Jazz, improvisation and a social pharmacology of …...Music Therapy Today Vol. IV (3) June 2003 1 Jazz, improvisation and a social pharmacology of music Jörg Fachner Abstract Extending

Music Therapy TodayVol. IV (3) June 2003

Jazz, improvisation and a social pharmacology of music

Jörg Fachner

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Abstract

Extending personal expressivity and relationship abilities during impvisation is a goal for active music therapy approaches. In creatiimprovised music we hear how humans perform in the world and how

‘sounding’ of their identity (Aldridge, 1996). Jazz music of the 20th and

30th has been dance music and musicians extended the structure otemporary songs with improvisations (“embellishment”) during tplayed tunes. Vividly played improvisations, with a unique personal sand sound, made jazz musicians, their bands and live-clubs famSince the beginnings of jazz, the consumption of drugs and its relaship to creativity and music has been controversial. Research on canand music perception has shown that there are certain changes in ptual and cerebral processing which influences performing and creamusic. Music therapists working with drug-experienced clients repproblems with clients and their drug-related history of music perceptState-dependent perceptual learning processes might resemble dtherapy processes. This paper will describe cultural issues and featudrug-induced music perception.

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Fachner, J. (2003) Jazz, improvisation and a social pharmacology of music.

Music Therapy Today (online) Vol .IV (3) June 2003, available at http://musictherapyworld.net

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A Social pharmacology of music?

Social pharmacology is a discipline of pharmacology, that focuses on the

usage of drugs as consumption behaviour. These behaviours are observed

and described in their social environments and are interpreted with phar-

macological, sociological and psychological methods. The aim of this

approach is to understand or describe patterns of use and resulting risk

behaviour. This data leads to adjusted prevention and harm reduction

strategies, mental health proposals or modification of law, as we are

observing in the 2002 British debate on rescheduling cannabis as a class

C drug. Class C includes drugs, that are not freely accessible, but allowed

for prescription and recommendation to patients. Private use and posses-

sion of small amounts can be tolerated. Being caught with cannabis will

in future be treated no more seriously than illegally possessing other

Class C controlled drugs like sleeping pills and steroids. This mitigation

of the Cannabis laws is what scientists have proposed since the La

Guardia Report of the 1940es (Solomon, 1966) or even the Carter

Administration in the late 1970s.

PARTY DRUGS The practice of social pharmacology investigations might be a statistical

description of drinking patterns of club visitors, that is, which drinks

were ordered, how long they stayed, or a survey on rave party attendees

and their consumption patterns of Drugs. Based on 1,853 questionnaire

derived from adolescent students participating in a Canadian Stu

Drug Use Survey, Adlaf (Adlaf & Smart, 1997) described the prevale

of rave attendance and the drug-use profile of rave attendees. For

thirds of rave attendees, drug use was significantly elevated. Altho

rave attendance is not prevalent, experienced drug users are attrac

raves, as earlier generations of drug users were attracted to rock con

A Social pharmacology of music? 2



One study (Forsyth, Barnard, & McKeganey, 1997), with 1523 school

children in Glasgow, aimed to find a relationship between the preference

of music styles and drug experience. Although few children in this study

had ever taken the drug ‘ecstasy’ (MDMA), fans of rave music were

more likely to have used drugs than those who preferred other styles of

music. This relationship held true across a range of drugs used, across

two geographical areas, over time and controlling for age, gender and

parental social class.

Why are concert and rave party attendees attracted by certain drugs? One

answer might be found in the action of drugs that change perceptual

styles and filters. Another might be found in the personality or identity

performance of an individual who takes part in cultural activities or hab-

its, or a third answer might hold true that drugs have been used at parties

since early days of humanity. However, these two studies mentioned

above seem to back up lay prejudgments about a connection between

specific music styles and certain drug effects. Is it possible, as we know

from musical preferences, that there is something like a social pharma-

cology of music? This means that certain drugs lead musicians to certain

musical styles and performance because some musicians are more

attracted by a specific drug? Let me cite Mezz Mezzrow, a Jazz Musician

from the 1930s who became much more famous for his marijuana joints

for friends like Louis Armstrong, Hoagy Carmichael, Thommy Dorsey or

others than for his playing. But by the way, he was not a bad musician.

