In Conversation with- Purvaa Sampath

10 Nov In Conversation with- Purvaa Sampath

The ‘In Conversation with’ series brings to you the stories of various creative professionals from the music industry and provides a glimpse into their journeys. Today’s conversation features an important conversation with India’s first board-certified music therapist and founder and director of ‘Mayah’s Universe’, Purvaa Sampath.

What stands out from the first moment you speak to Purvaa Sampath is her passion for her work and her love for the people she works with. Returning to India in 2018 after completing her dual degree in Music Therapy and Vocal Performance at the Berklee College of Music, Purvaa began her professional journey as a music therapist in India from a complete blank slate. She is a pioneer in the truest sense of the word, being the first to bring the profession of music therapy to India. In the last four years, she founded ‘Mayahs’ Universe’, roughly translating to ‘child of the universe’, through which her practice has grown from one client once a week to more than 150 clients- and that doesn’t even include the many requests she has to decline. Alongside the challenges of building an organisation from ground up, she continues to advocate for music therapy as a credible tool for therapy- a mode of therapy around which there is little to no awareness in India. Below are the excerpts of a conversation spanning the many aspects of her work and more. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you decide to study music therapy and why?

It definitely has been a journey. It was my carnatic music teacher who started teaching children who were differently abled. There were just two students who she was teaching music to and they started showing a lot of changes to their cognition, behaviour, emotional as well as mental health and it just made me extremely curious about the ‘why’. At that point it was attributed to the spiritual philosophy of Carnatic music but I think I was more curious about the science behind it. That’s where my introduction to music therapy happened. The decision to study music therapy happened when I realised that I didn’t see a future for myself in communication studies which is what I was in college for here in Bangalore. I ended up doing a BIN (Berklee International Network) school program and then auditioning and interviewing for Berklee where I did music therapy. My music therapy career only really started once I left for my internship. Up until that point I had a notion of what music therapy was and it turned out to be nothing like what I thought it was. The neuroscience angle was completely new for me and that’s the part I also ended up enjoying the most. My internship gave me a chance to work with a very diverse population. It wasn’t just music and medicine or music and autism, or music and special needs- it went above and beyond so I got to work with mental health, the geriatric population, teenagers, adults and children with autism and more. My internship made me confident to be able to take on a variety of clients.

How would you define music therapy?

Music therapy is an intersection between psychology, music and neuroscience and you use music as the tool to address non-musical goals. These non-musical goals can span across cognition, physical health, behavioural challenges, social challenges, and emotional challenges.

How did you conceive Mayah’s Universe?

Mayah was a name that came up when I was looking for an artist name for myself back in Berklee. It was a name that kept coming up in different contexts from different languages. The meaning that really stood out to me and the one I connected with was how mayah means child of god in Hebrew. I chose to play with what it means to me, which is the child of the universe. Anyone that walks into our center, our space, or anyone that I work with, I want them to feel like they are a child of the universe. It is based on the belief that we all come from the same source and we go back to the same source- whatever that is… It is based on the fact that there is respect in neurodiversity. That’s an approach that I have had right from my internship and it’s a belief that informs the way that I work with my clients which is to say that there is nothing wrong with you and that’s not why we do music therapy. Instead it’s a question of, ‘how can we facilitate therapy so you can have the best experience you do in this lifetime’? Be it finding solutions, mechanisms, whatever it is. That’s where Mayah’s Universe really came from- the idea that neurodiversity is to be celebrated and we are not looking at making anyone “normal”. That’s not part of our vocabulary.

How did people initially respond to you as a music therapist? Was it challenging to breakthrough and create a space to practice a profession that is at its very nascent stage? 

I received the most resistance from the medical community. Earlier on back in 2018 when I had just moved back, I met the medical director of a very popular chain of hospitals in South India and he was just extremely dismissive. He told me to my face that he did not believe in whatever “mambo jumbo” it is that I did but he only met me because the request came from a friend. That was very jarring for me. But having said that, the flip side has been really positive. I did end up finding doctors- neurologists, neuroscientists, neurosurgeouns- an entire community that really believe in how music can help in shaping your brain and shaping your experiences in dealing with physical and cognitive challenges. It’s been very heartwarming to see the kind of people who have given me a chance to show them what music therapy is or how music therapy works. Music therapy has kind of spoken for itself over time, be it the growing numbers of requests for workshops, or calls from people who want to know more about music therapy and how they can become a music therapist. There is a lot of potential but what we need to figure out is education that’s ethical, extensive and comprehensive in nature so that there is a standard of music therapists that we are creating in the country. I think India really wants music therapy or at least I seem to have found the right community that really seems to want it. And it’s always going to be a challenge. There have been organisations that don’t want to invest in music therapy and that’s completely okay because it’s still new and just picking up pace so it’s going to take a while before it becomes as well-known as, say, physiotherapy or occupational therapy.

