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July 14, 2019 - David Icke
48:58
NBE Talks To Hip Hop Artist & Musical Therapist Alex Blood About The Benefits Of Musical Therapy
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Outro Music I'm non-binary elephant. Podcast. Hello
Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the non-binary elephant podcast.
My name's Gareth, I'm joined by my brother.
Jamie Icke. Today on the show we've got Alex Blood, formerly of Alex Blood and the Diggers.
Was a musician, did lots of touring, played lots of big shows which we'll get into later.
He then went on to work a lot with the Arts Council, which he's currently doing organising events and helping kids in impoverished areas of Derbyshire, but he's also now a music therapist, which to me, I haven't got a clue what that is, so I'm quite interested to know.
So first of all, Alex, welcome.
Hello, welcome. If you could tell me, and well I know you, so don't tell me, tell the audience a bit about who you are.
Okay, yeah, well I mean, yeah, to kind of Flesh out what you just already told him.
Yeah, I'm a singer, songwriter, musician.
I have been for most of them. I'd say I like the way you describe me as was a musician.
Yeah, I was thinking that. I was going to jump in then and go, you just put me in a grave already.
Did I say... I didn't mean that.
Yeah, it's like I used to be.
Sorry, mate. It's quite a kick in the...
Because he's got a kid and can't musician anymore.
He thinks everyone can. I relate, though.
I do relate, yeah. I almost feel that felt sense of was a musician.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm hanging on to it.
So I could say I'm still a musician.
I spent a lot of years, like you say, touring, performing, writing.
I come originally from a hip-hop background.
That was my youth, was hip-hop and rapping and emceeing.
Which, just as I was touring and performing over the years, got me into more live music, live bands.
And just generally, music in general, took me out into that sort of industry and scene.
And I've always tried to, really, in a sort of real blunt way, Just try to hustle a living out of not getting a real job and being a musician.
Yeah. So that's kind of where everything I do has stemmed from, really.
It was like, how do I... I'm not doing anything else.
I'm not working for anybody. I'm not doing anything that I'm not into.
I can't take orders.
I can't deal with authority.
I want to just make music, and how do I do it?
So every little step along the way, I found a way of doing it.
So originally, sort of...
I say, well, you're looking at 2001-ish, 2002...
I was about 18, 19, and I was kind of booming around at uni on music tech degrees, which, I don't know, people might have different opinions out there, but a music tech degree is not really worth the paper it's written on, because it's kind of...
If you know what you're doing, you can go and get a job in a studio and produce without any degree.
So I was just bumming around.
I was just trying to find a way to get a student loan and not work.
I was touring my own music and stuff, but a friend of mine put me on to doing workshops with kids, going into pupil referral units.
And at the time, obviously, being sort of quite active in the hip hop scene, sort of on radio and on the Sky channels or whatever, being quite relevant to them.
So being able to sort of show them how to write a rap or show them how to make a beat, make a CD with them.
And it had a real sort of engagement, especially in this neck of the woods up in the Midlands.
In Derby, in particular, it had just not been done before, and nobody knew how to reach these kids.
This was when you were Baby People?
This was before Baby People, so Baby People is the company that kind of came out of us laying those foundations, sort of literally like two afternoons a week, driving to a youth club in a Corsa with a laptop in the boot, doing that, and that just got busier and busier and busier, and that sort of gave me a bit of a, you know, sort of pocket winning, really, while I was Actually going about driving up and down from London and back and touring and doing what I was doing.
So it kind of helped me make a living.
Subsidised it. Yeah, I mean that's kind of my background and that's kind of what...
Got me off the ground as a musician and never really had a job since, really.
Right. Because that led you then into the Arts Council stuff, which we've done together.
I've been fortunate enough to do the third project I've done with you, which we were in the middle of at the minute, which is wicked for me.
So obviously you've worked with the kids in some difficult areas, and we've been to some difficult areas together, particularly when we were in Stapleford at the Young Offenders.
That was kind of eye-opening, really, to work with those kids.
Yeah. Is that what then pushed you into music therapy, that you thought, you know what, I'm kind of helping them out, but I feel like I'm maybe treating the symptom a bit and that you could maybe make a bit of a difference?
Yeah, I mean, my journey towards music therapy...
It's a real convoluted one, really.
It's quite long, because I was doing the stuff with the kids in the crew units for years, and like I say, a company formed out of that that became quite big.
And needless to say, as you know, being an independent musician is a bit of a labour of love.
You don't really make a living off it.
You might be able to sort of...
It ended up more or less being sort of obviously a passion and a love, and I enjoyed doing it, but it was kind of the marketing...
That got me workshop work.
It was like, oh, this guy's got an artistic profile and he's touring and he's on radio.
Yeah, which, you know, that costs me to do.
But that would then bring in the sort of community work because people would like somebody to work with the youth that's probably some sort of, you know, I guess a role model of sorts, for want of a better phrase, or that might provide a bit of a pathway.
Like, look, this person's made a success and they didn't follow the normal path.
So, you know, they want that kind of flag.