This is how they felt about alcohol and music:

“We were on another plane in another sphere compared to the musicians who were bottle babies, always hitting the jug and then coming up brawling after they got loaded. We liked things to be easy and relaxed, mellow and mild, not loud or loutish, and the scowling chin-out tension of the lushbands with their false cour-age didn’t appeal to us.




Besides, the lushies didn’t even play good music – their tones became hard and evil, not natural, soft and soulful – and anything that messed up the music instead of sending it on its way was out with us. We members of the viper school were for making music that was real foxy, all lit up with inspiration and her mammy. The juice guzzlers went sour fast on their instruments, then turned grimy because it preyed on their minds.” (Mezzrow, 1946 p. 94)

DRUGS AND SOCIETY In 1998, the International Narcotics Control Board in Vienna released a

report that pointed to rock musicians, their songs and lifestyle as a certain

reason for increased drug consumption in the 1990’. Their drug-related

lifestyle had an impact on young people’s decision to take drugs.

“By far the greatest influence on many young people in devel-oped countries, as well as in some developing countries, is the promotion or at least the tolerance of recreational drug use and abuse in popular culture, particularly in popular music. Some lyr-ics of songs advocate, directly or indirectly, smoking marijuana or taking other drugs and certain pop stars make statements as if the use of drugs for non-medical purposes were a normal and accept-able part of a person's lifestyle. Popular music has quickly devel-oped into a global industry. In most countries, the names of certain pop stars have become familiar to the members of almost every household. With such globalization of popular music, mes-sages tolerating or even promoting drug abuse are reaching beyond their countries of origin”. (INCB, 1998)

One study, published by the US National Clearinghouse on Drug Abuse

from 1999, researched the contents of popular films and song lyrics for

drug related issues. After all mostly alcohol and nicotine have been men-

tioned, followed by cannabis including those lyrics that mention legaliza-

tion issues (Roberts, Henriksen, & Christenson, 1999).

In April 2003 the US government signed a child abduction bill and

attached the Rave-Act and the Clean-up act to this bill. Section 305 of the

Clean-up Act stipulates that:

„Whoever, for a commercial purpose, knowingly promotes any rave, dance, music, or other entertainment event, that takes place




under circumstances where the promoter knows or reasonably ought to know that a controlled substance will be used or distrib-uted in violation of Federal law or the law of the place where the event is held, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned for not more than 9 years, or both.“

Any concert promoter, nightclub owner and arena or stadium owner

could be fined and jailed, since a reasonable person would know some

people use drugs at musical events.

JAZZ AND MARIJUANA Anyhow, the history of attributing rock and pop artists as drug mediators

for young people, who would start to imitate a drug-poisoned lifestyle,

goes back to the early days of the 20th century. Since the beginnings of

jazz the connection between cannabis, music and creativity has been dis-

cussed controversially (Aldrich, 1944; Barber-Kersovan, 1991; Böhm,

1999; Boyd, 1992; Fachner, 2002a; Fachner, David, & Pfotenhauer,

1995; Jonnes, 1999; Mezzrow, 1946) and after all - politically exploited

as Shapiro or Sloman explained (Shapiro, 1988; Sloman, 1998). Harry

Anslinger, 1930s Head of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics put more

jazz bands in jail than he could count, as mentioned in an interview with

David Musto (Musto, 1997). Famous musicians -as we can read in the

list-were observed and some sentenced for possession of cannabis. In

front of the US 1937 congress, Anslinger talked about ”satanic voodoo

jazz” and those ‘reefer smokers’ that would make white women want to

have “sex with Negroes”. Furthermore, he described smokers as being

violent and insane. He was also ‘able’ to segregate between good and bad

musicians. The good ones play notes as written down on a score but the

bad jazz ones would add more notes in between what is written down

because of using cannabis and satanic voodoo rhythms (Sloman, 1998).

Anslinger obviously used the negative popularity of mostly black Jazz

musicians to support his position.




So, what happened those days back in 1934? The New York based ‘Litary

Digest’ reported:

”While whites often buy reefers in Negro night clubs, planning to smoke them elsewhere, sometimes they manage to gain entrance to a mixed-colour party. The most talked of reefer parties – excluding those of Hollywood – take place in Harlem. Early in the morning, when night club singers, musicians and dancers are through work, they gather informally – these affairs apparently are never arranged – and have a few drinks.

