When pioneering in play therapy techniques with severely traumatised children, Madge Bray noted that through the process of healing and recovery, dissonant sounds common in the early stages therapy gradually became sweeter and more harmonious as the child’s balance returned.
Fascinated by this discovery she began to seek out world music which mirrored this process, and eventually discovered in the Caucasus Republic of Georgia, a form of shared polyphonic harmony singing, which has served to stitch the fabric of Georgian society together for millennia, in the face of repeated invasions and threats to its integrity. In Georgian Polyphony, acknowledged by UNESCO as a "masterpiece of the intangible heritage of humanity" she recognises a harmonisation tool of world significance. Madge works out of the Charity Ecologia Youth Trust ,
http://www.ecologia.org.uk/, based at the Findhorn Foundation in the north of Scotland.
She co-founded Braveheart Georgia,
http://www.braveheartgeorgia.org/, with virtuoso Georgian singer and musicologist , Nana Mzhavanadze . Together they work to disseminate the music ,enabling , Nana to teach her musical inheritance internationally. In one of the few singing villages left in the High Caucasus , Lakushdi, they bring groups of singers and non-singers alike to keep the source of the music sustained. They also seek to disseminate this ancient vibrational healing tool to children in Georgian orphanages.
Madge was brought up in a Scottish singing family, and is a writer, singer and public speaker.
She has received a nomination as European Woman of the Year .
