The purpose of this narrative study is to explain the role that musicking plays in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic for 11 South African musicians. The research question is: How do the stories of 11 South African musicians explain the role that musicking plays in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic? There have been studies on how music helps in therapeutic and everyday settings, but there has been limited research on the role musicking plays in coping with pandemics. The 11 author-participants in the study have lived through this pandemic, and their stories served as the data. We used a narrative coding scheme to enable co-coding. Our findings are a collaborative interpretation of our analyses and are represented as a fictionalized dialogue. This dialogue revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had a range of psychological effects on the participant researchers. Musicking contributed to proactive and reactive coping strategies, including listening to music actively, making music with others virtually and in their homes, finding solidarity through engaging with musical icons, allowing them to connect with others, escape, focus, relax, and find hedonic well-being and hope. Further research will be needed to understand the roles musicking may play in coping with pandemics.

This study focused on the role music listening experiences play in the lives of three South African adults on the autism spectrum. The purpose of this interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is to understand the role that music listening plays in the lives of three adults living with autism. IPA considers three key areas of philosophical knowledge, which include phenomenology, hermeneutics, and idiography. We, therefore, interpreted the role of music listening for our participants by highlighting similarities and differences between the participants’ lived experiences. The findings emerging from this study revealed five superordinate themes explaining the significance of music listening in the adults’ lives: (1) coping with auditory sensitivity, (2) getting lost in music, (3) music is a companion, (4) self-regulation, and (5) finding connection. The importance of music for masking or coping with sensory overload is distinct from the studies conducted to understand the music listening experiences of neurotypical individuals. It is our hope that the findings of this IPA provide rich idiographic descriptions of the individual experiences of our participants, thereby humanizing their music listening experiences.

In this article, I provide a conceptual analysis of care in community music. Despite growing interest in the belief that an ethic of care should inform our community music practices, truly considering what caring means may be challenging. Caring through musicking is further complicated by the inherent power imbalances in interventionist forms of community music. I refer to this conundrum using the term (un)caring. The topographic decision to write (un)caring using a bracketed qualifier is meant to reflect the dialogic nature between caring and uncaring. This concept analysis proposes that (un)caring is informed by negotiation of the following critical attributes: (1) (un)attentiveness, (2) (un)responsiveness and (3) (in)competence. This concept analysis contributes to the continual development of community music theory by providing an evaluative and theoretical lens through which community music practitioners could engage in critical discussions concerning the ethics of community music practice and research.

The flourishing society envisioned by the South African government’s National Development Plan 2030 is based on nation-building and social cohesion. With the recent civil unrests, calls for healing a nation characterised by poverty, inequality and violence through social cohesion have again been made. Community music engagement is uniquely positioned to achieve social cohesion since the discipline engages disparities of power and privilege whilst aiming to cultivate an environment of unconditional welcoming. The purpose of this theoretical framework is to explain how community music engagement can facilitate social cohesion through community music engagement. Community music engagement promotes spiritual experiences since it fosters relationships. This relational theoretical framework will be derived from a thematic analysis of the 21 chapters in the book Ritualised Belonging: Musicing and Spirituality in the South African Context and related theories. Our findings indicate that joyful musicking rituals serve as the catalyst for hope. Hope, in turn, motivates people to engage in community musicking, which requires a bodily co-presence, fosters mutual focus of attention and promotes cooperation and trust. Musickers who share values, challenges, culture, and identity experience a joyful sense of belonging. Furthermore, joy is key to spirituality since it is self-expansive, self-transcendent and other-embracing and transcends different religions. Joy moves musickers to build bonding and bridging social capital. Social capital improves individuals’ and communities’ quality of life and ultimately promotes social cohesion.

This article proposes a conceptual framework to understand the relationship between musicking and Personal and Social Well-being for intermediate phase learners. We analysed the intermediate phase life skills Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) document to create a priori codes. We employed these codes to analyse literature on musicking and well-being. Through this analysis, it became clear that it is possible to apply musicking as a means to teach Personal and Social Well-being outcomes in the intermediate phase life skills CAPS provided teachers view musicking as cultural and moral education. This article presents a conceptual framework resting on nine propositions that need to be addressed if teachers wish to teach personal and social well-being through musicking.