TUTORIAL NUMBER SEVEN
What is Community Music?
Community Music leaders are first and foremost interested in using music as a vehicle for bringing people together, promoting personal and collective well being, community spirit and respect for others whatever their culture or religion.
We are a very small part of the glue that helps bind our communities together promoting peace and understanding, celebrating diversity and specifically rejecting division, prejudice, racism and nationalism.
Some of the most skilled community musicians work in extremely sensitive settings where cultures are clashing for many different reasons. This clash often leads to violence and hatred which is sadly encouraged by some political and community leaders in pursuit of their political and cultural goals.
The problems of the world are many and no one is pretending easy answers to complex problems but at the very heart of the global community arts movement is respect for universal human rights which remains one of the cornerstones of a civilized nation, or at least a nation attempting to progress in that direction.
So, for community musicians, music is just a very precious tool to encourage social cohesion, physical and mental wellbeing and positive respectful community relations.
Music is loved by all of us irrespective of our cultural and religious roots. It is the most precious tool in the tool box.
It brings different people together in the most beautiful way.
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