Thinking Community Music explores critical questions concerning community music practice and theory with emphasis on intervention, hospitality, pedagogy, social justice, inclusion, cultural democracy, music, research, and future possibilities. The book encourages questioning, reflection, and dialogue. Shaped as provocations and presented as eight stand-alone essays, each 'think piece' comprises of critical questions, concrete illustrations of practice, theoretical explorations, and reflective discussion. Flanked by a historical map and a closing statement, the book provides a springboard for conceptual interrogation about participatory music-making. Supported by the lineage of poststructural philosophy, ideas emulating from Derrida and Deleuze frames conceptual interrogation about community music practices and the broader parameters of social-cultural music-making and music teaching and learning. As a vital part of the music ecology, community music is a distinctive field and a critical lens to view other musical practices and the various political and cultural policies that frame them.

In Community Music: In Theory and in Practice, Lee Higgins investigates an interventional approach to music making outside of formal teaching and learning situations. Working with historical, ethnographic, and theoretical research, Higgins provides a rich resource for those who practice, advocate, teach, or study community music, music education, music therapy, ethnomusicology, and community cultural development.

Community Music at the Boundaries examines how music enhances the lives of those living in what might be considered marginalized settings. Built on foundational principles of community music, the volume addresses music and accessibility, health, justice and the prison system, faith, and education, by contributors from more than ten countries.

Community music as a field of practice, pedagogy, and research has come of age. The past decade has witnessed an exponential growth in practices, courses, programs, and research in communities and classrooms, and within the organizations dedicated to the subject. The Oxford Handbook of Community Music gives an authoritative and comprehensive review of what has been achieved in the field to date and what might be expected in the future. This Handbook addresses community music through five focused lenses: contexts, transformations, politics, intersections, and education. It not only captures the vibrant, dynamic, and divergent approaches that now characterize the field, but also charts the new and emerging contexts, practices, pedagogies, and research approaches that will define it in the coming decades. The contributors to this Handbook outline community music's common values that center on social justice, human rights, cultural democracy, participation, and hospitality from a range of different cultural contexts and perspectives. As such, The Oxford Handbook of Community Music provides a snapshot of what has become a truly global phenomenon.

Every day people come together to make music. Whether amateur or professional, young or old, jazz enthusiasts or rock stars, what is common to all of these musical groups is the potential to create communities of musical practice (CoMP). Such communities are created through practices: ways of engaging, rules, membership, roles, identities and learning that is both shared through collective musical endeavour and situated within certain sociocultural contexts. Ailbhe Kenny investigates CoMP as a rich model for community engagement, musical participation and transformation in music education. This book is the first to produce a valid and reliable in-depth study of music communities using a community of practice (CoP) framework - in this case focusing on the social process of musical learning. Employing case study research within Ireland, three illustrations from particular sociocultural, genre-specific, economic and geographical contexts are examined: an adult amateur jazz ensemble, a youth choir, and an online Irish traditional music web platform. Each case is analysed as a distinct community and phenomenon offering sharpened understandings of each sub-culture with specific findings presented for each community.

Music therapists from around the world working in conventional and unconventional settings have offered their contributions to this exciting new book, presenting spirited discussion and practical examples of the ways music therapy can reflect and encourage social change. From working with traumatized refugees in Berlin, care-workers and HIV/AIDS orphans in South Africa, to adults with neurological disabilities in south-east England and children in paediatric hospitals in Norway, the contributors present their global perspectives on finding new ways forward in music therapy. Reflecting on traditional approaches in addition to these newer practices, the writers offer fresh perceptions on their identity and role as music therapists, their assumptions and attitudes about how music, people and context interact, the sites and boundaries to their work, and the new possibilities for music therapy in the 21st century. As the first book on the emerging area of Community Music Therapy, this book should be an essential and exciting read for music therapists, specialists and community musicians.