
problematic structures. Music therapists have plenty of agency to enact changes that mitigate
harm by degree, even as we continue to perpetrate harm within our lives and work. For instance,
the harm that I perpetrated through my representations of experiences in Kenya might have been
mitigated to a degree if:
1. Local participants had made, framed, and/or received the images of the experiences we
shared,
2. I had member-checked the images and descriptions of my work with local community
members before sending them to my personal network and potential funders,
3. I had received explicit and affirmative consent to take and share the images and stories
that I took from those whose pictures and stories I was taking, and/or
4. Local participants had defined and described the experiences that took place between
us, either instead of or in addition to my own descriptions.

The potential to reduce harm by degrees, while not offering an ultimate utopian future,
provides something which clinicians can grasp. This framework can help music therapists and
other clinicians avoid immobilization and despair. It also prompts us to continually engage with
the things that we find problematic, rather than seeking to avoid them entirely.

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As an Indigenous musician in my home region pointed out to me, sometimes the
obsessive avoidance of harm can cause more harm itself (T. Sabbas, personal communication,
September 2017). I told him that when I was present for Indigenous music and dancing, I often
stood at a distance and silently observed. I wanted to avoid harm that I might cause by
overstepping, invading, or singing songs that did not belong to me. However, he noted that what
I intended as a respectful distance could also be interpreted as a cold distance, a disapproving
distance, or an indifferent distance. A similar lesson was evident in the video The Color of Fear
(Lee, 1994), a conversation on race in which the white participant who repeatedly blunders and
finally listens to his colleagues of color is, in the end, more tolerable than the “good” white
participant who remains silent through most of the conversation to avoid offense. These
instances emphasized to me that harm is possible in every direction; the goal cannot be to avoid
it entirely. By engaging, failing, acknowledging, and learning, at least harm can be excavated
and reduced by degree.

Beyond International Service-learning Settings
I have investigated such constructions in the context of international music therapy
service-learning due to its clear, multiply inscribed representations of dichotomy and disparity.
However, music therapists invoke themes of high need, dependency, and transformation through
therapy in many settings beyond international service-learning. Such discourse shapes the
materiality of music therapy as a discipline, from ideas in music therapy education to direct
experiences in sessions. Any time that clients are being described or presented collectively, as
metaphors or simplifications rather than complex and unique wholes, music therapists have
allowed their own anxieties to overtake and calcify their clinical relationality. In such cases,
music therapists must investigate why they need clients and settings upon whom they can project

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ideas of need, lack, and passivity. Just as Baldwin advised white folks to look into their hearts
and learn why they needed to construct a ‘n*****’ in the first place, music therapists must look
inwardly to deconstruct their desire to present a “high-need” client, an “at-risk” client, a
“violent” client, an “aggressive” client, a “resistant” client, and so on.
Future research in the field of music therapy could expand on this project to examine
representations of music therapy work in contexts beyond the international service-learning
settings that I explored here. These might include local music therapy sessions either within or
outside of settler-colonial contexts, sessions portraying music therapists with nondominant
identities (e.g., Indigenous, BIPOC, or Disabled music therapists), and examinations along other
axes of power (e.g., sexism, heterosexism, sizeism, and so on). Future research might also
examine other forms of discourse – especially music, which was a notably absent feature of the
discourse in this thesis.

Conclusion: Becoming Un-sutured
This brand of music therapy – that which roots itself in multiply inscribed power
differentials between client and therapist – is not the only possible version of music therapy, nor
is it the only paradigm through which music therapists currently practice. As Scrine (Australian
Music Therapy Association, 2020) has described, “Music therapy is a profession built outside of
pathology and deficit,” whose work can draw on intersecting resources, identities, and contexts
rather than relying on fixed and reduced understandings of clients. New materialities can be
produced through iterative accounts of music therapy that destabilize the realities depicted by
those in power (Jones & Jenkins, 2008). For example, new materialities emerge from the direct
perspectives of clients and communities with whom music therapists interact, especially from the
ways in which such accounts critique and contrast with dominant narratives. Such materialities

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can also develop from accounts of music therapy that depict both therapist and client as whole
and complex, each with their own needs and resources. Kenny’s Field of Play, her principle of
non-interference, and her belief in the self-organizing system provide examples and foundations
for such practice (see Kenny, 1989; Kenny & Hadley, 2013). These materialities can destabilize
the colonial and ableist underpinnings of dominant music therapy practices and representations,
introducing radical changes to what music therapy is and what it can be.
Shortly before her passing, Kenny wrote about the ways in which it was necessary for
music therapists to “put aside” sedimented, power-infused understandings of their roles and
relationships with clients:
We have to put aside various aspects of our own identity, like “position”, or
“healthy” to engage fully. How do we colonize ourselves intrapersonally as music
therapists so that this deep connection cannot be realized? Then how do we
subsequently colonize our patients and clients? (Personal communication cited in
Stige, McFerran & Hadley, 2017, para 10)

