The book Thinking Community Music by Lee Higgins (Reference HIGGINS2024) offers a reflective exploration of contemporary community music practice, bringing together a range of conceptual, pedagogical and ethical questions that shape the field. Drawing on his experience as both practitioner and scholar, Higgins considers how community music is understood, developed and sustained across different contexts. Rather than proposing a fixed theoretical framework, he invites readers to approach community music as an evolving practice shaped through reflection and dialogue.
The book is organised into eight ‘think pieces’, each centred on a key issue and combining practical examples with philosophical reflection and discussion. Pieces can be read in any order, reflecting the author’s conceptualisation of the non-linear and exploratory nature of community music. Pieces cover intervention, hospitality, pedagogy, social justice, inclusion and excellence, music, research and becoming. Framed by the opening chapter, arriving, and the concluding chapter, departing, the collection presents interconnected reflections on different aspects of community music practice, offering both conceptual perspectives and practical considerations for those working across community, educational and participatory music contexts.
An important issue that spans the book concerns the relationship between participation as a value and participation framed in relation to externally defined aims. For example, social justice is not understood as a fixed goal that can be achieved once and for all, but, drawing on Derrida, it is understood as open and unfinished, emerging through encounters with others and shaped by an ongoing sense of responsibility (p. 91–92). Through this concept, community music is not positioned as a mechanism for achieving predetermined social outcomes but as a practice shaped by relational engagement and ethical responsibility. This argument contributes to broader debates in music education concerning the purposes of participation, the influence of policy frameworks and the risk of instrumentalising musical practice.
The Intervention piece is among the most thought-provoking parts of the book. Instead of treating community music as inherently benevolent, Higgins interrogates the idea that intervention aims to improve the lives of others, noting that ‘the notion of music making as an intervention can be understood as an instrumentalization of music’s potential to transform lives for the “better”’ (p. 28). This framing raises questions about who defines need, who establishes objectives, and whose musical values take priority. Higgins further highlights concern among practitioners that the term ‘intervention’ may reflect ‘deficit-based perspective’ (p. 33), where ‘privileged/with power’ (p. 33) individuals determine what others require, and encourages practitioners to consider whether such practices risk reinforcing existing inequalities or even acting as another ‘colonizing endeavor’ (p. 38). In this way, the think piece resonates with scholars’ challenges to paradigms that treat marginalised groups as ‘Others’ to be remedied (p. 34), a perspective that can inadvertently reinforce the very norms of normalcy and power structures that sustain oppression (Kumashiro, Reference KUMASHIRO2000).
The Pedagogy part addresses a long-standing concern within community music practice concerning the nature of ‘teaching’. Higgins explores how community musicians often resist teacher-centred approaches, distancing themselves from associations with institutional authority, rigid hierarchy and top-down control. This resonates with existing studies in music education, which emphasise dialogic, relational and ecological learning (Schiavio & Kimmel, Reference SCHIAVIO, KIMMEL and Scarinzi2021). By drawing on case studies such as youth club work in Liverpool, Higgins situates community music firmly within the tradition of non-formal learning. He notes that ‘facilitation is the central strategy for engaging participants in learning that is designated as non-formal’ (p. 64). This shift from teacher to facilitator therefore reflects a move towards more collaborative and responsive learning practices, emphasising greater democratic participation. Higgins further proposes that community music occupies a fluid space on a pedagogical continuum, situated between structured, formal education and the spontaneity of everyday informal learning (p. 70). This positioning suggests that pedagogy in community music is flexible and context-sensitive, shaped by participants, settings and evolving learning processes.
