we can all make music

we can't help it

Why we do what we do

CMV was established because we've forgotten something really important.

In a society that worships experts, excellence and consumption, we've forgotten that the most valuable aspect of music is making it.

There's nothing wrong with concert going or CD buying, but it is through actively making music that the most profound joys and fulfilment can be found.

Music making needs no audience. Indeed, it is the participants, rather than the listeners, who reap the most significant benefits. Contemporary western society has only recently forgotten this truth.

It wasn't that long ago that music making was something that most people did as an ordinary, everyday part of their lives.

At CMV, we believe that all of us have the need, desire, capacity and right to make music - and that if we are deprived of this experience, we, and our society, are severely diminished.

What's more, it is in making music together that the most affective insights can be achieved.

Traditionally, making music together has been one of the most important binding agents within and between communities.

When people make music together, connections develop. These connections can transcend profound difference, illuminate unexpected unity, bring cathartic joy and extend into everyday life. Through creative practices, we discover and develop connections that join our collective beings in imaginative and intuitive ways that transcend the rational.

We often use 'harmonious' as a description of the society we aspire to live in. This is no accident. Our bodies respond physically, sensually and emotionally to harmony - the connections between sounds moves us. Making harmony in the moment is a joyful and uplifting experience; a tangible manifestation of our dreams of oneness built on diversity.

But most important, making music together is fun, and in the context of a culture that demands instant gratification - immediate fun.

Through the utilisation of just the body and the voice, with no external tools, no difficult-to-learn skills, people can discover, explore and celebrate their creative capacities in ways that no other activity can offer so easily, accessibly, inclusively, and possibly most important, so immediately gratifyingly.

Experienced facilitators can guide groups through experiences where their abilities to make their own music are made real, quite literally, within minutes. And this is not just their capacity to sing a 'given' piece, but to improvise and to compose.

This is not mere theory. At CMV we have personally witnessed this apparent miracle so many times that we are beginning to forget that we live in a society in which so many, perhaps most, people have been convinced that they can't sing, that they are 'tone deaf', that making music is best left to the experts.

This tragic manifestation of cultural cringe might not matter so much if it weren't for the fact that making music together is such a basic part of living a fulfilled life. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to do all we can to rediscover our musicality.

There are still a few cultures left in which the concept of 'performance music' is unknown; in which communities regularly come together to make music, not to be entertained or uplifted by professionals, but to express and celebrate, among themselves, the beauty of their communal existence in ways that transcend the inevitable sorrows, struggles and pain that accompany life on this earth.

So, how do we reclaim this essential aspect of being human?

First by recognising it; second by honouring it; third, by offering a helping hand to those among us who wish, in their communities, to bring music making together back into the central place it should occupy in a healthy community.

This is what we do at CMV - through training, networking, advice and counselling, advocacy and resource development. With the support of VicHealth and Arts Victoria, we work to assist Victorian communities to make their own music together. If you want to know more, just get in touch.

we can all make music

we can't help it

Why we do what we do

making a sound world together