So that would bring a lot of that kind of work in.
But it became a big company.
It wasn't my company. I was kind of involved from the start, but it was a friend's company.
It got bigger and bigger and more and more, I would say, systemically permeated by the outside coming in.
So we set off as sort of hip hop disciples, spreading the gospel of street music and culture.
And then before long you're sort of toeing the lines of the curriculum and the forms
that the client wants.
And over 10 or 15 years it became like that.
We started out with loads of autonomy with the kids, which in today's climate especially
is really not going to happen anymore.
We started out with a lot of autonomy, which like I say can be considered a risk really
if you're looking at it through risk tinted glasses which we do a lot.
Everyone does, yeah. But it actually allowed us the autonomy to build real relationships with the kids that actually were transformative for them, which, over 15 years or so, that became harder and harder to do.
You became more and more accountable for everything that was happening, and people were more...
The outside, if you like, the clients were more...
So the schools or the councils were more...
Started to prescribe what they wanted the outputs to be.
And it became a bit of like, well, you're coming to us because we've been engaging these people for so long, but now you're trying to tell us how to engage it.
And for me, it just started to not really feel right.
So I spent probably the last few years of that work really not enjoying the work, really enjoying connecting with the young people I was working with, but not enjoying the bureaucracy and the sort of...
It started to feel like I was working for a big company again.
So I was kind of done with it, really.
My music was sort of, as we know, having kids and stuff, music was getting harder.
So I was in a real transitional point and did a lot of other stuff.
Went and lived on boats for five years and sort of travelled about, no-fixed-a-boat style, and tried to find my path again.
And it was actually, I went on a retreat last year in Derbyshire, which was one of the most intense experiences of my life, which is eventually what kind of, you could say, catalyzed me towards music therapy.
And it was kind of off the back of a bit of a, we all go through our trials, so I had a bit of a crisis, if you like, in my own mental health, with all this sort of questioning what was going on in my life.
I'd Relationship breakdowns and displacement going off and I was living separate to my son and it was all a pretty bad point in my life and I actually ended up going into normal psychotherapy myself.
So I was in psychotherapy for 18 months prior to deciding to train myself and really sort of unpack myself really.
It was 18 months of intense unpacking down to granular level which has all sorts of...
Sounds frightening. It's frightening, yeah, because...
It gets a lot worse before it gets better.
So it's one of those processes.
And that's what kind of led me into that sort of line of life.
I'm unpacking myself. So I was looking for loads of opportunities to experience parts of myself.
I started meditating a lot and kind of having a bit of a, for want of a better word, spiritual awakening.
Which sounds really cliche to say, but it's the only thing that I can kind of say that it felt like.
It felt like a Coming out of something that I've been in for most of my life.
And so I ended up on this retreat, which was a three and a half day retreat, which went through a very deep process, using a lot of Native American processes.
they used a lot of really interesting, insightful processes where they were able to get insight
beyond the intellect because that's how they kind of generally lived. They took their insight from
nature, from a group, they had like a real group consciousness awareness as standard.
You know, it's something that we sort of don't really do much anymore in our side of the world.
And you can get people like Darren Brown going on telly doing sort of like impressive
TV feats where he's used the group mind to get some stuff But they would do this. That was part of their culture.
So there's a lot of that embedded in it.
A lot of gestalt therapy embedded in it.
And gestalt therapy is to do with...
The body and the embodiment.
So using the now very much to find...
How do you feel in your body when you recall this memory?
Or if I put you next to this thing which represents this part, how do you feel when you stand close to it?
It's all that kind of work, embodied work.
So it was a retreat of all that kind of stuff.
And I just kind of came out of it thinking like, you know, this is my window really to find what I'm supposed to be doing.
And I knew music was in me.
I knew that I was passionate about...
The way that music can connect with people, can resonate with people.
I personally felt the transformative effects of it, obviously as a youth, as we do.
You latch onto it as a way of finding your place in the world.
Part of my own getting over this Breakdown, for want of a better word, was me reconnecting back with myself as an artist, away from this sort of treadmill of writing songs for touring, writing songs for EPs, being a career musician.
I had to scrap that.
I had to literally sack that off and just go back to connecting with an instrument and finding what that felt like again, finding what it felt like to be creative with no agenda.
And that's when I started to think, wow, this is having an effect on me.
And the rest is history, really.
I was Googling around, what can you do with this?
And I discovered music therapy.
And then found out that Derby University was doing their first intake last year.
Oh, fab. Yeah, so that's kind of how I ended up there.
Synchronised, isn't it? Yeah. It's almost like it's meant to be, yeah.
Was this retreat, was this the one where they, you told me about it, I remember at the time, where they put you into like a family tree and people were, and you said it was like real, yeah.
Yeah, so there's this, there's a psychotherapist from, I think he's Germany, yeah.
called Bert Hellinger and he's wrote this book which is like a cornerstone of this kind of work called Love's Hidden Symmetry and it is incredible.
He gets a lot of backlash from certain communities for it and Because it's pretty mind-blowing stuff.
