Veblen, K.K. (2012). Community music making: Challenging the stereotypes of traditional music education. In C.A. Beynon & K.K. Veblen (Eds.). Critical perspectives in Canadian music education. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
After reading this article I feel like it sparked new ideas about music education and the music community. I noticed that music programs, and arts programs as well, are ones which don't get much recognition by the government in the sense that these programs don't get too much funding to keep them running. I find this a bit sad because art programs are the fundamental base for students to be creative and develop this thinking. They are not always challenged to be creative in other subjects like math or science because those subjects require a specific answer each time. But with arts there can always be a different answer, and many interpretations of the artwork. This to me was a very shocking reality to know that in the future where the arts might even be a foreign subject in schools and not many students might want to take these subjects.
I found it interesting that the music community is actually a very large one in size. This was because there doesn't necessarily have to be music just in schools, but there are also music programs outside of school such as choirs, symphonic youth bands, and many more. As well these carry over to even therapy, which is used on patients of all kinds, whether they have a mental or physical disability. The music is used to make their lives a little better everyday. I also found that there are even some outreach programs which help schools who do not have the funds to buy musical equipment but have students with the potential of being great musicians. I thought this was very kind of the organizations to do because there are many schools which are like this and the students usually come from very low income families who don't have the money or privilege to send them to private lessons or schools with high quality music programs. By being in this program they can get a taste of what the instrument is like rather than not experiencing this at all.
Towards the end of the article the author poses the question “ Should music making be accessible to marginalized populations and to those who can’t afford to pay? ” which is very insightful to the topic. My answer to this question is that music education should be accessible to everyone whether they can or cannot afford it because music should be a subject that everyone should experience at least once in their life time, and only after can they decide that they don't really have a passion for it. Overall I agree with the author, when they state that music communities support music education but they will never replace the education. The author explains that this is because music education is a much wider spectrum then community music.