Singing and Wellbeing

Singing and Wellbeing provides evidence that the benefits of a melodious voice go far beyond pleasure, and confirms the importance of singing in optimum health. A largely untapped resource in the health-care professions, the singing voice offers rewards that are closer than ever to being fully quantified by advances in neuroscience and psychology. For music, pre-med, bioethics and medical humanities students, this book introduces the types of ongoing research that connect behaviour and brain function with the musical voice. It also synthesizes medical findings with Western music history, musical ethics, aesthetics and ethnomusicology. The centrality of the inflected voice in human existence will be examined through the lenses of anthropological, evolutionary, historical, musicological, philosophical, psychological and emerging medical evidence. This book contributes to the interdisciplinary bridge-building already underway among musicians, music therapists, health-care researchers and providers, and caregivers interested in the effects of singing. Discussion points, links to further reading, and audio and video resources illustrate applications of central concepts.