So it's to do with the systems in the family and the sort of energetic exchange between generations that go on.
So, you know, a lot of his work, he would work obviously in Germany, he was working with Holocaust survivors.
And they found out, and it's quite common in that sort of field now, that there's a disproportionate amount of suicide, depression and anxiety involved.
In the following sort of three or four generations from Holocaust survivors that have had seemingly okay lives.
No real traumas like their ancestors experienced.
But there is this transgenerational trauma that comes infused through...
It can come infused through love.
It can come infused through care.
And it's a phenomenon.
It's classed as phenomenology.
So it's sort of a... It's not yet completely scientifically proven, but it's not disproven, but it seems to be...
But they'll mock it anyway. They'll mock it, yeah.
I mean, it's really worth checking out.
There's even stuff in there to do...
I mean, it's quite controversial.
There's stuff in there to do with a young person that might decide to be homosexual, or is homosexual, maybe accounting for something further back in their ancestral line, where...
Somebody was persecuted or a female was made to take a male role because of a lack of...
It's all to do with this balance and stuff of male and female energies and systems.
And it's fascinating stuff.
And so he devised this way of using that sort of knowledge.
Because if that's what's happening, if people are carrying this stuff from three or four generations back that they're unaware of, then we're all carrying it.
And that's sociological as well.
So he developed this thing called Constellations, Family Constellation work, which is absolutely mind-blowing.
I've been on three or four of them now and I've done a bit of training in it.
And you'll get an issue holder come, so somebody will bring an issue.
So somebody might come to the day or the group or the event with, I want to figure out why I'm not...
I want to figure out why I keep having this same problem or this same pattern or I've lost a family member and I can't move on.
It could be any issue. It could be anything.
So the issue holder will bring the issue to the group and the constellator, who is essentially just somebody facilitating the process, We'll boil it down with the issue holder to what do you want to find out?
What insight do you want from these?
You normally have about 20 people, 25 people.
What issue do you want to find out?
It's got to be pretty clear. And this then connects into quantum physics.
So there's a lady called Lynn McTaggart that wrote a book called The Field, which is to do with quantum physics and it's to do with the energetic field around us and Which connects to the hive mind.
All that kind of body of work.
It's all interlinked. It's all kind of there.
So if the issue holder isn't asking a question that is sort of genuine and true, they genuinely want to know this.
It can't be some sort of convoluted, well I don't really know, let's have a crack at this.
It's got to be true because otherwise it won't draw the right insight from the people.
So it could be something to do with the family.
So the issue holder will then be asked to identify, choose somebody in this group to identify your mum.
Choose somebody in this group to represent your dad.
And it doesn't have to be a person.
It could be a structural.
It could be somebody going, I want something to represent my pain or I want something to represent.
But normally it starts with people.
And then they'll be asked to position them where they want to position them in the circle.
And then... You kind of sit back and let it unfold, so the constellator will then say, right, representatives, make a move, tune into your body, feel your feet on the ground, move to where you feel comfortable, and a map will start to form, and you'll get insight.
Somebody will go, I can't stand next to him, I'm feeling something.
They don't know this person, they don't know their history, but that person will be going, yeah, that connects to this, that makes sense, that's what I've experienced, or...
And then it will unfold and it will end up with sort of breakthroughs.
You'll find blockages in the thing.
Why can't you connect with that?
Why can't you connect with that person there?
For instance, for example, why can't you step any closer to your mother?
I just can't. Right, well, if we bring in grandmother to stand behind mother...
And mother senses into grandmother's presence.
Yes, I can step closer now.
And these things start to happen and things start to get resolved.
And it is very powerful work.
We did a lot of that on this retreat.
And it's some of the most mind-blowing stuff I've ever seen happen.
Which really obviously has inspired me to go further with it.
I'm not quite sure how music relates to that.
That's just a separate thing that we experienced on that retreat.
And that work can be quite openly facilitated with a constellator asking questions.
The one that really blew my socks off, though, was when they did a blind family constellation, which was me sort of sat at the head of it with six people that felt drawn into the positions of my mother and father and then my two daughters.
You know, two sides of grandparents.
So there was mother, father, paternal grandparents, maternal grandparents, and me.
And it was whoever felt drawn into them, and it's not necessarily gender, so a woman may feel drawn into a male's position in the system, but generally not.
They take the step, we don't do any speaking, they look at me, and I make eye contact with every one of them, and then the Constantly, I'll go, everybody just spend a moment looking at Alex.
When I ring the bell, everybody take one step.
And they all took one step.
And the formation was completely my family system.
It was my mother touching my shoulder, my dad accessing my love through my mother.
You know, I've got a grandfather that was just, you know, no emotional connection to his family.
No real emotional sort of mute outside of the system that...
And the grandparents that were closer to me, his children were closer to me.
And it was just like, these people don't even know, these people don't know me at all.
And it was drawn out in sort of a...
A process, yeah. It's quite fascinating stuff, isn't it?
Yeah. I've never heard of that before.
