Meet Jesse Morgan

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jesse Morgan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jesse, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

As a young person, I suffered a lot of physical and mental traumas. At age six, I was struck by a vehicle, by age six, I had undergone two major kidney surgeries, my parents’ divorce, drug poisoning (accidentally ingested a large dose of amphetamine), witnessed violence between my father and step-father. and more. I was an only child until age 8 and I spent a lot of time alone. I had a lot of intense emotions I didn’t know how to deal with. I discovered that music would help me regulate my state of mind. It made me feel better. In fourth grade, I came home from school with a book of magic tricks, determined to learn a skill, to be able to have an act in the 4th Grade Talent Show. My mother noted my delivery and suggested I might learn an instrument. I chose piano. As soon as I made the decision to study piano, I was hooked, and driven. I practiced on a cardboard keyboard for six weeks, before the piano my mom and step-dad put on layaway arrived. I learned to play the theme song to the movie Fame and performed at the next year’s talent show. I had found a practice that enabled me to express myself in a way I had never experienced., My Myers-Briggs Personality Test label is INFP. This means I’m a generally introverted, intuitive person who is driven more by feeling than thinking and deals in perception more than judgement. Playing piano gave me a purpose, to express emotions through sound, to make music. I was ten years old. It would be another twenty years before I discovered music therapy as a discipline; thirty before I would actually become a board-certified music therapist. During those thirty years, In between me discovering the life-enriching practice of piano and me becoming Jesse Morgan, MT-BC, As I was not able to describe the job I would have in music when I graduated, my mom and step=dad, who were paying my tuition, directed me to study something more practical–teaching. And, since I loved to read, I should teach English. I worked as a high school English teacher and yearbook adviser for six years. Then, at age thirty, I went back to school to study music, which is what I had always wanted to do. I took out my own student loans. I fell in love with a fellow student in my college piano studio and left school with a B.S. in Music in 2004. My first child, my son, Stuart, was born in Sept of 2005. I was working a church music director. When our second child came along, my ex was working as an elementary school music teacher and our childcare costs were equal to what I was making at the time. So I decided to stay home with the children. At the same time, I decided to start a nonprofit organization (the folly of youth!) whose mission was “Building Community Through Music”. I would take my young children to meetings, forever heating up the baby’s mother’s frozen breast milk using hot water in paper coffee cups in endless coffee shops. from 2007-2012, I managed the nonprofit, Community Records, with local hip hop artist-teachers leading our songwriting workshops and local music producers. We worked with over 2000 young people in the five years we were running, meeting them in homeless shelters, schools, after school programs, summer camps, and community centers. We perfected our curriculum, which started by asking young people to describe their role in their community. Then we helped them identify and explore issues that needed to be addressed, i.e., gangs, global warming, domestic violence, etc. The verses described the issues and the choruses offered solutions. Then we would break into singers, musicians, rappers, visual artists, music producers.–we evenn had a student choose the role of business manager. Once we got the raw recordings on-site, we sent them to our local music producers and I burned the songs onto cds (!) that we gave to students during our closing ceremony, where we acknowledged the work they had done. I got a certificate in community-building from the local university. At the time, I did not have relationships with people with money and the fund-raising world was foreign to me. In order for Community Records to have continued on, I would have had to had investors. I just ran out of steam after running the org for five years with little help with admin tasks. In 2014, five months after our third child was born, my ex announced she was divorcing me and marrying her girlfriend, which sent me into a nosedive. I new that I would have to re-invent myself to some degree, so I decided to go back to school again, in 2016, this time to earn a Bachelors in Music Therapy, for the next five years I went through the music therapy program at Eastern Michigan University and graduated in 2021, Ending the year as a board-certified music therapist. From January 2022 till December 2023, I worked as a Music Therapy Fellow at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. At the hospital, I worked in the pediatric cardio-thoracic unit (PCTU), with newborns and children who received heart transplants and with children on kidney hemodialysis. I worked with patients and their families in their rooms and in a million-dollar recording studio called Sophie’s Place, which is located on the third floor of the hospital. I am currently leading an intergenerational community choir sponsored by Dementia-Friendly Saline. I also do hospice music therapy visits and maintain a music studio where I teach music lessons to people of all ages. On Thursday evenings, I lead a songwriters support group. I also lead piano karaoke sessions at Sid Gold’s Request Room in Detroit and have a monthly piano karaoke gig first Wednesdays at the North Star Lounge in Ann Arbor. Music is an endlessly rich resource that helps us connect with others and with ourselves. Music can be used for distraction, making meaning, self-expression,…I’ll finish this tomorrow! thx Jesse

