ABSTRACT

Body politics in music therapy unfolds in a web of cultural contexts and interactions, enacted through multiple modes of expression. In this chapter we explore how identity politics emerges in the contemporary landscape of European neo-liberal societies to continually shape bodily ideals and modes of being for women and men. Specifically, we locate musical practices in therapeutic contexts through their interaction with the broad context of popular musical practices, where performance has been a pervasive site for the performative doing and undoing of gender, and as such constitutes an important source of collective understanding about sex, gender and the body. Drawing examples from music therapy literature *we consider how descriptions of performative interactions in music therapy reveal the organizing function of normative gender narratives. Focusing on specific enactments such as singing and dancing, or the playing of particular instruments in a proscribed style, we highlight how the therapeutic affordances of musical performance are often configured through a range of gender codes.