I remember you, not in that detail, but telling me about it before.
I remember at the time thinking, wow, that sounds amazing.
Yeah. Yeah, I can see why you'd want to get into this kind of stuff.
Yeah, because it just...
I mean, I couldn't believe it, and it's just that sort of stuff that is not...
that we kind of know, but we don't know why we know it, and we're all walking around with stuff like that.
Oh, totally, yeah. So the music side of it then, I mean...
Say, for instance, I've got...
I've got an issue in a relationship or a family situation.
How would you help me, do you think, musically?
How does that work in terms of therapy?
So music therapy is mainly...
It's like any other form of psychotherapy.
You've got dance therapy and drama therapy.
It's basically psychotherapy where the main mode of communicating is music or music will be used as much as talking.
You can talk a lot.
You can go into a session with a client and talk for the whole session but you can equally go into a session with a client who's not in the mood to talk but will play.
From that playing you can You can draw insights and analysis of their interpersonal world, their internal world.
For instance, you could say to me, I've got real problems in my relationships.
I'm having a real difficult time.
We start playing some music together and you're not really a sense into what I'm doing.
I can tell that I might change...
Tone or I might change pitch or volume and you don't notice.
And that would give me some sort of insight into the fact that you're not sensing into my presence in this communication.
You're in your own thing.
Likewise, it could be the other way around.
So I've worked with clients where they're sort of considered to have anger issues and they're kicking off and they're not getting on with anybody.
They've got real communication issues.
And I can have really...
Intimate improvisations where they're so attuned to what I'm doing and I can go back to their school or social worker and go, no, they're really sensitive to people's incoming signals.
My signals are musical, but they're really sensitive to them and they're responding to them.
So their interpersonal world is still there.
They're still ready for a meaningful communication.
It's just they're having issues with something else so we can start to boil down where it might be coming from.
I can imagine if you're someone that finds communicating very difficult and talking about your feelings very difficult, that must be a much easier way of getting something across.
If you can just play some music with somebody, you don't have to speak, you don't have to pour your heart out to them, but then they can, as you can, you can gauge something from just playing music with them.
That must be so nice for somebody who really struggles to speak, of which a lot of people do.
Well, that's it, yeah. I mean, that's the other side of it.
I was just pretty much describing the The analytical side of it.
And what you're talking about there is the experiential side of it.
So somebody may get to experience a very nice, meaningful communication and dialogue with me musically that they just don't have in any other realm of their life because they really struggle in those kind of areas.
So by experiencing it and feeling it, they can start to work and value that part of themselves, which will hopefully lead to them recognising that they are Capable of that and that's still there within them or can be healed or worked on within them.
So you'd have to be a musician then?
Oh yeah, you would. Now one of the things that blew my mind as a musician when I went in there was this concept of free improvisation.
So this was nuts to me.
I'm sure you'd experience it the same as I did.
As a songwriter and a musician, we play basically...
We repeat in structures and frameworks that have already been done 3,000 times, millions of times over.
You know what I mean? Every rhythm that we play, every chord, every song is a framework.
It's got a musical frame.
It could be a tonal frame, it could be a rhythmic frame, it could be a genre-based frame.
And we kind of, as artists I think, who have tried to be, especially artists more so, but I think musicians in general, but we have tried to create products that have value, that are impressive, that are good.
So we have this craving for structure and aesthetics.
So free improvisation throws all that out the window and it's like, here's a load of instruments and some of them are in tune and some of them aren't.
Let's play. And that's it.
And let's play with the awareness of everybody else in the group at all points in time and respond considerably.
So it's kind of out there.
So when I first went into the uni and they were like, right, as part of my interview process, they were like, we want to improvise with you for 15 minutes.
15 minutes. That's a long time.
Yeah, a long time. We start in silence, we end in silence, and nobody conducts it or guides it.
It just happens. I initially found them quite annoying, coming from where I was coming from.
The sound was quite annoying.
I was like, this is out there, this is dinny, this is hippied out, this is weird, this is not pleasing to my ear.
But slowly, obviously, over the training, I got more and more into it.
And then when I started to use that with people, that's when I was like, wow, this is the power of this stuff.
This is the interpersonal communication that's going on.
It's not about the quality of the music.
So that was really interesting.
Because I always thought even improvisation was probably like, oh, you mean like jamming?
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought you meant.
The technical term for that is extemporisation.
I'll never remember that.
You're basically improvising something that is not completely improvised because it's within a frame.
So you might go, oh, we're jamming the blues.
Yeah, so you know where you're going.
So it's completely atonal, structural stuff.
And from there, they take you on this way of learning different techniques, such as there's a technique called matching, where I could give a client an instrument and they're going to start going crazy on it.
So on my instrument, which I could choose what it would be, and more often than not I will go with my main instrument as a guitar, I try and match them where they're at.
So I go in to where, if they're making a crazy row, I'm going to come in and make a crazy row.
If they're playing really gently, I'll stop playing really gently.
And what it says to them is, oh, you've met me where I'm at, you've arrived where I am.