With their uncanny power for wheedling melody out of even the worst pianos, it isn’t long before the crowd is humming, softly clapping hands or dancing in sensuous rhythms that have never been seen in nightclubs. There is little noise; windows are shut, keeping the smell of smoking weeds away from what might be curious nostrils.

Nor there is any of the yelling, dashing about, playing of crude jokes or physical violence that often accompany alcoholic parties; under the influence of marijuana, one has a dread of these things. Sensuous pleasure is the beginning and the end: Let us enjoy pleasure while we can; pleasure is never long enough” – as Prop-ertius put it.” (Digest, 1934)

Playing Jazz music, smoking cannabis and talking in jazz slang “can also

be interpreted as a ‚way of life‘ characterized by specific identity pos-

tures and social performances of the artist’s world, bohemians, the ‚night

people‘ etc.” concluded Curry in his participating observations of jazz

musicians and their audiences (Curry, 1968: 238).

What becomes obvious in these lines is that there is a connection between

a certain lifestyle, identity, time and place of listening to and creation of

music. This is what many of us as music therapists experience in our

work with clients as well. Personal history and lifestyle lead to an indi-

vidual form of performed identity expressed in the preference of a certain

music marking passages of personal experience.




MUSIC, MODEL-PSYCHOSIS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH

Psychedelic drugs – and cannabis has mild psychedelic effects - are pref-

erably consumed in a setting suitable for the interaction of consumer and

environmental cues to temporarily expand psychic reality. In certain psy-

chotherapeutic approaches an attempt is made to stimulate and evoke

unconscious material for psychoanalysis. Psychedelic therapy used

music and fantasy themes as support and guidance in the psychedelic set-

ting. The beginnings of “Guided Imagery in music” were based on such

an aspect of psychedelic therapy. Certain pieces of mostly classical or

jazz music were conducted in a thematic therapeutic sequence to facili-

tate emotions, evoke peak experiences, uncensored responses and associ-

ations and to open a path to the inner world of the client’s unconscious.

All this happened in a relaxed secure and guided setting of psychedelic

therapy. Anti-toxicants for a possible bad trip were at hand and therefore

the patient could let go (Bonny & Pahnke, 1972). However, the rising

subculture of hippies transferred core elements of psychedelic therapy

into cultural symbols, and musicians went on stage to create public trips

into sound as an acoustic surrounding for the ‘pot- and acidheads’ on

their ‘trip’ into inner and outer space. Here, music was also used and cre-

ated as a guide to keep the acidheads ‘on track’ during the hallucinogenic

state.

Early research on music and drugs was published as basic research on

music perception, production and therapeutic use (Bonny & Pahnke,

1972; Eagle, 1972). One research project published in the German area of

music therapy done by Weber in the 60's focussed on the use of psilocy-

bin, a fungus with psychoactive ingredients (Weber, 1974). His work was

in the tradition of model psychosis research. The method of a model-psy-

chosis was invented to compare psychotic states of hallucinations with

drug-induced hallucinations and to discuss its noetic and clinical consid-

erations (Gouzoulis-Mayfrank, Hermle, Thelen, & Sass, 1998; Leuner,




1962). The aims of this approach are to describe pathological states like

the productive states of schizophrenia, which seem to be analogous to

some experiences made during psychedelic drug action. In Weber's

research a drug-induced altered music perception should serve as a model

of functional regression to lower levels of cognitive development.

Research on state-dependent effects of music on mood and behaviour

referred to individual perceptual learning strategies and history under the

influence of drug action (Globus, Cohen, Kramer, Elliot, & Sharp, 1978;

Thaut & de l'Etoile, 1993). State dependent recall of mood and situated

cognition is hypothesized for the efficiency of music therapy with

Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease patients. Music reactivates memory

processes instates no longer accessible by normal daily activities (Ald-

ridge, 1996).

Research with psychoactive substances and music perception might help

to show models of neuro-physiological functions of state dependent

recall and cognition. Currently a research group is working on the neuro-

physiological exploration of fantasy systems using results from psyche-

delic research (Emrich, 1990; Leweke, Giuffrida, Wurster, Emrich, &

Piomelli, 1999). In recent animal studies a new brain system -the cannab-

inoid receptor system (CBR)- has been discovered in the brain, and the

immune system. This discovery has gained a lot of new research and

offered new treatment strategies for Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s Dis-

ease, Glaucoma, Nausea, Tourette syndrome, Schizophrenia, etc. The

interested reader is forwarded to the textbooks and overviews published

(Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1997; Grotenhermen & Russo, 2002; Solowij,

1998).

