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- Volume 11, Issue 1, 2018
International Journal of Community Music - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2018
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2018
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Listen to a Songbird sing: Musicians, creativity and the paediatric hospital setting
By Ros HawleyAbstractMusic making in a paediatric hospital offers new pathways to communication. Children become the leaders of musical interaction, as musicians carefully observe moods, emotions and the smallest of responses in order to be able to ‘listen’ to and respond to a child. Opportunities for music-making are created by the bedside and on the way to treatment. Medical professionals and families engage with live music and musicians, as a natural part of hospital life. Musical vocabulary is developed between musician and child patient to include music made with breath, mouth sounds, vocalization, hands and fingertips. Sense of time and space expand and contract in moments of music creation. Trust between musicians, patients and staff is gained through carefully paced musical interaction, ensuring a gradual exposure to musicians, live music and shared music-making. Songbirds, a two-year musicians’ residency in a children’s rehabilitation ward enabled children experiencing long-term hospitalization and their families to participate in regular music making sessions with myself and a colleague as part of their process of recovery. Many of the children were non-verbal and music making became an important element in supporting cognitive and social development and in reducing anxiety. In this case study of my practice as a musician working in a hospital I reflect on how the experience of making music with children informs and inspires processes of interaction and creativity, and how observations made during music making influence a musician’s reflection and consolidation of practice.
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Singing and spirituality in a South African male voice group
Authors: Dawn Joseph, Roy Page-Shipp and Caroline van NiekerkAbstractSince the mid 1970s, a group of twelve business and professional members of a male singing group have continued singing together in Pretoria, South Africa. These singers were interviewed as part of a project on spirituality and well-being: music in the community. From the interview data, two overarching themes emerged, membership benefits and spiritual connections; these are discussed in this research project. Members’ views of benefits related mainly to fulfilment of personal, including musical, needs, although all were gratified that their singing provided enjoyment to community audiences and benefits to disadvantaged communities, mainly from ticket sale proceeds. Most saw an association between singing and the spiritual, but only a minority identified a religious connotation, the remainder relating to nonreligious factors such as the ‘human spirit’. A deep sense of commitment and a love of music impacts positively on social engagement, benefiting and enhancing quality of life for the group members.
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24 Hours in a Revolution: Participatory music in the Umbrella Movement
More LessAbstractThe Umbrella Movement (UM) in Hong Kong, through its prolonged street occupation, has created an expressive platform for countless artworks by artists and amateurs. Under investigation is 24 Hours in the Revolution, a group of mostly musicians who facilitated thirteen song writing sessions inside and outside the protest sites. In addition to being an invaluable source of documentation of the movement, this collection of 40 collaboratively written songs is unique among protest music in being highly personal, detailing individuals’ motivations to join the movement and their on-site experiences and emotions. The lyrics of the songs are analysed within the context of the UM, supported by available studies, interviews, documentations and news reports. The analysis expands the ten functions of ‘culture in movement’ to include the therapeutic impact of participatory music-making in providing psychological relieve and fortifications.
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Transformations and cultural change in Scottish music education: Historical perspectives and contemporary solutions
Authors: Mark Sheridan and Charles ByrneAbstractCultural and socio-political disruptions have a direct impact on educational provision in both formal and non-formal contexts. Since the end of the Second World War, Scotland has faced significant upheaval in its social and economic fabric with the loss of traditional manufacturing and heavy industry, which was the mainstay of its financial stability. The formal education sector responded with far reaching changes in curriculum and assessment process in school examinations provision in the 1970s and 1980s; while grassroots organizations have driven a regeneration of older deeper musical and cultural foundations, flourishing over the last 40 years, despite, or because, of these disruptions. And young people in communities across Scotland are the core of this transformation. In 2008 the authors wrote:
What is important in this phenomenon is that young people are reclaiming the wealth of folk music and culture that had almost died out within largely rural communities in the margins of the north and north-west of Scotland (Campbell, 1999; Munro, 1996; Shaw, 1977). The work of Fèisean Nan Gàidheal has been largely instrumental in this restoration.
(Broad & France, 2006; Matarasso, 1996)
This article explores the responses to these changes and offers perspectives on the Scottish narrative for a wider global audience.
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Thumbs Up: The effective use of music in health and well-being education for Australian Aboriginal youth in remote communities
Authors: Brendan Anthony, Donna Weston and Samuel VallenAbstractThe academic literature on Australian Indigenous health and well-being suggests an overwhelming need for education to alleviate ‘lifestyle’ diseases and social dysfunction. Yet, the socio-cultural diversity of Australian Aboriginal communities provides a challenging landscape for efficacious and long-lasting support processes. The ‘Uncle Jimmy Thumbs Up!’ (UJTU) programme is facing these issues from an innovative perspective. ‘Thumbs up’, addresses health and well-being in remote Aboriginal communities from the ground up by engaging in music education programmes with the youth of the community, which subsequently filters through to the broader community. Based on an analysis of the effectiveness of a ‘Thumbs Up’ case study, this article will present preliminary recommendations for working with Australian Indigenous youth and their broader communities through facilitated musical activities. Informal learning frameworks, which incorporate music-making shared between educators and community members, are shown to be a constructive means of engaging the youth and empowering them in the management of their health and well-being.
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Community music on campus: Collaborative research, activist methods and critical pedagogy in a fandango-based participatory music programme
By James DariaAbstractThe relationship between community music and higher education is both potentially problematic and productive. This article relates the history of a unique community music programme on a university campus based in the Mexican traditional folk music of son jarocho and its participatory performance of fandango. In this project, collaborative research, activist methodologies and critical pedagogy were employed to link under-represented students, community members and exponents of traditional music in a transnational and reciprocal framework. Through an analysis of the challenges community music programmes on campus present to academic music schools and the strengths and weaknesses of the fandango-based programme, this article argues for the productive power of such relationships if their inherent inequalities can be overcome.
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Lithuanian folk ensembles as bonding social capital: Perspectives on participatory music-making in Vilnius
More LessAbstractThe purpose of this study was to examine the culture of four Lithuanian folk ensembles with particular attention to the perceived values and benefits for participants and the perceived functions of the ensembles in local and national communities. Based on five months of ethnographic fieldwork in Vilnius, findings suggest a wide range of benefits associated with participation that vary across generations. Folk ensembles emerged as critical to the preservation and dissemination of a living body of folk culture and also serve to cultivate a sense of Lithuanian identity among members. Findings are examined using a social capital framework and the notion of Lithuanian folk ensemble as generators of flexible bonding social capital is forwarded.
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