And then I can musically start to If needs be, take them away from that.
If it's not safe for them to be...
If they really could do with an experience in being calmed down, I learn how to do that musically.
So get them to come with me with where I'm going and calm it down and slow it down and bring them down.
So it's all them... You do need to have, you know, a fair understanding of music.
It's pushed my musical. Way beyond what it was.
Has it helped you?
Obviously music it has, like you say, but do you think you're almost treating yourself at the same time?
Yeah, absolutely. And so that's something we've had to study.
That's the concept of parallel process.
So parallel process can happen in various points and it can be...
If it's identified as parallel process, it can be really powerful.
If it's not, it can be pretty dangerous.
So that's kind of like getting into...
Transference, really. Psychoanalytical transference.
But, yeah, there's quite a unique period, really, in my training where I am learning about this at the same time that my clients are experiencing it.
So we're having new experiences together.
You know, I'm having one-off experiences.
Every interaction, you could say, is a one-off experience.
But this is quite a short period of time where, yeah, I'm having an experience myself in those improvisations.
And by entering into that music...
This is where it's a bit different to normal therapies.
When I enter into music with somebody, I'm basically at risk.
In a way, it's exposing.
You're going in with your music with somebody that's damaged with their music.
Whereas if it's just... Straight vocal, verbal therapy, you can always maintain that.
You create that little bubble so you don't take it on yourself.
You generally go in with a list of questions, don't you?
You have a standard practice of what you'd ask somebody, but you've no idea where it's going to go when you sit down, do you?
No, and when the music starts, you don't know what it's going to be and what it might reveal or what it could bring up as well.
What results have you found?
I know you've not been at it for that long, so obviously I... I want results now to resolve the business.
But what have you found?
Well, I mean, so I'm basically halfway through the training to get accredited by the Healthcare Professionals Council because it's a moderated sort of profession.
So last year I was working within a community setting in sort of an early intervention community team that would take young people who were on the The brink of possibly going onto social services radar or this case might get to social services.
So we'll try this first and we'll do stuff like that.
Next year, I'm going into one of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in the country, which is terrifying.
Absolutely terrifying. That'll be total eye-opening, won't it?
Yeah. I mean, that is like the most dangerous mental patients in the region type stuff, which is adults, which that's going to be new to me because most of my workers are young people, or has been historically.
And I'm really keen to try working with adults because children are very...
More often than not, they're up for picking up an instrument and having a bang.
More often than not, an adult that isn't a musician isn't.
No, no, not at all. So I'm going to have that to deal with.
But yeah, I mean, results-wise, there's some absolutely fascinating stuff.
Because obviously this is my first year in practice in this kind of work.
So there was a client I had that was very keen to play all the time, and he was considered to have a lot of anger issues, had a really...
Sort of very upsetting, very upsetting, abuse-laden past from early years to now.
And, you know, he seemed like a lovely boy, though.
Whenever I was working with him, he seemed like a lovely kid.
And we'd play music together all the time.
And he was really up for playing music, regularly.
So we did these kind of improvisations that was on about four or five weeks, six weeks, and And there was little things...
It was in between, when we'd stopped playing and the silence came.
And I would never decide when we would stop or start.
So that he would always, the client, if you like, would always start the music and end it.
And I would just be there with them all the time.
And little things would come out in between, where he would sort of...
Odd little sentences where he would give me little windows into his world.
And then, randomly, on sort of week six or seven, I think it was...
Not much music was being played but he had a guitar on his lap and he was in physical contact with the guitar just sort of just stroking it not trying to make any music and as he was stroking it and swinging his legs he just offloaded his entire quite horrific back story to me and it turned out and it was like it was really difficult to hear it was like lump in my throat moments and I was shaken after the session.
I just had to go through all the safeguarding stuff and ring stuff through and go, is this new?
You know, has this been... Yeah, it was quite a terrifying thing for me to be on the receiving end of.
But I was left with all these questions of, like, why?
Why and how have I got to a point where this has just happened?
And I said, you know, anyone else you've told this to?
And he was like, yeah, I've told it to four other people.
Five other people, three of them turned out to be soft toys and one of them was his grandma and one of them was me.
So it was like... A big deal.
It was a big deal. And I was just left with this like...
Obviously I'm in training so it's kind of on my shoulders to figure out what happened there.
How did that happen? And I had to go back through all the...
Because we had permission to case study so we had permission to record the sessions and It was going back and reflecting on it where I was kind of like, wow, these improvisations that I've just done week out thinking he's just enjoying playing his music has built a relationship.
Yeah, it's built trust. Yeah, he's felt safe by me doing these techniques, like I say, holding him or matching him in the music, letting him know I'm there, attuning to him, has let him know that he's been listened to and he's been held, which...
Eventually led him to the point where he felt completely safe to give me all this stuff, which allowed him to reprocess some of his trauma.
It's quite a short piece of work in training.
They don't let you go on. If I was working with this client for two or three years, we could really have gone through it.
