{"id":6388,"date":"2022-11-10T14:50:19","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T09:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalmusicinstitute.in\/?p=6388"},"modified":"2022-11-10T14:52:03","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T09:22:03","slug":"in-conversation-with-purvaa-sampath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalmusicinstitute.in\/v1\/in-conversation-with-purvaa-sampath\/","title":{"rendered":"In Conversation with- Purvaa Sampath"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u2018In Conversation with\u2019 series brings to you the stories of various creative professionals from the music industry and provides a glimpse into their journeys. Today\u2019s conversation features an important conversation with India\u2019s first board-certified music therapist and founder and director of \u2018Mayah\u2019s Universe\u2019, Purvaa Sampath.<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

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 \u2018Mayahs\u2019 Universe\u2019, roughly translating to \u2018child of the universe\u2019, through which her practice has grown from one client once a week to more than 150 clients- and that doesn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

How did you decide to study music therapy and why?<\/span><\/h3>\n

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 \u2018why\u2019. 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\u2019s where my introduction to music therapy happened. The decision to study music therapy happened when I realised that I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s the part I also ended up enjoying the most. My internship gave me a chance to work with a very diverse population. It wasn\u2019t 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

How would you define music therapy?<\/span><\/h3>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

How did you conceive Mayah\u2019s Universe<\/a>?<\/span><\/h3>\n

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\u2026 It is based on the fact that there is respect in neurodiversity. That\u2019s an approach that I have had right from my internship and it\u2019s 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\u2019s not why we do music therapy. Instead it\u2019s a question of, \u2018how can we facilitate therapy so you can have the best experience you do in this lifetime\u2019? Be it finding solutions, mechanisms, whatever it is. That\u2019s where Mayah\u2019s Universe<\/a> really came from- the idea that neurodiversity is to be celebrated and we are not looking at making anyone \u201cnormal\u201d. That\u2019s not part of our vocabulary.<\/span><\/p>\n

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?\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

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 \u201cmambo jumbo\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s always going to be a challenge. There have been organisations that don\u2019t want to invest in music therapy and that\u2019s completely okay because it\u2019s still new and just picking up pace so it\u2019s going to take a while before it becomes as well-known as, say, physiotherapy or occupational therapy.<\/span><\/p>\n