we can all make music

changing perceptions

Our biggest challenge

It's no big deal to get people singing. After all, it fulfils an innate desire. Yes there are strong forces in our culture that conspire against 'everybody doing it', but, given the opportunity, everybody will.

The big challenge is to change the perceptions of decision makers.

When a mayor, a Premier, a Prime Minister, an Arts Minister hears the word 'music' what image springs to their mind?

The odds are it's a professional orchestra playing in an arts centre, a rock star performing before thousands, listening to a CD.

Our challenge is to change that initial image. What if their first thought was to be of twenty people standing in a circle in a small hall singing together, or of the opening and closing moments of a public meeting being filled with mass voices or of an extended family joyfully making music in their kitchen?

Then perhaps music might begin to regain its essential place in the scheme of things.

And then there are greater challenges:

What if the word 'community' inspired images of people singing together? What if, whenever, decision makers were having to address the fissures developing in our society, their first thought was of music?

And perhaps the greatest challenge of all: to add singing together to the list of basic human needs.

Health, safety and education are among the things we immediately recognise as basic rights and necessities. Singing, at first glance, would appear pretty insignificant in comparison. And yet, for our earliest ancestors, it was integral to all three. Have things changed so much? No, we have just forgotten.

How can the perceptions of decision makers be changed? In the face of the resources devoted to the dominant images of music, it's tempting to throw in the towel. But we do so at our peril. If we do, we may lose an innate human capacity that is at the basis of the way that we learn to become social beings, and, above all, to enjoy doing with others.

Our experience leads us to believe that the best, and possibly only really effective, way of convincing those whose job it is to care for society is to actively engage them in the process of singing with others. This is a shockingly big call - it's hard enough to imagine a bunch of politicians in a singing circle, let alone to get them to try it. But try we must.

So, that's our fundamental advocacy aim - find ways into the congregations of power brokers and get them singing. Perhaps then we can make a sound world together.

we can all make music

changing perceptions

Our biggest challenge

making a sound world together