MUSIC THERAPY CLIENTS AND DRUG-INDUCED MUSIC EXPERIENCES

Music therapists working with drug-experienced clients, suffering from

addiction report problems that they have with music perception and




altered states. (See article from Tsvia Horesh in this issue). State-depen-

dent perceptual learning processes might resemble processes occurring

during therapy. We can imagine that once a client has experienced a way

of life involving states of drug-use, than emotional aspects of memory

will be reactivated when certain cues are heard in the music, or during

movements in dance, and this may interfere with the aims of therapists.

Such problems are not ‘in the music’ or the substance itself, but con-

nected to the brain reward system, which is linked to perceptual learning

and habituation of emotional states like euphoria, flow, joy or pleasant-

ness. Drug-induced positive moods and states of euphoria, music-making

or listening or other pleasing activities like eating, sex or play is mediated

through the brain reward system (Blood & Zatorre, 2001; Lukas, Men-

delson, & Benedikt, 1995; Wise & Bozarth, 1985). Patients with a history

of drug-induced euphoria may experience a state-dependent recall

induced from certain individually perceived cues, which have been expe-

rienced together with drugs. The connection of joyful experiences inten-

sified by drug action is producing a strong memory account and craving

for such situations might lead to an addiction. Hereby the addictive

potential of different drugs and their specific pharmaco-kinetic and -

dynamics (Julien, 1997) has to be taken into account. These learning pro-

cesses have to be focused and transformed in therapy by offering new

ways of experiencing.

HABITUATION AND LIFESTYLE

Becker in his classic sociological deviance study of Marijuana use among

jazz musicians was able to show that recognizing and enjoying the effects

has to be learned (Becker, 1963). Jazz culture preferred the euphoric pla-

teau of cannabis action, the period of laughter (Siegel & Hirschman,

1985) and emotional enjoyment, because it made them ‘hot’ to play, their

auditive impression on music was enhanced and they improvised more

expressively (Curry, 1968; Shapiro, 1988). Hippie culture seemed to be




more interested in the second phase of contemplation and visionary state,

as Baudelaire described the three stages of cannabis intoxication in the

midst of last century (Ch. Baudelaire, 1988). After all the third phase of

vivid hallucinations - as Ludlow wrote (Ludlow, 1857) - depends on high

doses (Ames, 1958) and a certain set and setting (Blätter, 1992); there-

fore the third stage is drowsiness and sleep. The typical behaviour of the

stoners in the second and third stage created the term of ‘being stoned’,

(remember Bob Dylan’s famous verse “everybody must get stoned”).

‘Stoner’-cultures as well as the oriental and Chinese opium smokers pre-

ferred to contemplate, being in the orientalistic state of ‘khif’, as referred

to in the use of hashish as an intensifier of music perception and produc-

tion (Gelpke, 1982).

In his book entitled „Drugs and Rock’n Roll“, Shapiro advocates the the-

sis that each popular music style in this century was also the expression

of a certain life style, to be seen as related to the preferences in drug con-

sumption on the part of the artists and the scene around them who coined

this style (Shapiro, 1998). From a socio-pharmacological view, the pref-

erence of a subculture for a certain drug has always been a kind of fash-

ion to “turn on”, i.e. to put them into certain physiological conditions in

order to experience ordinary and extraordinary events, occurrences and

moods more intensively and from a different perspective.

“…the opinion that under the influence of marijuana you can make better jazz since you lose your inhibitions and get better ideas and more self-confidence was common among the jazz scene”. (Shapiro, 1988 p. 38)




Drug action and improvisation

The Anslinger papers, which contain many notes about drug use among

jazz musicians of the 30es, contain the following report about an arrested

musician in the early thirties:

“This man has confirmed that the consumption of marijuana among musicians, above all those playing in so-called “jazz bands”, is wide-spread, since under the influence of the drug they seems to attain a certain gift which they do not normally possess. In the words of the individual mentioned before: they become hot (Shapiro, 1988 p. 63).

