Community Music and Youth: Delivering Empowerment?

Recent years have witnessed an increasing alignment between community music activity and youth. From the range of community music-style activities nowadays taking place across formal domains of youth provision, to the youth-oriented musical activities occurring within informal settings, many commentators have come to see community music activities as holding particular relevance and value in relation to youth. Importantly however, the assumptions lying behind the purportedly ‘special’ relationship between community music and youth – as well as their implications for the nature of much youth-focussed community music activity – too often go unexamined. This chapter therefore critically interrogates some of the key ways in which this relationship is commonly understood, before examining how these sit alongside the broader purposes and values commonly associated with community music.