But as we know, vocalising and going through stuff and sharing stuff can help with the reprocessing of it.
Absolutely. And I had to go through my own analysis of how and why that happened.
And that was just one...
Case, you know, of people that I've worked with.
So, yeah, they're the kind of results that can happen.
And that's very much in the sort of trauma-based sort of work.
Obviously, people have a lot of...
A friend of mine on my course, well, I say a friend is somebody on my course, was working in dementia care, and they have very quick results.
They have, like, very visible results fast.
So the sort of mental health of somebody in the care home...
Can improve, like, 300% for the week after their session.
Wow. And then when they don't have them, because they only get a certain amount of a lot of sessions through funding and all that, when their sessions end, they regress back.
Yeah, it's that clear. In that setting, it's that immediate, some of the responses from it.
So in that scenario, would it be something that you do as a group?
You could go into a care home and...
Work with a group of 20 people.
Yeah, so some of it is groups. So it's not always one-on-one.
It's not always one-on-one, yeah. So some of my work last year was with a group.
And next year in the psychiatric place I'll be doing an open group where people can come and get in if they like.
And so in the dementia home they'll do a group and one-to-one, yeah.
The group stuff is quite difficult really because in a one-to-one setting you're sort of holding one person in your mind and what's going on in their internal and external world in a group.
You've got to have your mind on everybody's internal and external world in the group.
It's harder to tune into individuals.
You can't tune into individuals, I suppose, in a group, can you?
No, that's it. And you don't know what's going to play out.
And it's getting into that sort of thinking of the sort of recapitulation of the primary family always happens in a group.
So people will start to communicate with people in ways that they will be communicating within their primary family, whether it's a parent or a sibling, which you can get all those kind of insights.
And sometimes if you've got the case knowledge as well, You can see that happening in the group and you can prevent troublesome encounters or problematic encounters happening.
So yeah, groups again are a lot of work in the music therapy groups.
You've brought, obviously people listening can't see, but you've got a guitar and what appears, although it's a different amount of keys...
Do you want to play some?
Yeah, so what we've got here is, I mean this is, interestingly, this is something I'm doing next week in a conference of 80 people.
Wow. With a company called Bolida, the people who make the shampoos and stuff, but they do all the sort of natural stuff.
I'm doing a lot of it in some of this kind of work in organisational work as well, when you're trying to get a group to work well together and stuff like that.
So this is a set of chime bars.
It essentially looks like, for people who are listening, you won't be able to see.
But it's basically a xylophone broken up.
Yeah. So you've got all your keys there.
You've got all your white keys and all your black keys, like on a piano.
But you can take each key individually.
So this is really useful in...
Yeah, and they've just got that.
So I can use it, if I know I've got my guitar tuned until I can open D, I can hand out the D. A set of notes, if you like, and we're all in tune.
So you can kind of provide that frame where they can go, oh wow, this sounds great, and we're doing it with very little effort, and that gives an experience in itself.
That would work then in a care home?
Yeah. Yeah, in a group scenario.
Because I'm guessing if you're going into a care home with dementia patients, I'm guessing they're not all musicians, or hardly any of them would be, I imagine.
Yeah, not at all, yeah. I mean, a lot of that is receptive.
Quite a lot of that work is what you'd call receptive music therapy, where you're singing at them.
Right, so they're just enjoying a gig.
They're basically enjoying a gig, yeah, and it improves their well-being.
A lot of it will be songs from the war, like Long Way to Tipperary and stuff like that.
My friend was learning all these songs because he needed a whole catalogue of that era of music, which would trigger memories.
So he'd sing that song and they'd go, I remember when I was in the war.
We were singing that and it would bring stuff back, which people, family members may have thought that part of their life had gone from their minds.
So a lot of it's receptive.
Still encouraged to be participatory as well, so they will shake something or bang something.
If you're doing the long way to Tipperary and you're in a certain key, you can hand out the chimes that are in key, then it sounds pleasant to everybody.
I use this in various ways.
The pentatonic scale is really good for randomness sounding in tune.
So that's mainly just, you know, in this situation, it's just the black keys.
So I'll usually lead it on piano, or lead it on guitar, but normally on piano, and I'll hand out a black chime to everybody in the room, and I've done it in sort of settings with young people where we've lowered the lights, and they've gone and found their own corner in the room to be alone, but they can hear each other through the chimes, and I'll sort of hold it with an ostinato on the piano, just a pattern that will keep them in a sort of frame with it.
So yeah, we can have a little...
They'll go with it now. Yeah, awesome, let's have a go.
But yeah, we could probably give these guys one.
Yeah. One chime each.
Gina and Lewis are also in the room, so they can get a chime.
Yeah, so if we, I don't know actually, I'm not going to choose the chimes, I'm going to make this as random as possible.
Oh, fantastic. I've not seen any of this, I'm sat at the wrong side of the table.
So choose a black chime.
I'll pick one right in the centre.
And a beater. What have I gone for?
I'm a left sharp. Cool.
And yeah, I'm going to go for a C sharp, which I believe is one of that ones.
