Community Music Today
Edited by Kari K. Veblen, Stephen J. Messenger, Marissa Silverman, David J. Elliott
Publication date:
24 January 2013Length of book:
300 pagesPublisher
R&L EducationDimensions:
253x179mm7x10"
ISBN-13: 9781607093206
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.
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.
This compendium of essays offers rich perspectives on Community Music, and communities making music, in a broad spectrum of contexts in the world. It is a grounded response to the question, “What is Community Music?”, such that by reading of music in mainstream and marginalized communities, inside and outside institutions, in venues ranging from after-school programs to settlement houses, elder-homes, and prisons, there emerges an understanding of music-making together, in socially-conscious collectives, as a precious human need--a vital piece of who we humanly are. Musicians, teachers, and scholars across the fields of music, education, therapy, and the “ologies” will find relevant reading for their thought and practice.