Free Music Therapy Webinar: Musicking and Cultural Identity

Keeping Community in Mind: Musicking and Cultural Identity

Have you ever seen a pipa or heard pipa music? The pipa is a four-stringed pear-shaped lute, one of the oldest Chinese musical instruments with over 2000 years of history. Cici will share some of her pipa music and reflect on the relationship between music, culture, identity and wellbeing, and invite you to experience a therapeutic sound-making journey.

The gayageum is a Korean traditional string instrument. Hyunah will introduce this instrument, which is one of the geum family, along with the zheng (China) and the koto (Japan). She will discuss the diasporic identity of Koreans in relation to gayageum performance, with an understanding the meaning of gayageum music to Koreans in Dunedin. This presentation includes a gayageum demonstration.

The presentations will be followed by an opportunity for comments and questions.

Cici Kong was born in Dalian, a beautiful Chinese coastal city where she started her musical journey when she was four, singing in a children’s choir and later learning to play the pipa. She graduated with a Bachelor in Music Performance (Traditional Chinese Instruments) from Xiamen University of China in 2012. In 2013 and 2014, she worked for the Confucius Institute at Victoria University of Wellington as a Mandarin language assistant, offering Chinese language classes, music workshops and music classes in schools and communities, and performed in many quality events. Since 2018, she has worked as a Registered Music Therapist, after training at the New Zealand School of Music. Cici is passionate about helping children and adults to reach their potential and to build connections through positive music-making. She has worked with children with special needs at schools and adults with dementia and mental health issues in rest homes and daycare centres. Cici’s music therapy approach is person-centred and strengths-based. Cici loves the positivity when people and music come together, and feels that she now has a better understanding of how to care for them with patience and compassion.

Hyunah Cho is a PhD candidate in music therapy research at the University of Otago. As a Korean Certificated Music Therapist (KCMT), she worked as a music therapist at a Korean psychiatric hospital and a Steiner school in South Korea before coming to New Zealand in 2016. Hyunah is interested in a holistic approach by understanding the cultural context of music therapy. As a New Zealand Registered Music Therapist, Hyunah is providing music therapy sessions in Dunedin while finishing her thesis.

Registration closes on Sunday 18th October, at 5pm