Kenny described this process of “putting aside” as necessary for the deep sense of
wonder and true play present in meaningful therapy. Yancy (2016) described a similar
process of “nurturing a disposition to be un-sutured, a disposition to crack, re-crack, and
crack again the calcified operations of the white gaze” (p. 14). Neither depiction
represents a single journey with a distinct point of arrival. Movement away from
dominant, reductive understandings requires iterative self-reflection and an openness to
being surprised, confronted, curious, and in awe. Music therapists must “look into their
hearts” (Baldwin, 1963) and honestly reflect on the ways they represent their own work,

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so as to unearth and destabilize the fears, biases, and anxieties that motivate calcified
understandings of their clients and communities.

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Appendix: Analyzed Texts
Text 1: Music Therapy Without Borders, website homepage
Enriching lives across the globe, note by note ♫
•
What is MTWOB
Music Therapy Without Borders specializes in leading music & creative arts centered volunteer
service projects around the Caribbean and the globe. Our trips combine the power of the arts
with the excitement of international travel and the desire to make an impact.
Our Mission
Our mission is to facilitate enriching & transformative opportunities for students and
professionals to learn, grow, connect, and broaden their multicultural competency, while
expanding the reach of the field of music therapy.
Join the Movement!
Sign up for one of our unique international service projects for an authentic, purposeful way to
explore the world while learning, connecting, and making an impact.
Welcome!
Are you a music therapy student looking to accelerate your growth?
Are you a professional music therapist hoping to expand your reach?
Are you a choral singer who wants to engage in meaningful interactions with local populations
on your next tour?
Do you love to travel, meet new people, and experience other cultures?
You’ve come to the right place!
Thank you for stopping by the Music Therapy Without Borders website! As the Founder &
Director of MTWOB, I want to invite you to have a look around and see what we are all about.
Be sure to check out the photo galleries and project blogs from past trips to get a sense of what
our volunteer service projects are like! I hope that you are able to find all the information you are
looking for.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
I hope to meet you on one of our upcoming trips soon!
“What an incredible week!
Julianne was a gracious host that taught us how to lead in a special needs summer camp,
all while showing us the best of Cayman!”
“TAYA 2017 was a fantastic experience and a great introduction to the idea of global music
therapy.
We were able to address the needs of the community and have a fabulous time in the process of
our work.
Invite me again, please!”
“A wonderful experience connecting with kids while testing your own creative energies.”

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“[This project] was a challenging, encouraging, and rewarding experience for myself as a
professional.
I would encourage anyone who is interested in growing in self-awareness to
take a leap of faith and sign up for the next service trip!”

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Text 2: Peace Corps, “Stories” webpage feature
Using music therapy techniques to teach holistic wellness classes in Fiji
Life in Fiji begins with rhythm, whether it is mothers patting their baby’s bums to get them to
sleep or hearing the village lali (traditional drum of the south pacific, pronounced “lah-lee”)
proclaim morning devotionals at 5:30 a.m.
Practicing turn-taking, decision-making, fine motor skills and social skills through music.
Every breath and every day in Fiji begins with music.
There is something inherently special about music; scientists have spent decades trying to
quantify the “it” quality of music. It makes you want to dance, changes your emotions, transports
you to another country, transports you to another time and can remind you of that one memory
you forgot you remembered.
Following World Wars I and II, a few musicians began treating shell shock (currently known as
post-traumatic stress disorder) through music. From this, the field of music therapy was created.
It’s still a relatively new field in the United States, with only around 7,000 practicing music
therapists. In order to be a music therapist in the U.S., one must complete at least a four-year
degree, a practicum, a 1,200-hour internship and pass a board certification exam.
I don’t remember a specific moment when I learned about the music therapy field, but I do
remember that when I was choosing my undergraduate degrees of Bachelor of Arts in Music and
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, I figured that the only profession I could possibly go into was
music therapy. During my master’s of music therapy, I learned that music therapy was using
music to reach a non-music goal. I learned to use music to reach goals with people with
developmental disabilities and psychiatric disorders, older adults, the medical field, holistic
wellness and trauma. I completed my internship working with trauma and had an amazing
internship director who encouraged me to think toward the bigger picture. I had always wanted
to apply to the Peace Corps, and the timing just seemed right.
A picture of a student's journal following the "Blurred Lines" intervention used to teach consent.
Music seemed to be magical! The very first day I arrived in my host village with a guitar, I was
swarmed by children and ended up singing “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen” at least five
times. Music created an instant bond and instant cultural integration; I may not speak their
language very well, but everyone loves music.
In Fiji, most Volunteers teach in either primary or secondary schools teaching holistic wellness
education courses. I teach these classes, plus music classes at a secondary school with around
200 students. Our emphasis is on life skills and sexual reproductive health education. Sexual
reproductive health is taboo to talk about in Fiji, so music offers a beautiful barrier; I’m not
discussing the taboo topic, but the music or the artist is. Students are more inclined to answer
questions about music than questions about them personally.