F-sharp, there we go.
What one have you got? C-sharp.
C-sharp. Don't know what that means.
Getting involved? Come on.
So what are you going to play, Alex, then?
Are you going to play guitar? I want to play the chimes, actually.
Oh, play the chimes, right. I can have a lead instrument, but it'll probably sound nicer on this.
It's working because everyone's smiling in the office now.
Yeah, and everyone at home doesn't know what on earth is going on.
No. So you've basically got pretty much the whole keyboard to yourself.
I'm not going to use them, I'm going to stay with the black keys.
Okay. Good band. Yeah, they are a great band, although the new album is a little bit dodgy.
Okay. Anyway, yeah, so I'm going to play these, and I'm going to just kind of start, I'm going to try and make it not too guided.
Right. But I will hold it together for a bit.
You guys hit when we feel like we should.
Really? Yeah. Me and you have fallen right into sync.
Just naturally.
It's genetics, mate.
Sounds like Christmas.
That's just nice, isn't it? I can see how that would work.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. People listening, yeah.
But it's put a smile on my face.
It has, yeah? Yeah. It's got a very nice sort of sound to it.
People feel like, oh, this sounds really nice.
And all they're having to contribute is that one chime.
Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed that.
So it's a bit of an experience in sort of no music skills whatsoever, but taking part in something that...
It has some sort of value to it.
Yeah, yeah. I did enjoy that. But you led that, so you put a nice little melody in there.
We've just hit it occasionally, but it's still added.
So you're still part of the band, aren't you?
Yeah, yeah, that's it. And what you can do, obviously, what I would do in a bigger situation, so I've got to do it with 80 people on Monday.
Wow. But they're going to be in groups of six, so I'm going to have 13 groups of six, I think, and I'm going to give each group one of these.
Thanks very much. And I'm going to be on the piano on the stage leading it.
But what I would aim to do is once it's kind of Because it starts with disarray, with that many.
And then eventually people start to, like you say, you guys start to sync up.
People start to find where they are in the pattern and the rhythm.
And I will then pull away.
So I'd pull away from leading it.
It's just left of them.
Just left of them, yeah. They're up and running, yeah.
And then if they start to lose it, I might come back in.
Yeah, just guide it, basically.
When he said in disarray, I just thought of Desiree.
What was the song? Desiree.
Desiree. What's the song?
I don't know. It's gone really bad.
Money Don't Make My World Go Around.
Reaching Out For A Higher Ground.
Oh, yeah. I can't remember the name of the song.
It's relevant. Yeah.
So whereabouts is this thing with 80 people?
This is in Ilkeston. Ilkeston.
Walida. Magical Ilkeston.
Yeah, yeah. So Walida globally put out this sort of initiative to redefine the purpose of their global company and brand.
Right. There's this kind of big move these days.
I can't remember what the analogy stands for, but they call it teal organisations or post-conventional organisations, where there's this idea that companies basically...
To survive and to stay afloat, they need to actually have a real reason for being and a real purpose in the world, and if they don't, they're just battling against humanity, really, to stay afloat.
So, I mean, a leader is healthcare products that are manufactured completely in line with nature, so they arguably do have quite a clear reason for being.
But they've put out a bit of a program globally, and the sort of company...
That is facilitating that in England is a friend of mine who runs the retreats.
Yeah. So he's called me in to do this.
He's like, I really want to give 80 people an experience of feeling like they're a tune together in sort of about five minutes.
No talent. I'd just take on bowling.
But yeah, this is much better. We could all sing Yellow Submarine.
We'd get together in five minutes on that.
But yeah, so basically they're using this as an analogy.
In that setting, they're using it as...
Obviously, we use a pentatonic scale.
That's a frame. So any contribution you made within that had value to the piece.
They're using that as a bit of an experience for them to go...
The purpose of the company is this and any contribution you make within this that is still valid and still contributes to it.
So using it as a bit of a metaphor and a bit of an activity.
You're going to need a lot more chimes then.
Yeah, I could do with 80 chimes, I wonder what that would sound like.
But yeah, I'm going to have two sets of these, so I'm about 20.
So what is your aim for it all, long term, do you think?
Yeah, because you've got how long left until you're done?
Oh, one year. Well, yeah, just less than one year.
Just less than one year, yeah. And then you're out into the big world.
Yeah. Would it be to maybe set up your own company doing it?
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think I really, I'm quite, you know, I'm a convert really into it.
I knew I wanted to use music to help people and I wanted to go above and beyond what I'd done with sort of educational or mentoring because I was like, this is great, but nobody seems to really be, in those systems, nobody really seems to be either aware or caring or it's not on the agenda to be sort of Looking at the real stuff that's going on, especially with these young people, damaged young people, and you're trying to get them through a certificate that they don't even care about.
I'd have situations there where they'd come to me and go, right, where's his rock school certificate?
And I was like, well, he came in today and told me that somebody beat him at home last night, and I've spent the hour talking to him about how that made him feel.
So I haven't done his certificate with him, if that's all right.
