| As the United States becomes a more diverse nation, mental health professionals are seeing increasingly more clients from different cultures in their clinical practices. Due to the ability of music to reach people in most cultural groups, music therapy is an ideal therapeutic modality for helping many of these multicultural clients. The limited amount of music therapy-specific research literature regarding culturally sensitive counseling, in addition to the fact that the vast majority of music therapists are White females, has revealed a need for music therapists to explore multicultural issues and actively seek ways to become culturally competent in counseling. This manual provides music therapists with a basic knowledge of select diverse cultural groups and, based on this information, suggests music therapy techniques that may promote the best responses from clients of these cultures. |
