Narratives of musicking and wellbeing: reimagining healing

This article explores how cultures construct notions of wellbeing through the lens of musicking, drawing on a lifetime of interdisciplinary research, practice, and reflection. It examines how Western modernity’s privileging of rationalism, individuality, and detachment has marginalised forms of knowledge, community practices, and musical experiences that historically and geographically lay/lie at the heart of healing. Integrating themes from Constructing Musical Healing with more recent research on narrative medicine, community musicking, and the polarities model of the self, the paper proposes a dynamic understanding of health as balancing – an ongoing negotiation of personal, social, embodied, and transcendent dimensions of human life. Through myths, case studies, personal narrative, and analysis of diverse musical traditions, the article develops a comprehensive account of musicking as a site of rebalancing. It addresses community choirs, guided imagery, improvisation, shamanic drumming, singing bowls, grief practices, and other therapeutic modalities. It argues that wellbeing is better understood as a process than a product; that narrative is more suited to its representation than numerical evidence; and that music, as respectful encounter, offers a unique medium for the restoration of wholeness in fractured societies.