Music, Communities, Sustainability : Developing Policies and Practices

In Music, Communities, Sustainability, editors Huib Schippers and Anthony Seeger bring together a diverse roster of thinkers and practitioners to offer new perspectives on the effects of the 2003 UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, and on efforts around the world to treat music as one essential Intangible Cultural Heritage of humankind.

Music, Communities, Sustainability, edited thoughtfully by Huib Schippers and Anthony Seeger, traces the genesis, implementation, and development of the influential 2003 UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and its impact on music practices around the world. With insights from established and emerging scholars who have been there from the early beginnings to those who work with it in communities today, this book tells a riveting story that celebrates the rise in awareness that approaching music as Intangible Cultural Heritage has brought. At the same time, it critiques the discrepancies between ideologies and realities as they emerged across the globe in its first twenty years, and provides perspectives for sound futures for the planet. Gathering such varied perspectives, this essential volume tells a crucial history and expands our understanding of the possibilities and limitations of interventions in music sustainability on a global scale.