Music: The New Age Elixir

Rating:
Summary: The real value of music
Review: A witty, well-informed and devastating attack on the delusions and frauds of those who have hailed music as everything from a cure for AIDS or cancer to a tonic for petunias. Summer, a music therapist herself, writes out of a tangible commitment to the real therapeutic and insirational value of music, and shows a sophisticated technical knowledge of music (and a grip of elementary logic)which is far beyond that of those she criticizes, notwithstanding their pseudo-scientific pretensions. Those she criticizes ought to blush and hide their heads in shame (but they won't of course: they'll just ignore her and carry on extracting large sums of money from those less well-informed and astute).

Rating:
Summary: A biased, unresearched view of music
Review: Lisa Sumner falls into the same pattern she criticizes in her book. She has not read much beyond 1992 in the field of mind/body medicine. She rightfully points out some of the sloppy thinking of new agers. But her logic is as faulty as theirs and just incorrect. Her lack ofrespect for those devoted to the field actually backfires against her goal. The book neither teaches nor inspires. It is unprofessional and does not reflect well on Music Therapy.

Rating:
Summary: A fine critique of a pernicious misuse of music.
Review: Summer takes on the vacuities and self-serving bombast of the so-called "sound healers." These folk are perpetrating a unique and dreadful double-header: bad science AND bad music. Summer uses their own claims and assertions, and by applying logic, clear thinking and analytical insight, demonstrates the emptiness of this pseudo-discipline and its practitioners. While often funny, her justifiable exasperation at their claims and beliefs leads her into occasional splenetic venting which sometimes mitigates the book's impact; methinks the lady doth protest too much. But then the next page brings a fresh "sound healing" inanity and I'm cheering her on again. Well worth your while -- and if you know a gullible person who's been sucked in by these particular scams, a good way to reintroduce a most valuable virtue: skepticism.