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My work is all concerned with helping people use music to meet their goals, which vary widely. I do home hospice music therapy visits, common goals include relaxation, self-expression, meaning-making. I always bring instruments with me that do not require any musical skill, including egg shakers, hand drums, triangle, kazoos, etc., to be offered to clients who are open to joining in the music-making, i.e., musicking. Songwriting is an intervention often use for meaning-making. We can explore ideas and memories in our music therapy sessions and choose which ones might be included in the client’s song, which can easily be recorded. During my Fellowship at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, I helped young families write lullabies for their new (often their first) babies. Patients of mine in the hemodialysis unit had to sit next to the machine that cleaned their blood for 3-4 hours 2-3 days per week. Songwriting is a great musical activity if you are interested in eating up a lot of time.

Another type of recording practiced in the hospital was creating Heartbeat Recordings. There were two circumstances that might require a heartbeat recording. One was for heart transplant patients. The other was for patients who were coming to the end of their short lives. For heart transplant patients, I would use a bluetooth stethoscope to record the patients heartbeat before the transplant operation and then return to record the new heartbeat afterward. For memory-making purposes, I would record the patient’s heartbeat before they died. In both cases, families chose a song that was meaningful to them and I would learn the song and record myself playing and singing that song over the patient’s heartbeat. Examples of Heartbeat Recording songs patients chose include: “The Imperial Death March” from Star Wars, “Songbird” by Fleetwood Mac, “Are You My Sunshine” Traditional, “Believer” by Imagine Dragons, that Phil Collins song from the latest Tarzan movies, “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. There were many more.

One thing that is unique about me as a music therapist is my level of musical ability. I have been learning and playing and learning and playing for almost half a century now. It’s still my greatest passion. My ability to use music to reach people, to connect with people, to help them connect to themselves and with others, is made possible through my musical skills. Piano is my first instrument. I also sing, play guitar and too many instruments to mention here.

I discovered the discipline of music therapy midway through my healing journey. Before then, I think I was trying to invent it! In my quest to heal myself, I discovered I could use music to help heal others as well. I have a deep knowledge of popular music of the 20th century. I am educated in classical music and dearly love the study of music, regardless of genre. I have helped songwriters and performers develop their songs into albums and concerts. I am skilled at supporting singers participating in my Piano Karaoke Shows. I have always had the ability to match a person’s emotional state. This, combined with quickly assessing a person’s musical skill level and years of experience, makes me a wizard at helping others succeed in their musical endeavors, be they medical or recreational.

