The Oxford Handbook of Community Music

Brydie-Leigh Bartleet (ed.), Lee Higgins (ed.)

https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219505.001.0001
Published: 2018 Online ISBN: 9780190219529 Print ISBN: 9780190219505

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PART FRONT MATTER

Part front matter for Part II Transformations 

Published: February 2018

Subject: Music
Series: Oxford Handbooks
Collection: Oxford Handbooks Online

Mitrovica Rock School, Mitrovica, Kosovo (photograph courtesy of Musicians Without Borders)

Mitrovica Rock School, Mitrovica, Kosovo (photograph courtesy of Musicians Without Borders)

IN many respects, community music often has a transformational agenda. As the chapters in this section
illustrate, the eld of community music is increasingly becoming a force for social change around the world.
As the introductory chapter outlined, the politics and practicalities of such a change agenda have long been
debated by artists and writers within the context of instrumentalism, particularly within the context of the
intrinsic-instrumental debate. As the introduction suggested, it might be argued that there is no dichotomy
p. 174 between these two ideas—the instrumental is intrinsic—and the chapters in this section, and indeed in
the handbook more broadly point towards this case. In the opening chapter to this section, Phil Mullen and
Kathryn Deane explore the essential components for a strategic approach to community music with
children and young people in challenging circumstances. As they suggest, in the United Kingdom, hundreds
of projects receive funding every year to work with these children and young people, often with a clear
agenda to focus on personal and social transformation, as well as musical development. Their chapter rst
considers strategies at the national policy level and asks what community music development should seek
to achieve for such children and young people). Then their chapter considers strategies at the level of
community music pedagogy, considers what approaches to music-making would enable the desired
musical, social, and personal goals to be achieved. Mark Rimmers follows the theme of community music,
youth, and transformation in his chapter. He critically interrogates some of the key ways in which the
relationship between community music, youth, and change are commonly understood, and then moves on
to examine how these sit alongside the broader purposes and values commonly associated with community
music.

Following this, Peter Moser’s chapter brings in the perspective of the practitioner in response to
considerations of community music and transformation, and explores how communities grow in response
to their constituents in a symbiotic process of sympathetic exchange. In this chapter, Moser explores this
through themes of cultural creativity, ‘vernacular art’, and civic and personal celebration, which he believes
are at the heart of the work of a community musician. Burnard, Ross, Hassler, and Murphy’s chapter then
continues considerations of transformations within the context of intercultural dialogue and explores the
 role of community music in facilitating understanding across and between cultures. Their chapter features
the work of Netherlands-based Musicians without Borders and UK-based Music Action International, and
the voice of a Malaysia-based composer working in an intercultural context to examine transformations
that have occurred through collaborations between diverse communities and musicians, illustrating the
meeting of cultures and new practices. Sooi Beng Tan’s chapter then explores the role that community
musical theatre projects have played in engaging young people of diverse ethnicities in multicultural and
religious Malaysia to cross borders, deconstruct stereotypes, appreciate di erences, and build inter-ethnic
peace. This chapter provides insights into the strategies and dialogic approaches employed in two such
community musical theatre projects that promote peace building in Penang. The emphasis is on the making

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of musical theatre through participatory research, collaboration, ensemble work, and group discussions
about alternative history, social relationships, and cultural change. Picking up many similar threads within
the context of transformation, Andre De Quadros’s chapter explores how identity, struggle, and inclusion
p. 175 are evoked in three contrasting settings: in American prisons and in community music projects in two
other vastly di erent locations and situations in Mexico and Palestine.

In the nal chapter in this section, Douglas Lonie continues the theme of research and transformation, and
asks pertinent questions about how we evaluate and measure transformation in community music,
particularly within a policy environment increasingly focused on establishing the impact of public
investment on individuals, communities, and society as a whole. Importantly, this chapter seeks to critically
engage with terminology and appraise common models of evaluation and measurement advocated by a
range of funders of community music, by reviewing a range of policy documents and evaluation approaches
promoted by funders across the public and third sectors, using recent history in the United Kingdom as a
p. 176 case study.