International Journal of Community Music - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2011

In this article the author offers a personal reflection on the 12th seminar of the ISME Commission for Community Music Activity in Hangzhou, China, 2010. She gives summaries of all the presentation topics, as well as personal narrative accounts of her experiences at the seminar. These reflective descriptions bring the seminar to life for the reader and also tease out some of the cultural dimensions to the Commission's time in China. As such the article offers both macro and micro glimpses of the key themes covered at the seminar, as well as reflections on community music making in the context of the seminar's hosting country, China.

In the process of building a learning society in China, the government has paid more and more attention to education in communities. Community education is oriented towards all social members of society and offers a vast space for the popularization of music education. China's open universities are able to provide a learning platform and systematic support and service for music education in communities. Open universities can play an active role in promoting the construction of a harmonious society. This article discusses the necessity of music education in communities, advantages enjoyed by open and distance education, and the channels and methods for conducting community music education. This is illustrated by several recent initiatives made by the open universities in China, particularly the organization of the 2009 National Community Music Activity Broadcasting and Exhibition and the Community Singing Rating Activity. These efforts have generated new community music experiences and serve as examples to further study the concept and the social impact of community music.

Music education in communities is a newly sprouted thing and is gradually catching people's attention. Music education seeks to promote community members' aesthetic senses. Music and the arts, the best tools for moving people's souls, link different hearts across various boundaries, affecting all aspects of social life. Music education can serve as a major force to intensify cohesion within communities that are purely formed by economic relationships. Starting with an explanation of community and community music in modern China, this article expounds the content, influence and functions of community music, with illustrations from a case study, to unveil the charm of community music.

Based on my personal experiences of learning nagauta as a case study, this article examines the process of learning traditional Japanese music. It raises attention to potential pedagogical issues when traditional music is introduced into school music classrooms, as was suggested in the 2008 Japanese Course of Study for Music. From my observation four points became clear: (1) traditional one-to-one and face-to-face teaching and learning situations are unfamiliar to school music teaching; (2) the historical and cultural background of this particular music may cause some obstacles to the students' learning; (3) music teachers are not familiar with this genre and it is difficult to learn it in a short time because there are no written scores to rely on but for using them to remember what has been learned; and (4) its performance is based on individual presentation supported by a community of musicians of the same school joining in. With these issues in mind, the article concludes by presenting possible strategies on how and in what ways can the traditional Japanese music of nagauta be taught in the music classroom, by calling upon professional musicians from within the community.

Professional music communities have realized that if they do not promote their art forms among the youth of today, the future of their music may be in question. Many local ethnic music groups have recognized the need to make the first move and go out to the audiences of the future and bring their brand of music to these audiences. Their task is to somehow teach potential audiences that their music, culture and the arts are an important form of enjoyment and worthy of their attention. This article presents a Malay music ensemble outreach programme for schools, which is supported by the National Arts Council (NAC) (Singapore) Arts Education Programme initiative.

This article discusses issues of creative music making and understanding as they arose in the context of a music programme for newly arrived refugee and immigrant children. How do young people make sense of a music environment when they do not understand the language of the facilitator or other participants Visual information and imitation offer reliable entry points into participation, but are not always sufficient for more complex creative processes such as group composition and invention. The author draws upon her experiences working in an English Language School for recent immigrants and refugees, and explores some key points of cross-cultural adaptation as they intersect with musical understanding and engagement in a composition process.

The interface of music and health has principally been through music therapy and the use of music to build individual wellness. Community music as a tool for communicating health messages in combination with other arts and as a part of an epidemiological study has not been widely used. This article considers the relationship between public health, community music in particular, and the arts more generally. It discusses various ideas that give shape to an interdisciplinary enquiry centering on health policy. It introduces several aspects of Dewey's philosophy to support the idea of a community musichealth nexus as a source of projects that are both beneficial and have genuine aesthetic value. The study examines issues relating both to artistic value and health impact effectiveness in an Indian dispossessed community context, and provides a narrative of community music interventions in India with an analysis of the inherent aesthetic value.