Response to Alexandra Kertz-Welzel, “Daring to Question: A Philosophical Critique of Community Music”

Studious Play as an Archê of Creative Music-Making: Repositing “the Scandal of Democracy” in Music Education

“…Furthermore, practitioners often suggest the dominance of practice, proclaiming their projects to be something which cannot be captured adequately through scholarly analysis" (120). Kertz-Welzel fails to take into consideration the deluge of authoritarian, oppressive, and one-sided music education practices that have flourished on the basis of dualistic thinking that regards "intellectual" takes on music as necessarily "superior" to any other (see also González Ben 2016). Moreover, Kertz-Welzel (2016) seems to regard research that foregrounds the always culturally mediated but also deeply personal aspects of musical experience as "amateur" (125), and de facto unable to meet scholarly criteria; in doing so, she advocates a rather narrow view of research practice.…”

Peace, Empathy and Conciliation through Music

“…The relationship between researchers and their interlocutors are brought into sharp relief in community music, where issues of reflexivity and power dynamics are also manifest and wrestled over in the collaboration between practitioners and participants. Questions around definitions in the field, and its epistemological foundations and researcher objectivity, highlight the difficulties here (see Ben 2016;Kertz-Welzel 2016;Kronig 2019). Community music literature embraces definitional ambivalence, partly to address "community musicians explicitly voicing an objection to defining themselves and being defined", especially given that "scholars and practitioners are not discursively situated on a level playing field" (Ben 2016: 221-2), and also in an attempt to, "not trap the field down in constructs and words that become fixed and uncritically used and simplified over time" (Bartleet and Higgins 2018: 17).…”