Improvisation and Social Justice in Contemporary Music Therapy

Abstract

For several decades now, music has served as a critical instrument for engendering social change, a driving force for social movements, and a key catalyst for promoting social justice. In their theories and frameworks, education and training, research, scholarship, and practice, music therapists have purposefully utilized improvisation as an intervention to advance social justice agendas, particularly to address societal concerns and issues such as poverty and the plight of vulnerable youth; cultural diversity, racism, and ethnocentrism; the displacement of refugees and asylum seekers from their countries of origin due to persecution, violence, conflict, and human rights violations; LGBTQIA+ marginalization; ableism; and prejudice against neurodivergent individuals. This chapter delves into the realm of music academia in order to examine and interrogate the roles of and the work in the field of music, the subfield of music therapy, and improvisation as an intervention for the promotion of social justice in this contemporary era.