International Journal of Community Music - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2017

This article explores the life-long trajectories of musical learning and participation amongst former military musicians, and how their musical and educational experiences spanning over 70 years, relate to community music practices in Sweden. The central questions are: Which factors seem to have formed the informants’ life-long engagement in music? How do their musical and educational experiences over these 70 years relate to community music practices in Sweden today? The army was one of the few contexts through which the vast majority of individuals could obtain free music tuition in the mid-twentieth century, and the article draws from interviews with five former military musicians who are now in their 80s. Their musical experiences, combined with educational aspects and goals informed by democratic values, mirror various characteristics of the formation of the Swedish welfare model during the second half of the twentieth century. Community music activities in Sweden often occurs in the specific interplay between top-down funded infrastructure and grassroots’ initiatives, and this article also highlights’ the role of these musicians in that particular context.

This article explores ‘community music’ in Norway, where the term is currently being introduced into higher education. The Norwegian context is outlined, and community music practices are traced back to inclusive music education practices in the 1990s. The authors discuss whether community music is a useful concept in a Norwegian setting. Three case studies are presented, exemplifying musicmaking activities with paramusical aims beyond teaching, rehearsing and performance. Conceptualizing community music as open-access musical participation with paramusical objectives represents a contribution to a pluralistic understanding of community music in the Nordic region. As the term community music becomes an educational subject in Norway, based on local practice, the need for a common theoretical basis uniting a diversity of practices becomes salient. The authors argue that, as awareness of community music as a distinct musical discourse grows, benefits might emerge if practitioners and institutions worked to develop a common professional identity, adopting the common label ‘community music’.

The Norwegian Municipal Music and Art Schools (MMAS) hold an important function in the Norwegian society, providing education and cultural activities on a weekly basis for some 103,000 kids. This article discusses the MMAS in the light of Community Music values. Orienting the discussion around three focal themes – Access and participation, Social aspects and Frames and flexibility – the article identifies both resemblances and contrasts between community music and MMAS practice and philosophy. A recently published curriculum plan for the MMAS is addressed and discussed in the article, and it is claimed that this new curriculum plan pulls the field in a direction towards more community like practice. This may imply a new perspective on what should be the MMAS’ core activities, and from that also follows that there might be a need for new and more relevant competences among the teachers.

This article explores the relationship between community music, folkbildning and music making in Sweden. This is exemplified by a case study of a Finnish association in contemporary Sweden. The article takes, as its point of departure, the specific question: what meaning do musical activities have for its participants in the context of a Finnish association in Sweden? Informants from the Finnish association consist of members of a senior dance group (65–80 years old) and a music group (50–65 years old). The fieldwork and methodological approach is inspired by the ethnographic tradition, and the methods of data collection involve qualitative semi-structured interviews in groups, as well as field notes. The findings reveal that dancing is the main activity in the association and through dance activities the participants (as adult beginners) started to play instruments within the association’s framework. This process promotes life-long musical learning and strengthened health. The participants’ migration experiences in combination with the musical activities in the association have an impact on their individual and collective identities, and their participation in a musical community develops a sense of purpose, empowerment and autonomy.

Every Tuesday morning, 150 people from the age of 62 and above gather to sing in Kilden Performing Arts Centre, Kristiansand, Norway. A case study of this choir, The Silver Voices, was conducted. The aim of the study was to understand the practice and how an art institution can play a role in developing such an activity. As a point of departure the following questions were formulated: What is going on in the choir? Why and how is the activity organized? What is the meaning of the participation for the singers? The collection techniques utilized were participant observation, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Perspectives from the fields of music education, community music and music and health will illuminate the analysis. The study shows that a musical activity such as The Silver Voices transcends distinctions between disciplinary fields.

The Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH) has been involved in a community music project for children in the Palestinian refugee camp, Rashedieh, in South Lebanon since 2003. This has grown into a larger music project where local instructors now run music activities and teach music as a permanent weekly activity. Three issues will be discussed in the article, based on perspectives within the field of community music. The first issue concerns how aiming for a culture of equality and cultural democracy can conflict with the ideology of the local culture and social structures. The role of learning and teaching within a community music project is the focus of the second issue. Finally, the role of formalized organizational structures will be evaluated with regard to fostering participation in music activities within the Lebanon project. Hopefully, presenting these perspectives and holding a discussion thereon will contribute to the ability to nuance and challenge underlying ideologies and common practises within the field of community music.

This article outlines a conceptual framework informed by anthropological and performance theory that allow for a deeper understanding of the connection between community music practices and processes of social transformation. By conceiving the community music practice as a cultural performance, attention is drawn to the complex relation between the meanings and relationships experienced inside the musical practice and how these affect and transform the relationships that constitute the broader social and cultural world of the participants. The discussion reveals that the relationships enacted in community music practices involving socially marginalized groups are better understood as inherently ambiguous, which challenge the idealistic perspectives often encountered in community music research.