The term “hot” coined in this context describes an attitude and musical

mood with a euphoric emotional quality and “an excessive heat of

expression” (Behrendt, 1974 p. 20). Being hot meant being good, being

expressive and flexible in the music and in general embodying a progres-

sive attitude and approach. In the words of Behrendt:

“You do not really ‘play’ on your instrument but rather ‘speak’ through it…” (Behrendt, 1974 p. 20).

By the way, doesn’t it remind us of what music therapists hear in the

form and quality of patient’s improvised play? More the form and com-

municative aspect of what and how it is played rather than the way it is

judged from a technical stance? This jazz root of improvised music

serves as an essential blueprint of music therapy work, as it offers a diag-

nostic tool for the therapist for listening after the session and for the

patient as an expression of his musical identity.

But, is it true then, that the emotional quality of the individual musi-

cal expression was enhanced with marijuana. In another of

Anslinger’s quotations, which has the negative connotation of musicians

keeping themselves awake with marihuana, there is an implicit indication

here to the first phase of intoxication induced by marihuana, character-

Drug action and improvisation 11



ised by euphoria and laughter, as Baudelaire described it (C. Baudelaire,

1966). Chemically synthesized marihuana was developed by Adams, a

researcher at Anslinger’s laboratories, and introduced in the treatment of

depression as an antidepressant and euphoretic called “Pyrahexyl” (see

Behr, 1982 p. 204; Stockings, 1966). This euphoretic and energizing ele-

ment of the effects of marihuana seemed to be the favourite effect at that

time, and highly appreciated by musicians in tendentially faster music. It

is interesting to note that the term “jazz” – according to Behrendt – was

derived from the dialect or jargon expression ‘jass’, ‘jasm’, for ‘speed’

and ‘energy’ in sports and games and sometimes also used with sexual

connotations as ‘gism’ (see Behrendt, 1974 p. 21); the term thus stands

for a description of temporal processes and intensity.

With inhibitions falling away, one might of course be tempted to try out

things one would not have dared before. However, John Hammond e.g.

complained that marihuana “hellishly interfered with the sense of time”

(in Shapiro, 1988). Becker quotes a musician on his cannabis experience

in the music:

”We played the first tune for almost two hours – one tune! We got on the stand and played this one tune, we started at nine o’clock. When we got finished I looked at my watch, it‘s a quarter to eleven. Almost two hours on one tune. And it didn’t seem like anything. I mean, you know, it does that to you. It’s like you have much more time or something.” (Becker, 1966: 74)

TIME EXPANSION However, all kinds of processes occur in time. We are ‘patterned frequen-

cies in a matrix of time’ improvising our identity in the personal set and

setting of situations we’re in, as David Aldridge has proposed (Aldridge,

1989). In the experience of time as kairos, time structures are connected

to the personal time. Time as chronos is connected to processes con-

cerned with defined geographical and societal agreements. Kairological

time allows a variety of time perceptions and refers to the right time to do




something, to decide or act directly in the here and now. A talk can seem

like hours, even if it lasts only 20 minutes or it can be exciting and feels

like only a few minutes. There must be specific moments, situations and

interests that interfere with a personal kairological set of emotions, habits

and attitudes. We need specific settings and surroundings that make us

experiencing an event as acceleration (‘rush’) or a slowing of time.

Cannabis influences this personal set of time frames. There is a feeling of

time being stretched or expanded or perceived as slowed down or sped

up. 95% of 151 participants of Charles Tart’s study “On Being Stoned”

agreed to the following statement:

“Time passes very slowly; things go on for the longest time (e.g. one side of a record seems to play for hours)” (Tart, 1971).

In most experiments, stoned subjects failed to reproduce a correct metric

counting of time intervals, and tended to expand the estimated units.

Jones reported that a 15 second time interval was expanded to a mean of

16.7 seconds, with deviation up to 19 seconds estimated under the influ-

ence of oral THC, while being counted correctly in normal state (Jones &

Stone, 1970). A reverse relationship also occurs. Melges declared a

speeding-up of the inner clock as responsible for expanded and slowed

perception of chronological time and for producing temporal disintegra-

tion failures.

