Women invented chill out DJing
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Abram Hoffer’s wife Rose was in charge of the tunes during Humphrey Osmond’s 1950s tests
I couldn’t find a picture of Rose Hoffer, Hermina Browne or Helen Bonny in the 1950s so please settle for Delia Derbyshire making one of the earliest and greatest pieces of electronic music in 1962
When 50s LSD researcher Abram Hoffer’s wife Rose soothed a tripping patient by changing a jarring record to an elegant Bach number, she was henceforth delegated I/C the tunes.
Testing music for effectiveness began in 1956 under Hermina E Browne, director of music therapy at New Jersey State Hospital during psychedelic sessions for alcoholics. Browne’s major innovations were to divide the soundtrack into five thirty-minute parts plus – I love this one – put the music on for half an hour, then turn it off again for the same time.
Browne’s playlist categories were:
1 Relaxing to tense
2 Very tense, disturbed with a purpose
3 Solemn, meditative, self-searching, spiritual
4 Relaxing, spiritual
5 Reconciling, restoration of confidence, feeling of hope and faith
Browne passed her findings on to E Thayer Gaston, ‘The Father of Music Therapy’ who eschewed her policy of ‘Five Moods Projected’. Instead he insisted on music ‘familiar’ to the patient. (The Fadiman handbook suggests the first time voyagers ask to change the music, stand your ground gently, then cave in if they ask again).
Hermina Browne’s innovation was to put the music on for half an hour, then turn it off again for another thirty minutes
Later during the 1970s Helen Bonny considered music ‘intersubjectively verifiable’ and set out to prove it. Her Maryland Hospital is noted for using four therapists in psychedelic sessions, always including a music specialist.
Bonny’s unpublished research demonstrated certain universal qualities, but she’s even better known for conceiving Guided Imagery and Music, the leading form of music therapy in the present day.
The soundtrack curated by women for early LSD test remains the template for chill out mixes – plus Johns Hopkins University (its seven-hour playlist here) and MAPS therapy sessions – today.
Unless you prefer the 2020’s foremost psychedelic tunestress DJ Bus Replacement Service.
Doris Woo AKA DJ Bus Replacement Service