English on demand low | Page 6

Music

THERAPI

In his book Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy, Robert Jourdain (1997) makes several meaningful points regarding the competitive positions of language and music, in terms of brain structure and functioning. “Although minds communicate through many sorts of symbols and gestures, only language and music… operate on a large scale and in great detail” (Jourdain 247).

These abilities seem to be somewhat lateralized in the two temporal lobes, the left one being 90

percent better at recognizing words, and the right one about 20 percent better at recognizing

melodic patterns (Jourdain 280). These two systems function in very different ways, supported by the left-brain‟s particular concern with “modeling relations between events across time, while the right brain favors relations between simultaneously occurring events” (Jourdain 281).

Music and Language

Music and Language: supportive Sisters

Music therapi for language

This review suggests the conjoining of music and language

learning, which inevitably posits a shift in perception for music

therapists and language teachers alike. Specific examples of

„musical language teaching‟ as well as „music therapy for language‟

will indicate areas for curriculum change in both fields. Insofar as the author is a language/ literacy teacher, he believes it proper to make suggestions intended to change the current-traditional stance on music in the language classroom. However, as a non-therapist, he will leave the explication of music therapy techniques for language to one of the previously mentioned scholars, Joanne Loewy. In a recent article, “Integrating Music, Language, and the Voice in Music Therapy,” she mentions themes from a web-published previous version of this review, while indicating the implications of music-language initiatives for music therapists (Loewy 1). A summary of Loewy's article, which concludes this section, increases the scope of this review to reach out to the music therapy community.