Meaningful Music Making for Life

Series Editors: Steve Dillon and Liz Mackinlay

The Meaningful music making for life considers music making and its effects as a lifetime pursuit. Each book examines the role and tensions of music-makers across ages and in the locations where meaningful engagement with music making takes place. Whilst it is philosophically an exploration of the notions of meaningful engagement presented in the first book of the series - Music, Meaning and Transformation, it undertakes this process from a global perspective and in a phenomenological exploration of this theory. Experts in their respective field edit each book in the series and each expert has selected key authors of the chapters that represent both world leaders in these fields alongside exciting emergent authors whose research and practice is influencing 21st century practice. The phenomenological approach to each context allows tensions to be enacted within the book, which will engage readers in a genuine debate that is central to the discourse surrounding the phenomenon. The structure of the chapters in the book will include both theoretical and practice-based examples of the phenomenon often co-authored with the case study participants. This approach allows a connection between the philosophical perspectives of the editors, the theoretical understandings of the authors and a direct connection to practice that exemplifies each issue.

The series invites researchers and practitioners to examine the often disruptive and challenging effects of diverse cultural contexts and new technology on music making and learning. The series seeks to: Navigate Music and Sound Education, examine the evolution and plasticity of Sound musicianship in schools, universities and communities. It documents Songs of Resilience shifting the focus to the social, health and resilience factors of music making on sound communities ranging from aged choirs to refugees and the disabled. Providing an edited collection that draws on authors from across the disciplines of music and health and engages community music practitioners to sing songs of resilience. Through Teaching sound cultures, learning sound cultures, music making and cultural diversity is explored seeking ethical ways of traversing approaches to the complexity of music in multi cultural contexts. The final book in the series A Sound Identity examines the critical relationship and role of music in identity formation.

Steve Dillon is a senior lecturer of Music and Sound and music education in the Faculty of Creative Industry, Queensland University of Technology. Steve’s research focuses upon meaningful engagement with music making in schools and communities. He is founding director of the save to DISC (Documenting Innovation in Sound Communities) Research Network which examines and documents the qualities and relationships between music, meaning, cognitive and social benefit, health and well being. Steve is also Project leader for the Australasian Collaborative Research Centre for Interaction design (ACID) Network Jamming research creating new instruments and ways of learning for media performance. Steve is also on the editorial board for the International Journal of Community Music, the Journal of Music, Technology and Education and Music Education Research and Innovation.

Liz Mackinlay is a Senior Lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland where she teaches Indigenous Studies, Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. Liz completed her PhD in Ethnomusicology in 1998 and a PhD in Education in 2003. She is undertaking research on Indigenous Australian women's performance, performance pedagogy and embodied learning, and music teaching and music learning environments. A full list of publications can be found here. Liz was the National Treasurer of the Musicological Society of Australia (MSA), Past President of the Queensland Chapter of the MSA (MSAQ), and Council Member of the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Society for Music Education (ASME). She is also Editor of the Queensland Journal of Music Education and Co-Editor of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education.

Music, Metamorphosis and Capitalism: Self, Poetics and Politics
Music, Meaning and Transformation: Meaningful Music Making for Life