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Most of the time, I use music therapy techniques such as lyric analysis to enhance critical
thinking skills in regards to life skills, singing to boost self-esteem or songwriting to increase
confidence. For just about every topic in our classes, from resilience to sexual health to
community safety, there is always a song for that topic. And in Fiji, there is most definitely a
reggae remixed version on the internet somewhere. We talk about the lyrics and emotions;
emotional identification is a precursor to understanding empathy and sympathy.
Teaching Year 13 about consent through the use of the song "Blurred Lines."
My favorite lesson uses the song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke and Pharrell to discuss
consent, rape culture and victim blaming. It’s a fun and catchy song – it makes you want to
dance – but the lyrics aren’t the best. In fact, there is no “blurred line” on consent.
The students underline one lyric they really enjoy and at the end, they have to imagine that
someone is saying that to them in real life. What would they do? How would they say no? They
get really into it and really own their decisions.
I’ve also used music to talk about puberty (“Hot and Cold” by Katy Perry), healthy relationships
(“Hello” by Adele), goal setting (“Drive” by Incubus) and much more.
Music is magical. It creates this instant bond and my integration is enhanced when I go out of the
way to use reggae versions or Fijian songs. It is a true sign of respect. It’s also a positive
reinforcer; when my students misbehave, I remove music from the lessons and they quickly
change their behaviors.
I owe my incredible experience, success in the classroom and cultural integration in the Peace
Corps to the training I received as a music therapist.
Kelli Maddock is a youth development Volunteer in Fiji. She has a master's degree in music
therapy from Drury University.

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Text 3: JAFSP website, description and first six of 75 testimonials
MT-BC Supervised Music Therapy Clinical Hours
The trips of the Jamaica Field Service Project include music therapy students and professionals
from across the US. These university students work under the supervision of AMTA board
certified music therapists and professors. Our music therapy students work at a variety of
locations throughout the rural parishes of Jamaica, including the parish Infirmaries, hospitals,
homeless centers, and special needs schools across the island. Music therapists are able to assist
a wide variety of needy populations in Jamaica, including geriatric, homeless, children with
autism, and developmentally disabled populations. Students train extensively before and during
their trip, preparing for their work in the care centers under the supervision of our AMTA
certified MT-BC’s.
[Participant name], St. Mary of the Woods College
JAFSP was a fulfilling and multi-faceted cultural immersion and volunteer experience. Through
the exposure to Afro-Caribbean music and culture, training with skilled supervisors, and living
among locals, I learned about Jamaican history and modern life. I knew that my work was
making a difference, and I had so much fun doing it - the Jamaica Field Serivce Project is
"voluntourism" at its finest!
[Participant name], Sarah Lawrence College
I feel so lucky to have been given this experience because it changed my life. I never knew I
could feel love for a country and culture not my own, my passion for music and my belief in its
power has increased exponentially, and I cherish every moment I had with the men, women, and
children whose lives I touched. They think what we did for them was a miracle and a gift, but
what they don't know is what they gave to me in return is so much more then I could ever ask for
and I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.
[Participant name], University of Western Ontario
It's such an easy, selfish thing for Americans to go into a third-world culture like that and feel
guilt. But when you realize how strong these people are, and how content they've learned to be
with what they have, there's no way you can take the easy way out. You learn to be strong with
them; to not pity them, but rather to walk beside them, hold their hand, sing together, and smile
together through music.
[Participant name], State University of NY at Potsdam
As you may know, I graduated this past May, and have been applying for teaching positions all
over the state with little luck until recently. Last week, I was offered a position to teach
instrumental music grades 4-8, in the Syracuse City School District. I was told they received
over 70 applicants for the position. I was also told that my application stood out because of my
experience Jamaica. I am forever indebted to you and the program for the considerable
advantages that landed me my first teaching gig. Thank you!
[Participant name], Wooster College

