Foundations for Community Music

The course offers foundations for community music. It introduces to students theoretical foundation for using music beyond contexts of stage performances. It focuses on the study of the creative and imaginative use of music. The course will borrow pedagogical, development and empowerment theories of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal—which inform the practice from Applied Theatre and Theatre for Development in particular—and examine how they can be adapted in community music. In addition, theories from psychology of music and music therapy will inform this course. This course will examine music from the perspective of the receptor rather than the transmitter. It focuses on the study of the creative and imaginative use of music.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Objectives: 

• To offer an opportunity to think of music beyond contexts of stage performance
• To examine the theoretical underpinning to why people create, perform and listen to music
• To offer a foundation for the understanding of the concept of community music, a new field in music
• To examine how Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal’s theories of empowerment and development could be applied in community music