Community Music in Theory and Practice represents a major contribution to the field of community music in both setting out the historical development and contemporary scope of the practice of community music and in establishing it as a field for international academic enquiry. It deserves to become established as an obvious starting point for new research, its reference list in itself being an invaluable resource, essential reading for practitioners and students involved in community music practice and related disciplines, but also of significance for those involved in music education at all levels. Higgins brings to the surface questions which are of particular interest to those seeking a holistic, democratic and sustainable understanding of what it means to make music.

The first part of the book takes us through what Higgins sees as his ‘heritage’ as a practitioner, the story of community music's emergence as a strand of the community arts movement arising from the social upheavals and political change of the 1960s to challenge the established order of those who hold power and control the purse strings for the arts, privileging so-called ‘high’ art over vernacular forms. Community music seeks to redress these imbalances, creating opportunities for people to make their own music, to create their own ‘culture’, to participate when previously they have been excluded, and for diversity in musical expression to be celebrated outside of any sense of hierarchy of value or worth. Higgins recounts how community music in the 1970s was positioned within the outlook of the New Left, owing a great deal to Marxist thinking which had now been broadened into ‘an open, critical and humanist project’ (p. 26).

Higgins uses the particular case of emergent British community music practice to explore how the discipline has grown and might be understood, although many of the projects he weaves into his discourse are situated elsewhere around the globe. Embedded in this narrative are key problems which are traced through the rest of the book – for example, the ongoing reluctance of practitioners to define what constitutes community music, to engage in theoretical reflection upon their practices, and the consequences of this deficit which Higgins seeks to redress:

Presenting commonly held views of what constitutes the field of community music, Higgins focuses on a conception which includes ‘an active intervention between a leader or facilitator and participants’, an approach to active music making and musical knowing outside of formal teaching and learning situations, an intentional intervention, emphasising inclusion, diversity and equal opportunities, ‘to create relevant and accessible music-making experiences’ (pp. 3–4). Higgins’ discussion, later in the book, of the notion of a facilitator grapples with the tension between the oft-perceived equality of leader and participant in groups and workshop settings and the necessary inequality of this relationship which Higgins comes to see as essential for enabling creative developments, a discussion which those thinking critically about contrasting conceptions of the role of the class music teacher will find useful.

He offers a list of the ideal characteristics of the community music practitioner, providing food for thought for those of us working in formal music educational settings (p. 5) and here is one of the fascinations of the book – its ability to speak to those in contrasting music educational contexts with a challenging, prophetic voice. The importance of individuals’ personal and social development alongside musical participation and growth within the group is reiterated throughout the book, begging the question of whether the conceptual framework Higgins unfolds in the second half of the book is indeed an outlook which could in some way underpin class music and instrumental teaching also.

Higgins portrays community musicians as working on the edges, boundary-walkers; ‘Uncertain as to their own professional status they inhabit territories that lie between other professionals’ (Kushner et al., Reference Kushner, Walker and Tarr2001, p. 4). In Chapter 7, Crossfields, he describes concepts and fields of practice which impinge upon, and intersect with, community music; democracy, lifelong learning, community music therapy, cultural diversity in music education, and applied ethnomusicology. Throughout, Higgins emphasises the difficulties of defining what community practitioners do, whilst retaining practitioners’ integrity in their adaptability and openness to the local situation in which they find themselves working. Some see it as a betrayal to theorise what they see as practice-based, and consider the move towards professionalisation as selling out by introducing elements of exclusivity in terms of who can practise.

Higgins takes us through the various milestones of publications, conferences and the founding of supportive organisations which punctuated the development and dissemination of community music practice. The instigation of the International Journal of Community Music is seen as a watershed in establishing it as a field of enquiry in its own right. He explores the changing social contexts and emerging concepts which fed into the development of community arts practice – the use of the arts in radical political struggle, cultural democracy and the influence of post-structuralist and post-modern perspectives. Putting art and artists back into social contexts was a major aim, in the belief that art had the power to transform communities fractured by capitalist hegemony.

Higgins devotes a chapter to one example of community practice – the Community Samba Band project he instigated in Peterborough in the mid 1990s. There is ample evidence of the life-changing effects upon the personal and social development of individuals, families and the group as a whole, of coming to belong in this drumming ensemble. Higgins deals honestly with the tensions which arise – for the professional musician, for instance, who seeks to become involved as a participant, acknowledging that both community and professional paradigms have much to teach each other.

International perspectives on the developing field of community music are explored in Chapter 5 alongside questions concerning the training of community music practitioners within an academic environment. Higgins presents the views of those who believe that ‘community music needs the rigour of articulating ethics, values and benefits, and to validate practitioners as a profession’ (p. 91) yet appreciates the tensions with those who value its relative informality and need to be outside the establishment in order to maintain a radical and reforming voice, challenging for instance the dominance in university music departments of the Western art music tradition.

Higgins gives illustrations of community music practice from diverse projects across the world, elucidating key elements of practice which he draws upon in the second part of his book. Higgins seeks to theoretically ground his discipline through the rich seam of Derrida's notion of ‘hospitality’ (Derrida, Reference Derrida, Brault and Naas1999, Reference Derrida and Bowlby2000, Reference Derrida, Dooley and Hughes2001). He writes that it is this dimension of offering an inclusive welcome, especially to those hitherto excluded from musical participation, which distinguishes the practice of community ‘musical doing’ and exhorts practitioners to ‘clothe’ themselves in the ‘acts of hospitality’.

He draws too upon Emmanuel Levinas’ ‘ethics as first philosophy’ in which Levinas calls upon us to resist dominating and colonising tendencies to make others the ‘same’, and to take on an orientation of profound openness which seeks to honour the ‘othernesss’ of the ‘Other’ (Levinas, Reference Levinas and Lingis1969). These are powerful tools which bear fruit richly for Higgins, who builds on the work of Wayne Bowman in conceptualising music education as ‘ethical encounter’ (Bowman, Reference Bowman2001). He comes to refine his concept of ‘community without unity’ through Levinas’ practice of ‘looking into the face of the Other’ where ‘the community with him begins in my obligation to him’ (Levinas, Reference Levinas and Lingis1981, p. 87).

Higgins begins to articulate his vision for community music practice fully here:

He embraces Levinas’ notion of ‘infinity’ by orienting community music practice towards ‘the impossible’ (Derrida) and facing possibilities which cannot be yet imagined: ‘I am suggesting that by reaching out beyond what may be thought possible, new and interesting things can happen’ (p. 139). Paul Standish, philosopher at the Institute of Education in London writes of the thinking of Levinas ‘pointing to a kind of perfectionist education’ (Standish, 2010, p. 346). Here, Lee Higgins orients community music to reach towards a future which surpasses what might be anticipated.

Through the face to face encounter, the call and the welcome, Higgins describes a structure of community music practice which ‘ignites the ethical experience’. He points towards the benefits to the wider community of music educators of taking on this orientation of practice, and grasping the wider dimensions of music's ‘materiality’:

Higgins writes:

The theoretical underpinning he has developed throughout this book does indeed offer a profound challenge to all of us involved in music-making in whatever context, to understand and act upon our responsibility towards the other. Higgins’ book will undoubtedly serve to enrich the practice of community music, to generate fresh perspectives and to inspire practitioners to ‘dream the impossible’ into the future.