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This trip was not only exciting and fun, but for me it was life changing. Just by taking a step
back, I learned just as much about my own culture as I did the people of Jamaica's. I now have a
more universal view of the world, and how similar people really are. I realized how much our
actions can influence people all across the planet. I have gained the confidence to travel more
and further expand my personal boundaries
[Participant name], Indiana University
I knew that the JAFSP would be a great experience, but I could not have anticipated how much it
would affect me as a person. Being able to see the "real Jamaica" helped me to understand the
culture and people better, and I feel sorry for the tourists that never get to see the parts of the
island that we did. It has also helped me realize that service to others must be a part of my life,
since there are so many that are so less fortunate than I am. Overall, it is an experience that I will
always treasure.

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Text 4: Miriam’s Circle, Project narrative for Discovery Scholarship from ASU
Project Narrative
Compassionate Creative Growth
Music Therapy in [Town Name], Kenya
This scholarship will allow me to integrate music therapy experiences into my work this summer
in [Town Name], Kenya. I will be traveling to Kenya through a small, grassroots organization
called Miriam’s Circle: Compassionate Growth. This will be my second summer and Miriam’s
Circle’s fourth year in [Town Name]. Music was a major tool that helped me connect with
people in Kenya last summer. Now that I am familiar with the community and with actual music
therapy practices, I hope to integrate music into my experiences in Kenya even more this year.
About Miriam’s Circle
The vision of Miriam’s Circle is to promote holistic growth within and between populations in
[Town Name] and the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps that surround it. It began as a
system of financial and emotional support for a single woman, [Name], who lives in [Location]
(an IDP camp outside of [Town Name]). When Miriam’s Circle began, [Name] lived in a tent
with her teenage daughter who has Cerebral Palsy. In addition to taking care of her daughter,
[Name] traveled into [Town Name] every day to volunteer as a teacher at a school for children
with disabilities. [Name] epitomizes compassion in a context of extreme marginalization.
Miriam’s Circle formed as a way to celebrate and support people with extraordinary compassion.
Miriam’s Circle began by creating a salary for the work [Name] was already doing as a
volunteer. We now also provide scholarships for fourteen girls and one boy in [Town Name]
based on high financial need, leadership potential, demonstrated compassion, and academic
capacity. We support these scholars through high school and in post-secondary school endeavors.
We operate on the Girl Effect principle that supporting individuals, especially women, has
positive ripple effects for the entire community.
The Community: [Town Name]
[Town Name] is a small town at the intersection of Kenya’s two major highways. Because of
post-election violence in 2007 and 2008, twelve Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps
surround [Town Name]. Many IDPs lost their property and capital in the post-election violence,
so the IDP camps are areas of extreme poverty. These camps are not temporary shelters; rather,
they are the long-term homes of their residents and function as semi-independent municipalities.
However, the IDP camps still depend on [Town Name] for things like school, health care, and
other public services.
People in the [Town Name] community (especially the IDP camps) face many of the same
problems as people here in the States, but their challenges are magnified by the context of
extreme poverty. For example, people with disabilities have far less access to transportation,
individualized education, and augmentative communication systems than they would here in the
States. Therefore, the opportunity music provides for education and relationship-building across
the learning spectrum is even more valuable there than it is here, because opportunity costs for
such programs are extremely high in [Town Name].