“A subject becomes less able to integrate past, present and future, his

awareness becomes more concentrated on present events; these

instances, in turn, are experienced as prolonged or timeless when they

appear isolated from the continual progression of time” Melges con-

cluded (Melges, Tinklenberg, Hollister, & Gillespie, 1971: 566). This

reminds of some of the counter-culture focus ideas on the ‘here and now’

feeling. Emotion-related time and information selection processes are co-




ordinated in the limbic midbrain, hippocampal and cerebellum parts of

the brain, regions found to host high amounts of the recently discovered

cannabinoid receptors (Joy, Watson, & Benson, 1999). Another brain

imaging study of time perception correlated cannabis-induced changes of

cerebral blood flow in the cerebellum (Mathew, Wilson, Turkington, &

Coleman, 1998).

Assuming that this endogenous cannabinoid system is involved in time

processing in general, the scope of this experimental research is not that

far from research on time processes in music perception and its therapy.

(See also the papers from U. Maas and M. Dobkin de Rios in this issue).

RHYTHM If cannabis induces a subjective time expansion, music, and especially

the rhythm must be perceived as expandable. In experiments Aldrich

(1944) as well as Reed (1974) reported cannabis-induced changes on the

rhythm scale of the ‘Seashore test’. Despite the controverse discussions

about the Seashore’s usefulness, after cannabis intoxication rhythm was

perceived more distinctly and especially casual users had an obvious

improvement in the rhythm task (Reed, 1974). Most of Aldrich’s subjects

– two of them musicians - said that they had the subjective impression of

perceiving tones and rhythm better after cannabis intoxication.

Jazz musicians of the 1920s and 1930s had to play contempory tunes the

whole night for dancing, so an embellishment of song structures was

needed to maintain interest and cannabis seemed to provide a nice inspi-

ration to create a larger vision for doing this. With Marihuana, “The

swing musician ascends new peaks of virtuosity” was written in a 40’s

Life magazine article (in Aldrich, 1944). Cannabis’ first euphoric level

seemed to help them to express vividly, intensive with self-confidence,

groove and jive in the music, reported the psychiatrist Winick (C. Win-

ick, 1959; Charles Winick & Nyswander, 1961). Jazz music featured




und

improvisational elements within the structure of songs. Musicians

expanded the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structure of dance songs

in their improvisations. Dr. Munch, the physician in Anslinger’s team,

said in a 70es Interview to Larry Sloman.

“... if you are a musician you’re going to play the thing the way it is printed on a sheet. But if you’re using marihuana, you’re going to work in about as twice as much music in-between the first note and the second note. That’s what made jazz musicians. The idea that they could jazz things up, liften them up...” (Sloman, 1998: 147).

Changed time estimation may thus temporarily permit an increased

insight into the space between the notes, as if music is heard with a time

lens but in real time. Urchs refers to the ‘space between’, as a noise ratio

relationship between information units that enables us to generate new

patterns (Urchs, 1986). This ‘insight’ might enable a skilled musician to

preconceive arising melody lines with suitable harmonic changes over a

certain groove of rhythmic structures. This kind of foresight due to a pro-

longed kairological time scaling in the flow of improvisation might open

up a more vividly playing and intensity scaling of expressive elements.

Vividly played improvisations with a unique personal style and so

made jazz musicians, their bands and live-clubs famous.

Anyhow, for Lindsay Buckingham cannabis seemed to work like a

refreshing of his listening abilities:

”If you’ve been working on something for a few hours and you smoke a joint, it’s like hearing it again for the first time” (Boyd, 1992: 201).

George Harrison would have agreed with him:

”I think that pot definitely did something for the old ears, like suddenly I could hear more subtle things in the sound” (Boyd, 1992: 206).




Globus did another study that backs up this idea of a temporarily broader,

extended perception of music elements.

Caldwell reported an increased sensitivity to intensity thresholds. Loud-

ness parameter detection was enhanced. He couldn’t find cannabis-

induced changes in basic auditory functioning of the outer and inner ear

(Caldwell, Myers, Domino, & Merriam, 1969). Globus referred to Cald-

well’s work and Becker’s conclusion (Becker, 1966) that cannabis effects

are learned. He conducted a research design with three different groups.

All of them learned how to adjust a loudness level of 800 mV (81 dB)

sound level on a 610 Hz frequency. One group learned the loudness level

in a ‘stoned state’, while the other groups learned the loudness level in a

normal state. The task was to adjust the loudness only by an internalized

imagery of the learned criterion tone. The last two groups smoked either

a placebo or a THC-joint at a defined time period. After these two groups

received the joint, they failed impressively in adjusting the loudness

level. Only the marihuana learners stayed stable in their adjustment (Glo-

bus et al., 1978). As a result, Globus suggested an expansion of the audi-

tory measuring units as responsible for the experience of an enhanced

music perception.

