Reclaiming Music, part 1: Musical Wounding

The problem we immediately hit up against when hoping to reclaim musicality for all, is that most of us are musically wounded. We carry injuries around the right to experience and express ourselves through our inborn musical natures, so when it comes to opportunities to have such a musical merge experience, we freeze up, get weird, opt out, or else go in the other direction and dominate, control, or perfectionize.

If I could wish one thing for all of us, myself included, it would be that we become freed up in our musicality enough that we can really more deeply join together, experience our unity and our distinctness, and together enjoy the leaderful-leaderless state of being part of a group musical mind, expressing a musical wholeness almost as if we are parts of the same body, all dancing the same dance, in our own utterly unique and original way.

Due to the musical wounding, this is a big ask. I have found that many of us untaught, self-taught, or partially-taught musicians struggle with feeling skilled or valid enough to participate, and we hold ourselves back. On the other side, those whose musicality has been developed in formal environments struggle with a crippling perfectionism and inability to be spontaneous or exploratory. It’s like those who might be able to go in with beginner’s mind (the untrained) and those who have very finely developed skills (the trained) are each held back for opposite reasons.

My invitation to you for working with Musical Wounding:

Everyone, even or perhaps especially the most trained musicians among us, have musical wounding. In the spirit of helping all of us to recover and co-heal, here is a self-assessment reflection that you can use to identify your own more wounded places, as well as the parts of your musicality that are intact enough to play.

Musical Wounding Self-Assessment

  1. How do I feel about my singing voice? What level of comfort do I have being heard singing? What am I confident about when it comes to expressing my musicality through my voice? What am I insecure about?

  2. How do I feel about my instrumental skills/innate capacity to express myself instrumentally? What level of comfort do I have being heard playing instruments? What am I confident about? What am I insecure about?

  3. How do I feel about my rhythm skills/innate rhythm? What level of comfort do I have being heard playing rhythm instruments? What am I confident about? What am I insecure about?

  4. How do I feel about my lyrical skills/innate capacity to sing words? What level of comfort do I have with being heard singing my own lyrics? What am I confident about? What am I insecure about?

  5. How do I feel about playing music together with others? What positive expectations would I have about a musical encounter with a group where I would be participating musically, at my current level of skills & innate capacities? What fears does this idea bring up? What negative self-image do I have of myself, that I fear others would have of me? What positive self-image do I have, that I imagine others might have of me?

  6. How do I feel about my innate capacity for artistry/having something special to express?

Continue Reclaiming Music in part 2: Activating Innate Musicality.