Music Therapist Michael Kenny of Drum Heart to be Featured on CUTV News Radio
DALLAS, TEXAS, UNITED STATES, May 9, 2017 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The jazz musician Albert Ayler once said, “Music is the healing force of the universe.” Music doesn’t just engage the mind and the body, it engages our emotions for a powerful, evocative and often transcendent experience. Music enlivens our reality.
This is because music is a whole-brain activity: it activates expressive and receptive language, special and temporal reasoning, motor cortex, and our social and interpersonal skills.
We know rhythm, tempo, melody and harmony affect our brain. How can we target music to address those areas of the brain that govern how we function?
Michael Kenny is the founder of Drum Heart, a private music therapy practice for children and adolescents with special needs, as well as the elderly in hospital and nursing home settings. As a music therapist, Kenny applies the elements of music to address therapeutic goals. His results have been nothing short of miraculous.
“Some of my friends are tired of hearing about what a great day I had at work and how much I love my job,” says Kenny. “I’ve had experiences with autistic children who light up and engage with sustained eye contact, doing things their parents have never seen them do. I’ve seen 90-year-olds spring out of their wheelchairs and dance. Music therapy is the art and science of refining that in a purposeful and meaningful way.”
Training for a degree in music therapy is the same as a music performance or music education degree but with additional specialization in psychology, anatomy and physiology and more specialized coursework. Whereas in music education the goal is outcome driven (repertoire, performance), music therapy is more process-oriented, relying on improvisation and interaction.
Kenny specializes in a therapeutic modality known as TaKeTiNa, a group rhythmic process that utilizes sight, sound, and movement to activate human and musical potential through rhythm. Participants in a TaKeTiNa circle are guided through call and response and the pulse of a surdo bass drum through a series of steps, claps and songs. Participants fall in and out of rhythm in the circle, much like our movement through life, but each time they find their way back to the basic pulse and fall back in rhythm, they experience rhythm more intensely and profoundly.
“My true bliss in music is uniting with other people through music,” says Kenny. “I serve them and the music itself but I’m also serving my bliss.”
CUTV News Radio will feature Michael Kenny in an interview with Jim Masters on May 11th at 11am EDT.
Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio1.
If you have a question for our guest, call (347) 996-3389.
For more information on Drum Heart, visit http://www.drumheart.org
Lou Ceparano
CUTV News
(631) 850-3314
email us here
1 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/closeuptalkradio/2017/05/11/cutv-news-radio-spotlights-michael-kenny-of-drum-heart