Conclusion

It is a goal for active music therapy approaches to extend personal

expressivity and relationship abilities during improvisation. In creatively

improvised music we can hear how humans perform in the world and

how they achieve identity (Aldridge, 1996). In an EEG study Fachner

showed, that the EEG topography of music listening activity did not

changed but exhibited more amplitude power on the alpha range when

listening to music in an intoxicated state (Fachner, 2002b). The EEG

Conclusion 16



topographies of music listening exhibited inter-individually different

EEG gestalts but were intra-individual stable. This means that music is

perceived and processed inter-individually differently but intra-individu-

ally the listening strategy is linked to personality and the way music is

perceived. This might serve as means for demonstrating electrophysio-

logical objectivity for individual therapy indication and treatment. Fur-

thermore, these individual differences become visible when comparing

quantitative EEG (QEEG) Brain maps derived from combined single

case studies. In a quantitative study with results gained from a bigger

number of subjects these individual features would be averaged to a sta-

tistically acceptable profile but loose the important information as visible

in individual topographic QEEGs and treated as visual phenomenological

comparison of EEG-gestalts.

We can see that marihuana has a certain action profile, that has an impact

on playing and listening to music while being under the influence of can-

nabis. Becker demonstrated that musicians were able to habituate to the

cannabis effects (Becker, 1963) and used time expansion issues and emo-

tional enhancement of intensity scaling (Globus et al., 1978) for their

artistic expression. A reduction of inhibitions can offer a more direct way

of emotional expression and this made jazz musicians hot in their playing

(Shapiro, 1998). Jazz music has been one of the contributions to improvi-

sational abilities of musicians and served as a tool which music thera-

pists.

From the stance of modern receptor science, the external agent of can-

nabis docks on the internal endogenous receptor and stimulates the sys-

tem more intensively. This shows that cannabis only works as an

enhancer of what is already there and does not add something completely

new. One will not be suddenly able to play an instrument without learn-

ing, but his preconceptions about what is possible and ways of perceiving

Conclusion 17



the acoustic field will be changed. When generations of users report that

they can listen to sound more distinctly and that cannabis enhances their

appreciation of music, why shouldn’t a patient benefit?

Some pioneering work on the use of psychoactive substances during

music therapy done by Peter Hess and colleagues has shown that can-

nabis might work as an adjunct helper in therapy (Hess, 2002). One

Alzheimer patient, receiving an oral dose, was able to concentrate more

deeply on sound than before and was attending the therapy process with

much more cognitive attendance than before. Cannabis might help to

broaden and intensify state-dependent recall of music memory structures

and situated cognition of emotional learning, Furthermore, as is known

from medical research, cannabis has a neuro-protective function, which

hinders free radicals from destroying nerve cells. Here, the pharmacolog-

ical action of cannabis might be usefully combined with processes initi-

ated in music therapy.

Perceptual filter lowering of psychedelic drugs was used in the beginning

of GIM to evoke a free flow of associations in psychotherapeutic context.

Helen Bonny always stressed that the use of drugs was not really needed

for doing guided imagery in music but in a personal communication she

agreed that the levels of emotional involvement were different with or

without substances and so was the flow of ideas and associations.

A social pharmacology of music might help us to understand the use of

drugs in certain contexts of music activity. The use of drugs is predomi-

nately reported in the context of addiction. However, there is a culture of

using drugs in medical, psychological, traditional and cultural settings,

which is not problem-related and uses drugs for certain purposes (see

Blätter, 1990) as outlined above (see De Rios and Maas in this issue). For

music research, these cultures are of interest because they help to under-

Conclusion 18



stand ways of perceiving and processing music in different states of con-

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This article can be cited as: Fachner, J (2003) Jazz, improvisation and asocial pharmacology of music. Music Therapy Today (online) Vol. IV, (3)June 2003, available at http://musictherapyworld.net

References 26

Jazz, improvisation and a social pharmacology of …...Music Therapy Today Vol. IV (3) June 2003 1 Jazz, improvisation and a social pharmacology of music Jörg Fachner Abstract Extending

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