There is one musical skill that is key to my music therapy work is improvisation. Successful improvisation requires an understanding of how music works, what the rules are and the most creative ways to break them. Once dialed in to a person’s emotional state, I am often in a position to quickly choose a way forward (a song or an intervention) that is in line with the client’s goal and with which I have a musical facility. This takes years of practice. There are countless studies proving the efficacy of music therapy using science. These inform the interventions music therapists choose when working with clients. I am a firm believer in science. I also know that healing often requires art. Music is an intuitive art that has been around as long as humans. I am often aware of when the music has created a healing space within one of my music therapy sessions. If the client is able to communicate to me about our session, later, they tell me they felt that same awareness. Music is emotion expressed through sound. Emotions are sometimes subtle, shaded with different levels of intensity, and even other emotions. Nothing can recreate the subtleties included in specific emotions better than music. This is especially true if the music is being made by a tremendously skilled musician. I am a tremendously skilled musician. I am good at making music in a way that I am not good at anything else. I am doing my best to use this skill in the service of others. Currently that includes leading an intergenerational dementia-friendly community choir, leading (supporting) piano karaoke performances, teaching piano lessons, and helping people reach their own unique goals in my music therapy practice, Jesse Morgan Music Therapy, www.jessemorganmusictherapy.com. In the past, I have helped pediatric heart transplant patients and their families through the many emotions of that process, helped families grieve the loss of a child, helped hemodialysis patients forget where they were, helped hospice clients through their final days, helped families celebrate successful surgeries, helped mothers connect with their babies during initial breastfeeding attempts, helped families write songs about their traumatic illness journeys, helped people learn to express their emotions in the moment, helped people so many things, not all related to emotion, but most. Music is emotion expressed through sound. As a young child, I was lost and afraid, overwhelmed by the intense emotions inside and around me. Then I found music. I still use music to regulate my emotions every day. I also practice yoga now, but that’s another story!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

My father gifted me with an expansive musical education in folk, blues, rock and jazz music that layed the foundation for my own music-making, especially my piano playing. It also provided a way for me to feel connected to him, because I didn’t see him that often.

Musicianship. Once I started learning to express my emotions through music, I became passionate about it. Still am! This includes improvisation.

Self-knowledge. I was a public school high school English teacher and yearbook advisor for 6 years in the 1990s. Teaching classrooms of children taught me more about myself than anything I have ever done. It’s a truly challenging job! It’s one of those things that you cannot understand unless you have done it yourself.

My advice for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on their knowledge of musical literature, musicianship and self-knowledge is…

Well, a music therapist’s *knowledge of music literature* includes songs, pieces, genres and generally flows from the culture of that person’s family. I think it’s important to be aware of the musical cultures of our clients. Beyond that, we have our personal experiences with music that help us become who we are as musicians.

I think it’s important to strive to have the best *musicianship* possible. Some teachers say “the music makes the therapy” or “the music is the therapy”, i.e., if the music’s not good, the therapy’s not good. I can only speak from my own perspective. Many music therapists I know are done with playing music when they’re done working. Sometimes I need quiet breaks, but I almost always have a desire to explore music.

Know Thyself, said Socrates. To be honest, I don’t believe we ever really thoroughly know ourselves to any meaningful capacity, or anyone else for that matter. But it is useful to pay attention to one’s thoughts, either through meditation or journaling. It’s useful to notice one’s own reactions, emotions. There’s that word again!

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

I read a lot of books by C.G. Jung and about Jungian Psychology. I have been very interested in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy lately, founded by Richard Schwartz. It’s roughly similar to Pixar’s Inside Out movies. We all have an internal cast of characters that may or may not be working in concert. Study IFS has helped me develop a better relationship with myself.

The other most helpful books have been fairytale collections. There’s one by Robert Bly called More Than True that I’m gobbling up right now.

Fairytales and Jungian Psychology both deal with the unconscious, the parts of ourselves we are not aware of. Music and art come from the unconscious. Fairytales, Jungian Psychology, music and art all help us to develop a relationship with our unconscious selves.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Toko Shiiki-Santos
Mark Samano

Suggest a Story: BoldJourney is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems,
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
Leadership Development
Empathy Unlocked: Understanding how to Develop Emotional Intelligence

“Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It’s the impetus

Productivity
Where do you get your work ethic from?

We’ve all heard the phrase “work hard, play hard,” but where does our work ethic

Productivity
Boosting Productivity Through Self-Care

When you have a never-ending to-do list it can feel irresponsible to engage in self-care,