As a researcher, my interest lies predominantly within the emerging scholarly field of community music. Although the expression “community music” has in recent years gained in popularity, there is often a lack of clarity regarding the term. In order to navigate my inquiry I use three broad perspectives: (1) Community music as the “music of a community”, (2) Community music as “communal music making,” and (3) Community music as an active intervention between a music leader or leaders and participants. My work moves across all three perspectives but has an emphasis on community music as an active intervention between a music leader or leaders and participants. This can be seen in the publications included in this section. As a result of this specialization, other areas of interest, including life-long learning, cultural diversity in music education, social justice in music education, and inter-disciplinary performance making, influence and affect my writing. I explored traits of practice through an emphasis on context, participation, community, pedagogy, and identity in my PhD thesis, entitled ‘Boundary-Walkers: Contexts and Concepts of Community Music’. The doctoral study process was a journey of synthesis for my professional work that spans some twenty years. In 2008 I received the ‘Outstanding Dissertation Award’ from MENC’s adult and community music education special research interest group.
I have given presentation, lectures, and keynote addresses in North America, Europe, South Africa, Scandinavia, Australasia, and Asia. As senior editor of the International Journal of Community Music it is my job to provide a vision that enables the development of the discipline through high quality scholarship that is cutting edge and relevant to practice.
Recent projects include Free to be Musical: Group Improvisation in Music, a joint project with Patricia Shehan Campbell (Rowan & Littlefield), three chapters for the Oxford Handbook of Music Education (Oxford University Press, due 2011) and a monograph Community Music: In practice and theory (Oxford University Press, due 2012).
As a musician I play guitar, mainly electric popular styles, Brazilian hand held percussion and Cuban congas. I have worked as a composer, primarily in collaboration with other art forms, particularly dance. The interaction between performance and technology interests me and I have been involved in three performance projects that have explored the relationship between real-time sampling and performance. These projects, entitled ConCussion, have focused on the application of music technology and group work. My professional practice embraces a gamut of music genres, most notably samba drumming, improvisation, pop/rock, and music technology. I am also interested in the non-traditional performance space and as such encourage the use of site-specific and environmental possibilities in performance.
