Community Music Today

Community Music Today highlights community music workers who constantly improvise and reinvent to lead through music and other expressive media. It answers the perennial question "What is community music?" through a broad, international palette of contextual shades, hues, tones, and colors. With over fifty musician/educators participating, the book explores community music in global contexts, interconnections, and marginalized communities, as well as artistry and social justice in performing ensembles. This book is both a response to and a testimony of what music is and can do, music's place in people's lives, and the many ways it unites and marks communities. As documented in case studies, community music workers may be musicians, teachers, researchers, and activists, responding to the particular situations in which they find themselves. Their voices are the threads of the multifaceted tapestry of musical practices at play in formal, informal, nonformal, incidental, and accidental happenings of community music.

In Community Music: In Theory and in Practice, Lee Higgins investigates an interventional approach to music making outside of formal teaching and learning situations. Working with historical, ethnographic, and theoretical research, Higgins provides a rich resource for those who practice, advocate, teach, or study community music, music education, music therapy, ethnomusicology, and community cultural development.

Invitation to Community Music Therapy presents the main perspectives and principles of community music therapy as it is practiced around the world. A relatively recent development within the broader field of music therapy, community music therapy emphasizes human connectedness, health promotion, and social change. This textbook surveys the history, theory, and current practice of community music therapy to develop a comprehensive picture of the field. Along the way it takes full measure of the diverse and vibrant ways community music therapy is practiced around the globe. Including dozens of photographs and pedagogical tools such as chapter questions, textboxes, figures, key terms, and discussion topics, Invitation to Community Music Therapy is the ideal introduction to a growing area of music therapy.

This handbook provides a comprehensive review of what has been achieved in the field to date and what might be expected in the future. This handbook addresses community music through five focused lenses: contexts, transformations, politics, intersections, and education. The contributors to this handbook outline community music's common values that center on social justice, human rights, cultural democracy, participation, and hospitality from a range of different cultural contexts and perspectives.

Music lives where people live. Historically, music study has centred on the conservatory, which privileges the study of the Western European canon and Western European practice . The Eurocentric way music has been studied has excluded communities that are considered to be marginalized in one or more ways despite that the majority of human experiences with music is found outside of that realm. Community music has emerged as a counter-narrative to the hegemonic music canon: it seeks to increase the participation of those living on the boundaries. Community Music at the Boundaries explores music and music-making on those edges. “The real power of community music,” writes Roger Mantie in the foreword, “lies not in the fiction of trying to eliminate boundaries (or pretending they don’t exist), but in embracing the challenge of ’walking‘ them.” Contributions from scholars and researchers, music practitioners, and administrators examine the intersection of music and communities in a variety of music-making forms: ensembles, university and police choirs, bands, prison performing groups, youth music groups, instrument classes, symphonies, drum circles, and musical direction and performance. Some of the topics explored in the volume include education and change, music and Indigenous communities, health and wellness, music by incarcerated persons, and cultural identity. By shining a light on boundaries, this volume provides a wealth of international perspectives and knowledge about the ways that music enhances lives.

In German music education, the focus has historically been on formal music education in schools. Participatory music making in the community, or community music, has so far received little attention in theory or practice. This thesis constitutes the first in-depth analysis of the development of community music in Germany, conducted using empirical data and literature analysis. The development of the Munich Community Music Action Research Group is highlighted as an example of the potential of community music in the German context. The research shows that the context-specific development of a framework for community music in Germany, within the community music spirit of participation reflected in the action research methodology, gives voice to and connects community musicians, and has contributed considerably to the development of community music theory and practice, not only in Munich, but across Germany. Alicia de Bánffy-Hall arbeitet seit 15 Jahren europaweit als Community Musician in Forschung und Praxis. Projekte u.a. mit Orchestern, Museen, Schulen, Gemeindezentren und freie Projekte. Seit 2016 ist sie an der katholischen Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt am MA inklusive Musikpädagogik/Community Music tätig. Seit 2018 Mitglied des Editorial Boards des International Journal of Community Music. Alicia de Bánffy-Hall has worked in community music practice and research for over 15 years: with community centres, nurseries, schools, and arts organisations. In 2016, she accepted a post as a lecturer at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt where she established the first MA in inclusive music education/community music in Germany. In 2018, she joined the editorial board of the International Journal of Community Music.

Engaging in Community Music: An Introduction focuses on the processes involved in designing, initiating, executing and evaluating community music practices. Designed for both undergraduate and graduate students, in community music programmes and related fields of study alike, this co-authored textbook provides explanations, case examples and ‘how-to’ activities supported by a rich research base. The authors have also interviewed key practitioners in this distinctive field, encouraging interviewees to reflect on aspects of their work in order to illuminate best practices within their specialisations and thereby establishing a comprehensive narrative of case study illustrations. Features: a thorough exploration and description of the emerging field of community music; succinctly and accessibly written, in a way in which students can relate; interviews with 26 practitioners in the US, UK, Australia, Europe, Canada, Scandinavia and South Africa, where non-formal education settings with a music leader, or facilitator, have experienced success; case studies from many cultural groups of all ages and abilities; research on life-long learning, music in prisons, music and ritual, community music therapy, popular musics, leisure and recreation, business and marketing strategies, online communities – all components of community music.

Special Needs, Community Music, and Adult Learning is one of five paperback books derived from the foundational two-volume Oxford Handbook of Music Education. Designed for music teachers, students, and scholars of music education, as well as educational administrators and policy makers, this fourth book in the set focuses on issues and topics that help to broaden conceptions of music and musical involvement, while recognizing that development occurs through many forms. The first section addresses music education for those with special abilities and special needs; authors explore many of the pertinent issues that can promote or hinder learners who share characteristics, and delve deep into what it means to be musical. The second section of the volume addresses music as a shared, community experience, and the diverse and constantly evolving international practice of community music. The chapters in the third section provide evidence that the process of music education exists as a lifelong continuum that encompasses informal, formal, and non-formal methods alike. The authors encourage music educators to think in terms of a music learning society, where adult education is not peripheral to the priority of other age groups, but is instead fully integral to a vision for the good of society. By developing sound pedagogical approaches that are tailored to take account of all learners, the volume endeavors to move from making individual adaptations towards designing sensitive 'universal' solutions. Contributors Carlos R. Abril, Mary Adamek, Kenneth S. Aigen, Chelcy Bowles, Mary L. Cohen, William M. Dabback, Alice-Ann Darrow, John Drummond, Cochavit Elefant, David J. Elliott, Lee Higgins, Valentina Iadeluca, Judith A. Jellison, Janet L. Jensen, Patrick M. Jones, Jody L. Kerchner, Thomas W. Langston, Andreas C. Lehmann, Katrina McFerran, Gary E. McPherson, David Myers, Adam Ockelford, Helen Phelan, Andrea Sangiorgio, Laya H. Silber, Marissa Silverman, Rineke Smilde, David S. Smith, Kari K. Veblen, Janice Waldron, Graham F. Welch