music making that enable a deeper understanding of community music. The purpose of this paper is to acknowledge and explore these two areas of musical discourse and, in doing, point toward possible connections, meeting points, and differences in order to invigorate future conversations and collaborations. In conclusion, I suggest that there are more opportunities in community music, more room for scholarly discourse and more open floor for international debate. This constitutes an opportunity to strengthen distinctive fields and through collaboration bolster their philosophical, and thus political, positions in the broader discourse of music education.
Keywords: Community, collaboration, education, ethnomusicology, music, therapy Community music as a field of research, practice, and pedagogy has come of age. In the past decade we have seen an exponential growth in practices, courses, programs, and research which has greatly increased its visibility and opened the field toward other musical domains including community music therapy and applied ethnomusicology. The purpose of this paper is to acknowledge and explore these two areas of musical discourse and, in doing, point toward possible connections, meeting points, and differences in order to invigorate future conversations and collaborations.
The following questions guide this paper:
• How might community musicians interact with colleagues in community music therapy and applied ethnomusicology?
• What are their differences and similarities?
• What can we learn from each other, and where are the opportunities to work together?
Community music therapy
As an increasingly evolving practice within music therapy, community music therapy (CoMT) incorporates community-based activities and can be described as a way of doing and thinking about music therapy in which the larger cultural, institutional, and social context is taken into consideration (Ruud, 2004). As a collaborative and proactive approach to health, development, and social change, CoMT involves an awareness of the broader systems that music therapists work within and is
characterized by collaborative and context-sensitive music making focused on giving
“voice” to the relatively disadvantaged. Like community music, Christopher Small’s (1998) notion of musicking is of particular significance, providing many of its practitioners with a conceptual fulcrum through which to discuss music as a performance activity. As such, CoMT provides challenges for major reassessment of performance’s place within music therapy. As Brynjulf Stige, Professor of Music Therapy at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Head of Research at the Grieg Academy Music Therapy Research Centre notes,
CoMT encourages musical participation and social inclusion, equitable access to resources, and collaborative efforts for health and well-being in contemporary societies. It could be characterized as solidarity in practice. In this way community music therapy can be quite different from individual treatment, sometimes closer to practices such as community music, social work, and community work. (Stige & Aarø, 2011, p. 5)
Resisting, or at least challenging, the traditional medical focus on cure and reduction of symptoms in favor of empowerment, prevention and health promotion, music therapists working in this way promote the necessity of individuals as co-constructors of their health and living conditions rather than recipients of care who routinely have things done on them. Like community musicians they work with rather than on participants. Community music therapy practitioners work with people to not only promote individual well-being, but communal well-being also. Although there has been an increased interest in “assessing” health in terms of measurable physiological changes through developing evidence-based practices, community music therapist lean towards a collaborative and sustainable practice-based evidence. This approach presents a model that is participatory, resource-oriented, ecological and culturally sensitive relating therefore to human needs and a wider perspective on human rights putting “musical justice” as a significant part of a music therapist’s agenda (Tsiris, 2014). It is within this context that a growing number of music therapists find themselves working in domains traditionally inhabited by community musicians.
Illustrations of practice
Simon Proctor’s work at Way Ahead presents a good illustration of CoMT. Located in London, in an environment that has high levels of unemployment, crime, and incidences of mental illness, Way Ahead is a non-medical community resource center for people with experience of mental health problems. Not part of any statutory services, it is funded by a yearly grant from the local health authority, social services, and an assortment of charities. A management committee, which includes service users and local people, runs the center, endeavoring to create an environment in which members can value their individuality and their culture through a sense of community.
The center is designed to help people experience their capacity for well-being, rather than focus on their medical illness. In an effort to alleviate isolation, there are no doctors, nurses, or patients - just members. There are no experts - just workers. There are no case history files and no classification of members on the basis of diagnosis.
Members are welcomed to the center based on who they are rather than a personification of a history or diagnosis. Way Ahead is, as Procter (2004) describes,
“a haven from psychiatric orthodoxy” (p. 224). Within the project Procter engages with each member in such a way to draw him or her into “co-musicking,” with all the interpersonal and creative demands that this presents: “Our co-operative relationship, at the center of all we do, is that of musicking together, or co-musicking” (Procter,
2001, n.p.). Through co-musicking, Procter seeks to create a shared musical history that is not documented for others to pick over, but experienced by each musician in his or her own unique way. Although music therapy in this setting is not part of a medical treatment model, neither is it really just playing music. Procter’s musical engagements cause him to reflect on the members’ well-being in order to offer intervention, “changing the ways I played and the suggestions I made in response to my musical observations of our co-musicking” (n.p.). Without such interventions, Procter believes that he could not offer his co-musickers significant opportunities for empowerment and enablement.
CoMT attempts to promote health within and between various layers of the sociocultural community and/or physical environment. Its practice includes a focus on family, workplace, community, society, culture, or physical environment; these interlinking aspects of life are described as an ecological approach that is an attempt to provide a holistic perspective where people and context are always inter-related.
This is illustrated nicely through the work of Norwegian music therapist Venja Ruud Nilsen. Working for several years with female prison inmates, Nilsen’s work generated a culture of rock music making within the prison. This has meant that many of the women have become proficient rock musicians. Nilsen, not restricting herself to the confines of the prison, has organized and supported participatory music opportunities for women after their release. “Working both within the institution and out in the community, the music therapist creates a bridge between prison and society” (Ruud, 2010, p. 132). This “bridge” helps support the person in maintaining a prison-free life. Through her work both on the “inside” and on the “outside,” Nilsen creates a safe space, providing a friendly atmosphere, a continuing social network, and a drug-free environment.
So what makes CoMT different from community music? Nordoff Robbin’s Director of Education Gary Ansdell considered this question in 2002. Ansdell recognized that both fields of practice flow from a broad belief in musicking but points toward working territory, theoretical explanations, institutional legitimacy, and resourcing as areas of divergence (Ansdell, 2002). One of the key differences was that those working in CoMT had built up a body of experience and expertise through their particular focus on the promotion of health. However, through a practice that directly considers the individual-communal continuum, CoMT has challenged tightly bounded definitions of music therapy (Wood, Verney, & Atkinson, 2004) and thus began to blur the boundaries between music therapy and community music. This is illustrated through the practice of Harriet Powell (2004), who once worked as a community musician and later trained as a music therapist. She assumed a new identity, understanding music therapy as a more narrowly defined field. She now sees CoMT as a way of “coming out,” a chance to work with a broader identity that enables greater breadth in her professional life. In personal correspondence, Ansdell has noticed an increase of community musicians taking courses in music therapy noting later that this is the case because usually “they [community musicians] want to pursue a more specialist track, learning particular craft practices and theory in order to enhance their practice in health and social care settings [and] conversely, music therapists continue to learn from the vibrant, flexible practice of community musicians, and their ability to engage with the musical spirit of the age, and people’s varying musical needs” (Ansdell, 2014b, p. 43).