International Journal of Community Music - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2014

This article contains my article ‘Community music therapy and the winds of change’, which was written twelve years ago. It also contains my reflection on this article. In this I explore some of the circumstances in the United Kingdom that prompted writing the original article, and consider these in relation to subsequent developments of community music therapy (CoMT) as an international movement. I also evaluate what I think I got wrong and right in the original article, and what I could not have anticipated in 2002. I finish by suggesting that CoMT has functioned as a ‘trojan paradigm’: smuggling into an increasingly reductionist, individualized and medicalized culture of treatment and care a more flexible ecological understanding of the complex relationships between music, people, health, illness and well-being.

In this article I attempt to understand bits of the ongoing change that the emerging movement of community music therapy (CoMT) reflects and instigates, through an exploration of processes of learning about and struggling for openness. I argue that change involves painful unlearning and challenging relearning and I examine this claim through discussion of three moments of change in my own relationship to CoMT. I focus on three moments that happened to emerge with a ten years distance (in 1983, 1993 and 2003). The first moment I call ‘Towards an open door’ and it reflects unlearning and relearning in relation to a more contextual and ecological practice of music therapy. The second moment I call ‘Towards a more open discourse’ and it reflects the unlearning and relearning necessary for a more grounded yet interdisciplinary discourse of music therapy. The third moment I call ‘Towards an open floor’ and it reflects the need for an ongoing, international, and critical debate on the assumptions, values, and priorities that characterize contemporary music therapy. Through reflections on these three moments, I try to depict interrelationships of theory and practice as well as interrelationships of music therapy and broader sociocultural–political forces. I particularly focus on how CoMT has created new possibilities for music therapy to dialogue and debate with the medical discourses that dominate contemporary health care services in most societies.

Music therapists engaged in musical-social development in territories with well-established legacies of suspicion towards state-sanctioned professional structures face uncomfortable dilemmas. South Africa’s Music Therapy Community Clinic (MTCC) has worked in the Cape Flats, in the Western Cape, for over a decade, and developed priorities and methods in attentive response to that particular market place. The ‘market place’ metaphor signals the possibilities for chaos and flourishing offered by spaces with distinctive – and not necessarily consistent – priorities and edges regarding music, safety, therapy, currency, work, economics and status. These reflections from the market place focus on the complex collisions of professional, musical and community loyalties that music therapists are offered by absent health and education resources and a rich social tradition of everyday music. While situated in a particular South African context, this article seeks to contribute to an adventurous broadening of community music therapy (CoMT) praxes everywhere.

The nature of schooling in first world western countries has changed significantly in the past decade. The philosophy of inclusion has been embraced internationally and has led to school communities comprising of staff and students who have considerably diverse backgrounds and abilities. Pedagogical emphases are therefore slowly shifting from teaching universalized curricula to developing universal designs that can take account of the individual needs of students. While the tradition of withdrawing students from class in order to participate in individualized therapy does not fit well in these contexts, music therapists have a lot to offer contemporary schools. The music therapy literature suggests innovative practices are occurring in mainstream and special school contexts, yet they continue to be framed by traditional theories. In contrast community music therapy (CoMT) provides a congruent theoretical framework for current practice, with an emphasis on equality, resource-orientation, collaboration and acknowledgment of the systems that shape music therapists’ work. These theories can be translated into practice principles for music therapists working in schools to assist in the transition away from a sole focus on the pathology of individuals and towards the flourishing of musical cultures within whole school systems. In this article we outline the various forces of change that we perceive to be influencing schools, how they intersect with both traditional and innovative practices of music therapists, and suggest key principles that have been helpful in our own school-based projects in the past decade. Drawing on five key features of CoMT we present a framework for contemporary music therapy practice in schools.

Music therapy holds a particularly valuable place in providing holistic health care, and medical settings are well suited to a community music therapy (CoMT) model of practice. As medicine continues to shift its focus to become preventative, health-promoting and patient-centred, the presence of live music in hospital environments can contribute to valuable collaborative relationships between members of the community who might not otherwise meet, while impacting and addressing patient wellness as well as patient illness. CoMT is a model music therapists are practicing within to focus on improving quality of life in a variety of domains for patients and families in various healthcare settings. This article explores two distinct community case reports from Ontario, Canada, in which an emerging CoMT practice fostered therapeutic collaborative relationships. Background information is provided on music therapy, performing, interdisciplinary health care and CoMT in context and action.

Community is essential for individuals to feel like a part of something larger; however, many individuals with disabilities and their families lack a connection to community due to the display of unusual social behaviours or unavailable accommodations when at community-based events. Community music therapy (CoMT) encompasses an effort to build community around music-making and enjoyment for the collective whole, as well as supporting social justice and self-advocacy for individuals. One CoMT effort specific to individuals on the autism spectrum is the Sensory Friendly Concerts® (SFCs), a music enjoyment and making venue that promotes the social acceptance of each individual, specifically of those who identify as ‘autistic’ and seek to develop an autistic culture and community. SFCs are not only a venue to create ‘equal access to the fine arts’, but also serves as a platform for self-advocacy, thus promoting the social justice of a typically marginalized population. The purpose of this project report is to discuss how SFCs, as a CoMT initiative, can provide an opportunity for individuals and families to explore the arts, develop an inclusive community and promote social justice for autistic people. To this effect, this article will discuss SFCs within the broader scope of community music and CoMT, introduce core concepts of the Neurodiversity movement, and present initial programme evaluation data and personal accounts from SFCs.

This article presents a study of music and health promotion in Skiffle Steel Orchestra, a community music group located in San Fernando, Trinidad. It is based on ethnomusicological fieldwork data collected through an ongoing research partnership with Skiffle that began in 2005 and continues through the present. The study features health musicking that facilitates the embodiment of cultural values that engender a way of life, an outlook through which members of Skiffle ascribe meaning to their experiences that potentially encourages health promoting attitudes and behaviours as well as states of well-being. The primary objective for the article is to document and analyse this phenomenon, detailing the specific context as well as the general principles that underlie it, thus contributing to the body of literature about the potential for health promotion through musical means. A secondary objective of the article is to take advantage of, and encourage further, the potential for multidisciplinary and collaborative study of music and health promotion made possible by some of the theoretical perspectives and methodological procedures common to both community music therapy (CoMT) and medical ethnomusicology.