Community Music, Community Music Therapy, & Applied Ethnomusicology: Building Bridges between Scholarship and Practice

Community music therapy and applied ethnomusicology represent approaches to music making that enable a deeper understanding of community music. The purpose of this paper is to acknowledge and explore these two areas of musical discourse and, in doing, point toward possible connections, meeting points, and differences in order to invigorate future conversations and collaborations. In conclusion, I suggest that there are more opportunities in community music, more room for scholarly discourse and more open floor for international debate. This constitutes an opportunity to strengthen distinctive fields and through collaboration bolster their philosophical, and thus political, positions in the broader discourse of music educatio