ABSTRACT
Music therapy as an arena of professional practice emerged in Western countries, first in the USA, followed soon by developments in Northern Europe, South America, Australia, and Asia. It is in Africa that this practice has been slowest to develop and in which the clash between the concepts and practices of music therapy and those of long-existing local healing practices that employ music have been most prominent. The discussion in Chapter 1 considered whether or not music therapy is continuous with perennial healing practices employing music. In contrast to the historical investigation from Chapter 1 where the question of temporal continuity was considered, the present chapter and Chapter 10 take more of a cultural-sociological perspective, looking for geographical continuity in the current day between the modern profession and healing practices as they exist in primarily non-Western cultures.
