International Journal of Community Music - Volume 6, Issue 1, 2013

Membership of community music groups by older people can enhance quality of life, provide a sense fulfilment and create a space through which cultural identity may be shared. This case study explores community and cultural engagement by members of the Coro Furlan, an Italian male community choir in Melbourne, Australia. Members were interviewed and data analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Three broad themes were identified: sense of community, maintenance of cultural identity and sustaining well-being through shared music making. The choir members perform music from Italy and elsewhere and consider themselves to be custodians of Friulan choral music. Singing in this choir has offered members an opportunity to value, learn and share music in formal and informal settings. This article identifies how music engagement can facilitate successful ageing through commitment to community, singing and following the ten ‘Commandments’ of the Coro Furlan.

The String Project construct was conceived at the University of Texas in 1948 before being adopted by music faculty at the University of South Carolina (USC) in 1974. For 38 years, we have provided affordable instruction on stringed instruments and also given our music education majors essential teaching experience prior to graduation. Between 25 and 30 undergraduate and graduate university students serve over 350 students from the community each year. Due to the efforts of the National String Project Consortium, 39 other universities have adopted the models pioneered first by the University of Texas and subsequently, by USC. We believe the String Project construct is one solution to provide access to students who may not otherwise be able to afford instrumental music instruction and at the same time, prepares teachers for teaching in the public schools

In this practice report we explore the application of community music in a drop-in community mental health setting. This report will map out how our practice of community music that was ‘therapy-aware’, used music as a personal metaphor and analogy for service users’ mental health issues. Two brief case examples showing the application of metaphor and analogy will be outlined, followed by a wider discussion about the implications of this approach within community mental health settings

Health musicing was explored in a community orchestra in a large metropolitan area in the Northeast United States. Participants in this study included both health care professionals (paediatrician, oncologist, haematologist) and non-health care professionals (accountant, architect) who performed with the orchestra, and the conductor. The following two questions guided this study: (1) How does health musicing function in this orchestra? (2) How do the participants perceive their engagement and subsequent health musicing with the local medical community? Data collection for this study included interviews, observations and collection of artefacts during the course of three concert preparation sequences. For the participants in this study, health musicing occurred primarily for two reasons: The role of the orchestra with community engagement; and the affect that participation had upon the musicians with music as healing

This article explores being a musician in a foreign community, considering the author’s experiences as a visiting artist in East Timor as a manifestation of this. East Timor is one of Asia’s poorest and least-developed countries, a former Portuguese colony that suffered brutal occupation by Indonesia for 24 years and which has only been an independent state since 2002. The author establishes a community musician’s role as an ‘outsider’ to the communities in which they work, and considers this in terms of her four-month artist residency as an unknown foreigner in a developing rural community, where post-colonial legacies, traumas of recent conflict, and ongoing poverty gave additional layers of complexity to her work. Through narrative enquiry and an autoethnographic lens she describes a community music project that grew organically from very informal and unstructured beginnings, highlighting the importance of trust and mutual exchange. The author’s experiences and interactions ultimately suggested a transition from outsider to accepted community member, and are discussed as acts of hospitality, gifts and tests utilizing L. Higgins’ conceptual framework for community music activity.

This study provided a brief overview of some of the most important life quality elements that affected senior adults with regard to their musical experiences, motivations and preferences. The research and analysis of these elements established a researched-based framework for understanding how a select body of music affected senior adults in Taiwan. Further, data collected from older Taiwanese people would be analysed to explore these issues further. Questionnaire responses were analysed by using the statistical software SPSS. Data collection involved administering 150 questionnaires to senior adults and undertaking twelve in-depth semi-structured interviews with individual healthy adults. All participants came from regional communities, churches, musical organizations and recreation centres to interpret and identify how music effects on their lives. Most of them did not have great educational/musical background, but they speak of a new, cultural expectation of ageing in which it is normal for seniors to be actively engaged in society. Participants believed that they can share their musical experiences and positive attitude with their local communities and other institutions. They also believe that the government, private organizations and music educators have not provided enough support – such as equipments, programmes and funding – to music. It is very important that the rural population of healthy senior adults (such as the ones who participated in this study) serve as resources; their broad perspective about the function of music on positive ageing should be of interest to scholarly researchers considered

This article features seven case studies by Boston University graduate music education students enrolled in a course titled ‘Community Music Perspectives’. The course invites music educators to consider principles and practices of community music and to imagine new horizons for what music education can be. These case studies involve participants of all ages and take place in schools, colleges, churches and community centres. They embrace ideals of inclusiveness; diversity; musical, social and personal growth; social justice; entrepreneurship; and hospitality

In describing the dedication necessary to transplant Buddhism to North America, the Japanese Zen master Sokei-an Sasaki (1882–1945) famously said ‘it will be like holding a lotus to a rock, expecting it to take root’. Since 2001, the Texas Tech University Vernacular Music Center (VMC) (whose mission statement includes ‘teaching, research, and advocacy in the world’s vernacular traditions’) has grown a community of collegiate dancers and musicians in the American Southwest, one that cuts across boundaries of class, age and ethnicity. Paradoxically, in this socially and culturally conservative part of the world, while receptivity to music and dance is very high – Texas is the only state in the Union that still maintains required music and art in the public schools – awareness of the art forms’ available stylistic and cultural diversity is very low. Here, vernacular music communities are separated, insulated and cut-off from one another: alienated both geographically, stylistically and sociologically. At the same time, university music programmes, while recognizing the benefits to all of inclusive and diverse excellence, struggle to actualize this recognition: lacking resources, personnel, materials and/or community engagement. Drawing on musicology, ethnography, arts advocacy and mass communications theory, this article investigates the history, goals, means and methods by which the VMC has developed a series of student-centered, boundary-crossing participatory arts communities in the American Southwest, and provides both a practical toolbox, a political vocabulary and a philosophical framework for building like bridges elsewhere

CHANCES AND CHOICES: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF MUSIC EDUCATION, STEPHANIE PITTS (2012) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 240 pp.,978-0199838776, h/bk, $17.99