The Hospitality piece provides an important conceptual lens for the pedagogical discussion. Higgins conceptualises community music as an ‘act of hospitality’, suggesting that participation begins not with instruction but with an invitation to encounter others through music (p. 40). He describes this process through ‘the call, the welcome, and the “yes”’, which together establish the relational conditions for participation (p. 41–42). Central to this framework is the host–guest relationship, which Higgins maps onto the interaction between facilitator and participant. However, he emphasises that hospitality occurs at boundaries or thresholds that shape participation. These boundaries remain ‘porous’, allowing negotiation and movement, while also requiring limits and responsibility (Casey, Reference CASEY, Kearney and Semonovitch2011, cited in Higgins, Reference HIGGINS2024, p. 53). This creates an ongoing negotiation between authority and openness, inclusion and boundary and responsibility and freedom.
Read alongside the pedagogy chapter, hospitality provides an ethical grounding for the facilitator role. Teaching is therefore understood not as transmission but as a relational practice shaped by welcoming, responsiveness and shared participation. In this way, hospitality challenges routine or fixed teaching practices, encouraging active involvement and flexible participation. This democratic orientation allows diverse voices to emerge and supports creativity, inclusion and representation within community music practice.
In his exploration of Inclusion and Excellence, Higgins challenges traditional aesthetics that view excellence as mere technical virtuosity (p. 102–103), arguing that in the context of community music, excellence should be viewed as an interactive process, while inclusion is the natural outcome achieved through that process. This perspective resonates with a philosophy that views music as ‘social praxis’ (p. 114), meaning that music is not an isolated object but an intersubjective act of ’musicking’ rooted in specific socio-cultural environments (p. 115). By employing Derrida’s theory of the ‘trace’ to argue that community music is an ‘always-already’ present core component within all musical possibilities rather than a second-rate substitute (p. 119–121), Higgins effectively dismantles the hierarchy of formal learning, thereby empowering participants to embrace an identity of ‘becoming-musician’ that promotes human flourishing (p. 128). While Higgins offers a compelling new definition of excellence, its real challenge lies in sustaining such values within institutions still shaped by hierarchy, measurement and professional authority.
The book is notable for its clarity and directness of communication, with complex ideas presented in a clear and concise manner. Nevertheless, readers unfamiliar with post-cultural theory may need time to embrace critical issues such as the hospitality-orientated concept of inclusion, fluidity of identity and the philosophical discourse of Foucault. Similarly, the book presumes that readers are aware of the widespread debates about the interaction between community and music. A close reading of the book also reveals that Higgins sometimes falls short of his democratic commitments. While he does not explicitly favour one culture over another, the book does include case studies from non-Western contexts, but overall, the impression from the ideas he presents leans ideologically and ethically towards the Global North through his use of major frameworks, including Derrida’s hospitality and Deleuze’s philosophy of becoming. This may undermine the book’s promise and advocacy for diverse participation and representation.
Similarly, the book’s discussion of diversity and inclusion tends to reflect Western ethical concepts shaped by individualist values. Higgins places strong emphasis on individual voice, autonomy and the right to participation, even when this may create conflicts with collective harmony and shared social expectations. While this perspective reflects an important democratic commitment, it may require further interpretation in cultural contexts where collective responsibility and social cohesion are prioritised over individual expression. Higgins touches on this in these words: ‘For the sake of hospitality itself, there must be limits to hospitality’ (Wrobleski, Reference WROBLESKI2012, cited in Higgins, Reference HIGGINS2024, p. 54). While this perspective promotes democratic participation, it also risks privileging individual expression over collective coherence, thereby reflecting implicit cultural assumptions that may not fully translate across different social and cultural contexts.
Thinking Community Music is a challenging, provocative addition to the discourse in community music and music education in general. Higgins challenges instrumental, policy-driven discourses and remakes ethical reflection, relational pedagogy and democratic participation as central issues of practice. Although the use of Global North theories in the book and the implicit individualist may limit its applicability across diverse cultural and social contexts, these contradictions can also provide fruitful areas of critique and subsequent discussions. Rather than offering fixed answers, the text invites readers to critically consider established assumptions about music, education and social interaction from alternative perspectives. Consequently, the book forms a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners interested in reflective, ethically grounded and socially engaged musical practice.
