Music, Communities, Sustainability, edited thoughtfully by Huib Schippers and Anthony Seeger, traces the genesis, implementation, and development of the influential 2003 UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and its impact on music practices around the world. With insights from established and emerging scholars who have been there from the early beginnings to those who work with it in communities today, this book tells a riveting story that celebrates the rise in awareness that approaching music as Intangible Cultural Heritage has brought. At the same time, it critiques the discrepancies between ideologies and realities as they emerged across the globe in its first twenty years, and provides perspectives for sound futures for the planet. Gathering such varied perspectives, this essential volume tells a crucial history and expands our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of interventions in music sustainability on a global scale.

Over the past decade, cultural diversity in music education has come of age, both in terms of content and approach. The world of music education is now widely considered to be culturally diverse by definition.Within this environment, appropriate strategies for learning and teaching are being reconsidered. Many scholars and practitioners have abandoned rigid conceptions of context and authenticity, or naive perceptions of music as a universal language that appeals to all.

In four sections, this volume offers contemporary views from scholars, educationalists, classroom practitioners and experts in specific disciplines. From this diversity of perspectives, the challenges posed by music travelling through time, place and contexts are being addressed for what they are: fascinating studies in the dynamic life of music, education and culture. In this way, Cultural diversity in music education chronicles the latest insights into a field that has convincingly moved from the sidelines to centre stage in both the practice and theory of music education.

The sustainability of music and other intangible expressions of culture has been high on the agenda of scholars, governments and NGOs in recent years. However, there is a striking lack of systematic research into what exactly affects sustainability across music cultures. By analyzing case studies of nine highly diverse music cultures against a single framework that identifies key factors in music sustainability, Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures offers an understanding of both the challenges and the dynamics of music sustainability in the contemporary global environment, and breathes new life into the previously discredited realm of comparative musicology, from an emphatically non-Eurocentric perspective. Situated within the expanding field of applied ethnomusicology, this book confirms some commonly held beliefs, challenges others, and reveals sometimes surprising insights into the dynamics of music cultures. By examining, comparing and contrasting highly diverse contexts from thriving to 'in urgent need of safeguarding,' Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures analyzes sustainability across five carefully defined domains. The book identifies pathways to strategies and tools that may empower communities to sustain and revitalize their music heritage on their terms. In this way, this book contributes to greater scholarly insight, new (sub)disciplinary approaches, and pathways to improved practical outcomes for the long-term sustainability of music cultures. As such it will be an essential resource for ethnomusicologists, as well as scholars and activists outside of music, with an interest in the preservation of intangible cultural heritage.

Facing the Music investigates the practices and ideas that have grown from some five decades of cultural diversity in music education, developments in ethnomusicology, and the rise of 'world music'. Speaking from rich, hands-on experience of more than thirty years at various levels of music education (music in schools, community organizations and professional training courses), Huib Schippers makes a powerful case for the crucial role of learning music in shaping rich and diverse musical environments for the 21st century, both in practical terms and at a conceptual level: "what we hear is the product of what we believe about music."
Advocating a contemporary, positive and realistic approach to cultural diversity in music education and transmission, Schippers advocates taking into account and celebrating the natural dynamics of music. He argues that "most music travels remarkably well," and regards every musical act as an expression of the 'here and now', as do many of the musicians and scholars he quotes. In this way, he challenges stifling directives to recreate 'authentic contexts', which in fact constantly change (and have always changed) in the cultures of origin as well. This liberates music educators to seek with integrity appropriate ways of presenting music at all levels of education: in schools, community settings, and professional training.
In seven succinct chapters that each approach the issues from a different angle, Schippers gradually unfolds the complexities of learning and teaching music 'out of context' in an accessible manner, and presents a coherent model to approach these, as well as lucid suggestions for translating the resulting ideas in practice. While mapping the various factors that determine all acts of music transmission, he also comes to surprising insights into the nature and preconceptions underlying much formal music education settings across the world, including those focusing on western classical music.
Facing the Music provides a rich resource for reflection and practice for all those involved in teaching and learning music, from policy maker to classroom teacher.

Facing the Music investigates the practices and ideas that have grown from some five decades of cultural diversity in music education, developments in ethnomusicology, and the rise of 'world music'. Speaking from rich, hands-on experience of more than thirty years at various levels of music education (music in schools, community organizations and professional training courses), Huib Schippers makes a powerful case for the crucial role of learning music in shaping rich and diverse musical environments for the 21st century, both in practical terms and at a conceptual level: "what we hear is the product of what we believe about music."
Advocating a contemporary, positive and realistic approach to cultural diversity in music education and transmission, Schippers advocates taking into account and celebrating the natural dynamics of music. He argues that "most music travels remarkably well," and regards every musical act as an expression of the 'here and now', as do many of the musicians and scholars he quotes. In this way, he challenges stifling directives to recreate 'authentic contexts', which in fact constantly change (and have always changed) in the cultures of origin as well. This liberates music educators to seek with integrity appropriate ways of presenting music at all levels of education: in schools, community settings, and professional training.
In seven succinct chapters that each approach the issues from a different angle, Schippers gradually unfolds the complexities of learning and teaching music 'out of context' in an accessible manner, and presents a coherent model to approach these, as well as lucid suggestions for translating the resulting ideas in practice. While mapping the various factors that determine all acts of music transmission, he also comes to surprising insights into the nature and preconceptions underlying much formal music education settings across the world, including those focusing on western classical music.
Facing the Music provides a rich resource for reflection and practice for all those involved in teaching and learning music, from policy maker to classroom teacher.