Community Music Education: A practice of hope and humanness
This article is written by Andrea Johnson in celebration of music education. Join the celebration here.
Music is human. Music is everywhere. It has been with us for millennia and is hardwired into us as humans. People in virtually all cultures and historical periods have participated in music for social bonding, ceremony, artistic expression, wellbeing, entertainment, and worship. Consider any significant human event, and there you are likely to find music.
Remarkable for its “ubiquity and antiquity” (Levitin, 2008), music is a universal practice with diverse forms of expression (Mithen, 2005). Wherever humans find themselves, they make and interact with music. The human voice and the drum have been used in both music-making and communication for thousands of years. The discovery of the 50,000-60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute with four holes for specific pitch production gives a sense of how long we have intentionally been making music.
How we interact with music today has been influenced by various philosophical and technological evolutions. For instance, after centuries of being prioritized as an indispensable component of both education and wellbeing, music became diminished in priority during the Enlightenment. As Descartes’ mind-body dualism led to the advancement of reason and the natural sciences, music was largely relegated to religious and entertaining contexts. While the past 50 years or so have (hearteningly) unlocked a broader biopsychosocial lens (Bonde, 2019) through which expanding research has demonstrated the physiological, cognitive, social, and psychological benefits of music on human wholeness, vestiges of Cartesian thought persist. Perhaps this is to some degree why music is still seen to many as an add-on to “real” subject matter in education, nice if you can afford it. STEM vs STEAM, anyone? Would Plato (in whose day music comprised 25% of the quadrivium) be incredulous at our need to advocate for music education today?
Alongside remaining traces of Enlightenment-minded binarism lie other problematic binaries which have negatively impacted how humans participate in and view themselves through music. Daniel Levitin writes about how the development of concert spaces led away from participatory music and toward categorizing performers vs audience. Doubtless this trend has only been heightened with the advent of recorded music, talent-based reality TV shows, and a competitive and sometimes cutthroat music industry. How often have you heard someone say, “I’m just not musical”? Equating “musical” with “talented” is common today, but our pre-Enlightenment ancestors would likely scratch their heads to hear such a statement.
Surely these changes have contributed to the perception that music education lacks weight as a legitimate subject. When music is seen as an extra, something for which only a small percentage of the population shows potentially profitable aptitude, rather than as a formative and meaningful human practice/art/science/pursuit/experience, why should it be made universally available? This superficial view is a product of only a recent sliver of history, lacking broader understanding of the multidimensional benefits of music on the human.
Increasingly, qualitative and quantitative research demonstrates these benefits. Singing together increases oxytocin and dopamine release and lowers cortisol (Chanda & Levitin, 2013; Keeler et al., 2015). Participation in music helps lower depression and anxiety, improve cognition, and foster a sense of subjective wellbeing and belonging (Daykin et al., 2018; Levitin, 2019). Music-making allows people to unite toward a common goal, to bond socially, and to feel part of something larger than themselves (Turino, 2008).
Surely these benefits should be prioritized for people of all ages. Undeniably, music education in schools is essential. I contend that music education beyond schools is also essential. Music is social, emotional, physical, creative, logical, artistic, spiritual, mathematical, challenging, rewarding, aesthetic, frustrating, inspiring, expanding, formative, beautiful, messy. Sounds human. Formed throughout the lifespan, humans should have access to music education throughout the lifespan.
Community music and community music education are emerging themes in the music education literature. Community music is generally non-competitive, inclusive, process-centred, and socially based, often for people who have been underserviced (Willingham, 2021). On a spectrum with many tendencies overlapping other forms of music-making, community music is typically participatory and informal, often without auditions, curricula, or expectations of an excellent product. Still, it is educative. Community music provides space for those who are less concerned with a high-calibre musical product and simply want to make music for the joy of it.
Community music education then, can serve all age demographics. Community music educators can use their musical expertise to help guide participants into this ancient, formative, human activity. While they need not be limited to a list of prescribed outcomes, community music educators can cherish the role of potentially meeting various human needs by facilitating peoples’ connection to their own voices, to others, and to creative expression.
A great starting point for community music education is singing. We all have a voice. In his seminal book Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening, Christopher Small wrote that “The voice is at the center of all musical activity…” Giving space for people to use their voices is empowering, and logistically perhaps the most economically accessible form of music-making. Understandably, not everyone may feel comfortable with singing and may wish to start somewhere else. That’s just fine. Music is big enough and human enough to hold any number of starting places. The point is to begin.
At a recent music education conference, I heard André de Quadros say, “Music making is here to stay regardless of funding or curricula. Humans have been making music for at least 80,000 years – long before trained music teachers and researchers,” and that “Music education is a practice of hope.”
Surely hope is for everyone. Considering the universal benefits of music on human wellbeing, I see community music education as a meaningful way to both spread those benefits widely and to dismantle the recent, shallow paradigm that music is only worthwhile for the “talented” who plan to pursue a career in music. Music is for everyone. Music education should be for everyone.
Let’s get back to our roots. Let’s prioritize, normalize, and support community music. Let’s highlight community music education as a meaningful practice of hope and humanness.
References:
Bonde, L.O. (2019). A. Music Therapy – A Historical Perspective from Jacobsen, Pederson, Wigram, and Bonde (Eds) A Comprehensive Guide to Music Therapy, 2nd Edition: Theory, Clinical Practice, Research and Training. London, UK ; Philadelphia, PA : Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Chanda, M., & Levitin, D. (2013). The neurochemistry of music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(4), 179–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.02.007
Daykin, N., Mansfield, L., Meads, C., Julier, G., Tomlinson, A., Payne, A., Duffy, L., Lane, J.,
D’Innocenzo, G., Burnett, A., Kay, T., Dolan, P., Testoni, S., & Victor, C. (2018). What works for wellbeing? A systematic review of wellbeing outcomes for music and singing in adults. Perspectives in Public Health. Sage Publications. DOI: 10.1177/1757913917740391
Keeler, J., Roth, E., Neuser, B., Spitsbergen, J., Waters, D., & Vianney, J. (2015). The
neurochemistry and social flow of singing: Bonding and oxytocin. Frontiers in Human
Neuroscience, 9, pp.518–518. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00518
Levitin, D. (2019). Medicine’s Melodies: Music, Health and Well-Being. Music and Medicine. 11:4. pp.236-244.
Levitin, D. (2008). The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. Penguin Group Canada: Toronto ON.
Mithen, S. (2005). The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body. Widenfeld & Nicolson: London, UK.
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: the meanings of performing and listening. University Press of New England.
Turino, T. (2008). Music as social life: the politics of participation. University of Chicago Press.
Willingham, L., & ACUP, vendor. (2021). Community music at the boundaries.