Well, no, it's not all right. That's the harsh reality of that situation.
So I was like, no, I need to, I know that there's work out there for somebody that wants to work with that stuff, and I know, I believe in music.
So, you know, I'm really passionate about actually taking that out, and it seems to be, music therapy is a, It's one of the longest existing creative expressive therapies.
It sort of came about...
Well, even in sort of...
I need to look into this, but even in sort of the ancient Islamic world, they used music therapy and healing and gongs and stuff in the East to heal.
But they used it a lot in First World War, in sort of the wards that were set up to deal with people coming off the trenches.
They used a lot of music there. It's one of the longest established creative interventions for people.
But it's still quite unknown.
You know, like you guys have kind of said to me in the lead up to coming in here, like, we don't know much about it.
And that's more often the case.
And I've had experiences this year in having to sort of fight the corner for it, going back into settings and people going, oh, here comes the music, man.
And you're like, no, I'm not just here.
I'm not an entertainer. And things like people go, well, we've moved your room this week and we've put you in.
No, you can't just move the room.
It's clinical. If you change the room, I have to think about everything.
I have to think about the psychotic impact of that and It's trying to establish the profession, really.
I mean, the profession is established, like I say, it's healthcare professionals governed, the British Association of Music Therapy, all these bodies are kind of there to govern it.
But I feel quite passionate in this area, in sort of the Midlands and Derbyshire, in taking it out there.
And historically, it's been quite...
And this sounds bad, but I don't mean it in a bad way, but it's been quite sort of middle-aged, middle-class women with scarves doing music therapy.
Right. Which, admittedly, I know a lot of music therapists.
Chiffon scarves? Yeah, sort of like those sort of whimsical scarves.
Ones that you don't really need.
Yeah, oh yeah, you don't need them. Because they don't keep you warm.
Yeah, yeah. And I know a few therapists who are that, who admittedly say, yes, you know, we know that.
And there's only... You know, there's certain client groups and stuff that that sort of demographic of person can't reach.
So me walking in sort of covered in tattoos looking like a rock musician can connect with a different demographic to what they can.
And it's kind of changing the landscape of the profession and bringing in more diversity in the profession.
So I'm really quite keen on sort of Bringing it down, not bringing it down, that's the wrong kind of phrase, but you know what I mean?
Grounding the profession.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're going to appeal to younger people as well.
Yeah. Whereas the older people would still be, like you were saying, people's reaction, oh here's the music guy.
If you were walking in a thousand pound suit with a box full of pills, you'd be, sir.
Yeah, yeah. And that's the joke of it.
But to younger people, you probably wouldn't.
And they would look at you and go, yeah man.
Yeah. I don't know why they're saying, yeah man.
Yeah, they probably would though. Yeah, so after that, that's what I want to do.
I probably will need some organisation in place to deliver it and promote it really.
And I want to get writing about it because I think there's a lot in that.
I really want to try and get some published stuff out there to do with the sort of cultural elements of music.
A lot of what we're doing with the Arts Council is feeding into this kind of work with me because...
The gig we played recently in Ilkeston, we went into the pub and there's no stage, there's no PA, there's no room even really for your guitar, but you're stuffed in a corner next to Mick, Jane and Pete who go there every night and we played music around them and there's something happening there, sociologically, psychodynamically, there's something happening, there's an enriching of people's lives.
So there's a... There's a real connection, I think, between my work with the Arts Council stuff, which is taking art and music out into society, and the therapy stuff.
And I'm really keen on writing about that.
Yes, it is a clinical healthcare intervention, but it's actually in the fabric of people as a way of healing.
And yes, I'm trained in it, but it's not mine.
Music isn't mine. When I'm entering some music with a client, it's their music as well.
Music is everybody. So I'm really excited about uncovering and writing about that and spreading the word about that, really, and doing more.
We'll share anything, won't we?
If you write articles and stuff, we'll share them on the website.
People listening to this will be dead interested to know.
I think new music's something that's always brought people together.
Well, it's something that everyone likes.
You don't have to like the same music.
You can listen to Dvorak's concerto or you can listen to Slayer.
But people like music, don't they?
Yeah. One sort or another.
Yeah. Last Ketchup. Brilliant.
Why chuck that in? It's irrelevant.
I'm not aware of Last Ketchup, but maybe I should be.
What was the song?
The ketchup song. The ketchup song, yeah.
You'd know it, Gina.
Yeah, Gina's nodded. But someone likes Last Ketchup.
See, I listen to that and I think, what on earth is that?
But someone will love it. It could have very healing properties.
It probably has. Yeah, exactly.
We'd love you to come back then and come and have a chat.
We're building a studio upstairs at the minute so we can actually film it, which we...
Far better in terms of playing the instruments and stuff.
We'll see what's going on.
And it'll be really interesting to see where you're going with it further down the line.
Yeah, absolutely. Fab.
Well, thanks, Alex. Yeah, absolutely.
It's been fun. Thanks for having me on.
Alex Blood, ladies and gentlemen.
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