World of Music / Cultural Diversity in Music Education

ISME CMA seminar: Community Music in the Modern Metropolis

Most music education in the world has been organised around the great tradition of Western classical music. This has led to an infrastructure that extends not only from Vienna to Los Angeles, but also from Cape Coast to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, this solid structure has its limitations in terms of flexibility. As a consequence, many large institutions for music education at all levels have difficulty in responding to new social and artistic realities, especially in the multi-ethnic, multi-musical cities at the beginning of the third millennium. By its very nature and practice, community music can play a major role in leading the way to new approaches to music education across the board.

This was the central thought behind the Community Music Activities (CMA) seminar in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 5-10 August 2002. The target gorup consisted of international professionals from various areas of music education. All participants were actively involved in the seminar, where everyone brought in their own experiences in formal and informal ways. The seminar had the following subthemes:

Key issues and definitions of community music, defining the parameters
Community music in practice and institutions for music education
Community music, cultural diversity and identity
Community music and policies of funding
Community music and new teaching methods

The seminar was organised by Rotterdam Conservatoire. As an institution for higher music education, the Conservatoire has experience with all sorts of music: classical, jazz, pop, and world music. Since twelve years there is a separate department for world music with programmes for tango, flamenco, latin, Turkish and Indian music. The conservatoire is currently involved in the development of a music programme in secondary professional education, with a focus on community music.

The seminar programme as well as papers and presentations are published on this site. A full report is expected soon.

ISME Homepage: www.isme.org

Conference programme

The full programme of ISME CMA seminar 2002 is published on this page.

Papers and presentations ISME CMA 2002

All papers and presentations of the ISME Community Music Activities seminar are published on this page.

Contact list ISME CMA 2002

Participants and their e-mail addresses: