The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure

Book excerpt: Music has been a vital part of leisure activity across time and cultures. Contemporary commodification, commercialization, and consumerism, however, have created a chasm between conceptualizations of music making and numerous realities in our world. From a broad range of perspectives and approaches, this handbook explores avocational involvement with music as an integral part of the human condition. The chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure present myriad ways for reconsidering and refocusing attention back on the rich, exciting, and emotionally charged ways in which people of all ages make time for making music. The contexts discussed are broadly Western, including an eclectic variety of voices from scholars across fields and disciplines, framing complex and multifaceted phenomena that may be helpfully, enlighteningly, and perhaps provocatively framed as music making and leisure. This volume may be viewed as an attempt to reclaim music making and leisure as a serious concern for, amongst others, policy makers, scholars, and educators who perhaps risk eliding some or even most of the ways in which music - a vital part of human existence - is integrated into the everyday lives of people. As such, this handbook looks beyond the obvious, asking readers to consider anew, "What might we see when we think of music making as leisure?"