A new typology of community music groups

Abstract

In this article, we offer, through a new typology, a way to portray and understand the diversity of community music’s organizational foundations and purposes. Typologies are a common descriptive and interpretive device for understanding patterns of activity. Some researchers of community music have, explicitly or implicitly, developed a number of typologies of community music organizations. Our new typology is systematically aligned to capture the social and musical variability among community music organizations. It then puts the typology to work by providing brief examples, drawn from Australian research, of each of its proposed types. This new typology is intended to allow researchers and practitioners to understand how different community music ensembles are similar or dissimilar, and make comparative discussions clearer and more systematic, offering give a clear frame for understanding present and possible future community music-making groups and organizations.