What do you think it will take to grant more legitimacy and credibility to music therapy as a profession?

I think the first step is to not want a crash course. Don’t do a twenty-hour program or a hybrid online program- these things don’t work. After studying music therapy in person for three years, when I went to my internship on my first day I still felt like I knew nothing about music therapy. It was that supervision and in-person training for 1200 hours that gave me the confidence to go out there and work as a music therapist. I think it’s very important right from the get-go for those who want to become music therapists to 1) know that you can’t shortcut your way into it, and 2) to understand that there will be aspects of it that you don’t really like. It’s not about knowing what to do with a client but knowing how to improvise and adapt to your client’s needs in that moment. That’s what the six years of study and training is for. 

There are many musicians that host sessions that they call “music therapy” without being trained music therapy professionals. Tell us your thoughts on this growing pattern and how it impacts both professionals and clients.

More than anything else it’s just not ethical, right? If you have people- who I am sure are well-intentioned – who don’t have the right training and they go and talk about what music therapy is to a group of people who have probably never heard of music therapy before, then it can be misleading. This is from a workshop standpoint. The people that end up getting hurt in this process are clients. If you don’t have the right training, you might not know how to assess a client’s needs, how to create interventions or how to be able to take into account the neuroscience or the psychological aspect of it. The client is completely trusting you by opening up to you and being their most vulnerable self with you. And at that point in time if you don’t have the training to be able to hold that space for them and the ability to work with them then clients suffer. It’s great that people want to bring music and mental health or music and emotional health together but just be aware of who your audience is, be aware of what your limitations are in doing that, and do what you need to do in order to make sure that the work that you are doing is ethical. Put your client first and think about it from their point of view. 

What have been some of your most moving and memorable experiences with your clients?

There have been many many memorable moments. One heartwarming moment that comes to mind is… I’m at a ward for residents with dementia- they live there and stay in that ward and they are towards the end of their life.  I see them every Tuesday and there is one particular client who is usually quite snappy and gets very irritated when the nurses try to wake him up or try to get him to do something. Whether he remembers what day it is or what the time is, he will always remember me. He will hear my voice at the door, and from under his blanket he will say, “oohhhhh, Purvaa is here!” And then you know, just sit up! It has become like a ritual where I have to go to give him a hug and pat him on his back eleven times and only then will he get up and come to the common area for music therapy. One of the plans is that everytime he sees me, he asks me, “okay, is today the day you’re going to kidnap me?” Because he says if you kidnap me, my family will give you a lot of money so you can keep that money and you can keep doing all this lovely work that you are doing and then I get to be free!” Everytime I tell him that if I kidnap you, the only thing that I will want is you, it lights up his face! Everytime I get to interact with him, sing with him and make music with him, it just leaves me feeling very very fulfilled. It leaves me hoping and having a lot of faith in humanity more than anything else. He’s my little man.

How do you see Mayahs’ Universe growing in the next few years?

I am definitely hoping to bring in people who have either studied with me or done a program where I know that their foundation is solid, and to be able to create training programs for them. Basically doing what I did when it came to my internship as a training program. There is no requirement for a training program as of yet from universities. So having them train and having them be comfortable using music as a modality even if it is not just music therapy that they are doing is important. I see Mayahs’ Universe growing mostly through collaborations with educational institutions, mental health spaces and hospitals. One area to focus on is to create a standard educational program that I definitely think Mayah’s Universe will be a part of but another aspect to it is also just advocating for understanding what music therapy is and having very functional ways of making music a part of what you are already doing. I think these are the few goals or the vision that I have in mind for Mayah’s Universe. And of course the plan is that the more people that come in and train and practice, the more I will be able to focus on bigger picture projects like setting up education programs and also finishing up my own education. That is the plan but I am always open to the universe doing as it pleases and later realising that it was right all along.

You can follow Purvaa on Instagram and Facebook to stay tuned to her journey!

Written and interviewed by Senjuti