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Music provides unique opportunities for people without disability labels as well. For example,
because of lack of funding, [Town Name] Secondary School has no official fine arts program; all
arts are facilitated by students outside of school hours. Music is proven to increase academic
success, so providing more musical opportunities can help the students at [Town Name]
Secondary School achieve their academic and career goals. Further, the community-building
effects of music have particular significance in Kenya, where political elites’ manipulation of
marginalized people and economic competition pitted ethnic groups against each other in 20078, causing these people to be displaced. Although [Town Name] Secondary School is already
noted for its atmosphere of respect between ethnic groups, building community through music
can only intensify this link. It can also provide opportunity for cross-cultural comparisons not
only between the music of various ethnic groups, but also between popular music in Kenya and
the United States.
Music therapy practices are also especially valuable in the [Town Name] community because of
the prevalence of exposure to severe trauma among Internally Displaced People. Many people in
the IDP communities directly witnessed post-election violence and fled their hometowns for their
own safety. Post-trauma is a specific population for music therapy. Therefore, because of my
music therapy skills and my deep personal interest in helping others cope after trauma, I can
creatively help displaced people process through their traumatic experiences and find positive
outlets for their emotions.
Finally, music is enormously important as a recreational activity in [Town Name]. Music is
already deeply integrated into the culture of [Town Name], but community members lack access
to materials and structures for recreational music experiences. For example, [Town Name]
Secondary School has student-led clubs, but performances and entertainment activities at the
school are rare. Music can provide a way for students to relax and have fun during their time
away from studying. Perhaps more importantly, music is also a healthy form of recreation for
high school graduates in the IDP camps. Kenya’s education system has a year-long gap between
high school graduation and the beginning of college, and this gap year is a time of high
vulnerability for Kenyan students. Music as recreation will allow high school graduates to have
fun in a way that is safe and intellectually stimulating.
Initiatives
I have four main initiatives for this project, and I will also enact multiple smaller projects for
community growth and my own experience. However, although I am familiar with the
community, I plan to reframe needs assessments before enacting any specific initiatives. I will
adapt my plans based on feedback I receive from community members and experiment with
different musical experiences to determine which help most to forge relationships with and
between community members. With this in mind, my initiatives are as follows:
1)
Musical Mentoring Experience and Stipend – I will do one-on-one music therapy work
with Phyllis, a seventeen-year-old with Cerebral Palsy. I will also mentor one of the Miriam’s
Circle scholars, including her in music therapy sessions with Phyllis to facilitate a relationship
between them. I will build capacity in this Miriam’s Circle scholar so she can continue her
relationship with Phyllis after I leave Kenya, using music as a communication tool. After the trip,
I will continue to check on this relationship via Skype, reports from the Miriam’s Circle Kenyan

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Director, and cell phones. The Musical Mentoring Stipend will provide monetary compensation
for this Miriam’s Circle scholar’s continued time and travel to sessions with Phyllis.
2)
Health Rhythms and Drum Circles at [Town Name] Secondary School – Using the
protocol I learned last semester, I will facilitate Health Rhythms sessions with groups of students
at [Town Name] Secondary School. The Health Rhythms evidence-based protocol uses
drumming as a tool to connect people, including not only drumming but also ice breakers, guided
imagery, guided verbal communication, and other components geared toward making
connections between participants. As with the Musical Mentoring Experience, I will ensure this
program’s sustainability by establishing student leadership and instrument availability. I will
donate Remo drum shapes to the school, and I will also lead an “upcycling” activity, converting
old water jugs into drums and making shakers out of bottles and dry beans.
3)
Individual Mentoring of Miriam’s Circle Scholars – My main role in Miriam’s Circle is
empowering and building relationships with the Miriam’s Circle scholars. Music will open
avenues of communication otherwise inaccessible between the scholars and me. This will look
different for each girl: For some, it will look like processing through traumatic experiences,
using music as a tool to give expression to emotions that might otherwise be silenced or
repressed; for others, music will provide a structure in which we can consider the future together,
including the girls’ dreams, fears, and plans; for still others, it will be a purely recreational
activity, offering a healthy alternative to less-desirable options of how to spend time between
high school and university.
4)
Community Center in [Location] or [Other Location] IDP Camps – By establishing a
community center with musical instruments and structured activities, I will broaden the access to
musical experiences in [Town Name]. This will allow the entire community to access some of
the benefits of these music programs, and it will provide a continued opportunity for music as
recreation for high school graduates in the [Location] and/or Jakaze communities.
5)
Other – I will complete other, smaller projects as they arise. I will visit a school in [Town
Name] for students with disabilities, and I will do music therapy with them, potentially guiding
the classroom teachers through some basic music therapy practices as well. I will also participate
in music activities when Miriam’s Circle gathers for a single celebration with all the scholars
together. At the dorms at [Town Name] Secondary School, I will use music as a tool to relate and
compare cultures with students, many of whom want to know what the United States’ culture is
like.
My Education
My work in Kenya last summer inspired me to learn more about music therapy. Taking music
therapy classes this year has prepared me to use music more effectively to build community in
[Town Name] this summer. Every time I learn a new practice or theory in music therapy, I
consider how it might apply in [Town Name]. Funding for music therapy experiences in [Town
Name] will allow me to directly and legitimately apply the music therapy theories and practices
that sometimes remain abstract in academia. Also, because the need in [Town Name] is so great,
I believe that music therapy practices will pay off even more there than they typically do here.
By seeing the full positive power that music can have for people, I will be re-inspired in my
studies once I return to the United States.