The following is a list key concepts and terms used in the Liberation Music Therapy perspective.
Accompañamiento - To stand alongside those who need witnessing and nurture concientización to recover people's discounted wisdom.
Anti-fascism - Anti-fascism is any political process opposing fascist ideologies, groups, and individuals. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum, including anarchism, communism, social democracy, socialism, conservativism, and liberalism.
Artivism - A portmanteau word that combines art and activism popularized through various events, actions, and artworks by artists and musicians. An artivist can be involved in culture jamming, subvertising, street art, spoken word, protesting, and activism, in addition to traditional mediums like film and music, to raise awareness or advocate for changes.
Concientización - The intrinsic connectedness of the person's experience within the sociopolitical structure; roughly translates as raising politico-social consciousness or critical consciousness.
De-ideologized reality - Ideology refers to the principles that maintain the hegemonic group's values while maintaining an unjust sociopolitical environment. Ideology obscures the social forces and interpersonal relationships that generate and maintain oppression. Therefore, a critical task of facilitators is to de-ideologize reality, allowing people to understand the nature of social reality transparently rather than obscured by the dominant ideology.
Entrainment - The unconscious synchronization (e.g., foot tapping) of sentient organisms to an external perceived rhythm, such as human music and dance.
Methodological eclecticism - Traditional research methods, such as surveys and quantitative analyses, are integrated with novel tools, such as qualitative analyses, creative arts, and spiritual practices.
Positionality - Personal values, views, and location in time and space influence how one understands the world. Gender, race, class, and other aspects of identities are indicators of social and spatial positions and are not fixed, given qualities.
Preferential option for the oppressed majorities - The preferential option for the oppressed Majority is the development of music therapy that is "from" oppressed people rather than "for" oppressed people and to re-situate the facilitator as part of the emancipatory process for and with oppressed communities.
Psychological First Aid - An evidence-informed approach for assisting people in the aftermath of a disaster, designed to reduce the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Psychological trauma - An emotional response to a distressing event or series of events, such as accidents, violence, or natural disasters. Reactions such as psychological shock and denial are typical, though people will react to similar events differently, given that subjective experiences differ between individuals. Longer-term reactions include unpredictable emotions, emotional flashbacks, difficulties with interpersonal relationships, and sometimes physical symptoms, including headaches or nausea.
Realismo-crítico - Theories should not define the issues addressed but that the issues generate their theories. Theorization plays a validating, but not fundamental, role.
Social Orientation - Social orientation refers to the reorienting of focus from an individualistic orientation to a more socialistic orientation, as all individual characteristics emerge from social relations.
Somatic Abolitionism - Somatic Abolitionism is an emergent process of respecting, honoring, and resonating with other human bodies and resourcing energies always present in your body. It is not exclusively a goal, an attitude, a belief, an idea, a strategy, a movement, a plan, a system, a political position, or a step forward.
Transgenerational trauma - The psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group.
Intergenerational transmission - Epigenetic changes pass down from the traumatized generation to their offspring.
Transgenerational transmission - Offspring pass trauma down to their children who did not experience the first traumatic occurrence.