Why any song won't do: community music practice and its repertoire

Community music practice is about participation and ease of access. However, giving people what they want and feel comfortable with -for example endlessly reproducing their favourites- is a completely different matter and a rather superficial and one-dimensional one. With regard to Community Music's fundamental credo and aim, which is giving people (and especially less benefited or disenfranchised ones) a personal voice, the core of the argument moves to making this voice one with a heightened consciousness. In other words, one which reflects on Western world's mass production of homogeneous culture and recycling of stereotypes and juxtaposes a rediscovering of idiosyncratic, thoughtfully informed likes and dislikes. We talk about a personally expressed voice which celebrates and, at the same time, is being strengthened by a gradual formation of a communal identity inside a group. This voice and identity is fed by people's main fuel: high aspiration, and this is what should define standards of excellence in community art, in all art.