How can music therapists value a person’s disfluency? An investigation into Nordoff-Robbins music therapists’ experiences

Abstract

This is an exploratory, qualitative, interview-based study investigating the subjective clinical experiences of Nordoff-Robbins music therapists with regards to the following questions: ‘To what degree can aspects of “disfluency” be considered sources of creativity within the Nordoff-Robbins approach to music therapy?’ and ‘How can music therapists articulate these aspects of their practice, to contribute to shifting discourses around “fluency”?’. I draw on the work of Claypole who advocates for ‘disfluency’ to be deemed a source of creativity. I suggest that the concept of ‘fluency’ is useful for music therapists, encouraging consideration of how the people we work with experience themselves in time. I posit that a central goal of music therapy is to bring ‘flow’, and that there is perhaps a tension between this and valuing someone’s experience of disfluency. The interviews reveal that, perhaps uniquely among therapeutic interventions, Nordoff-Robbins music therapists can simultaneously value a person’s disfluency, while offering an experience of fluency in the music. I conclude by drawing on the interviews to recast the binary of fluency versus disfluency and explore language that embraces the diversity of ways in which people ‘flow’.