Then certain songs came : music listening in the grieving process after losing a child

Abstract

In this article we investigate the affordances of music listening during a parent’s grieving process following the loss of a child, and what these affordances may tell us about music and grieving processes more generally. The discussion is based on a narrative by Janne that is taken from a longer interview related to music experience as a mediating tool for emotion knowledge. Janne describes her reliance upon music at different stages in the grieving process and emphasises its relational aspects—that is, how she experienced the music as a process of ‘reaching out’ (or in) in the context of her chaotic ‘bubble of grief’. The interview was guided by principles derived from the hermeneutic-phenomenological tradition, and the present analysis draws upon this tradition as well but also integrates narrative theory and contemporary music psychology research. We then present the results in relation to theories of emotion knowledge, grief and receptive music therapy.