Community Music Interventions in Post-Conflict Contexts

Abstract

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of community-based music interventions in sites affected by violent war and conflict. The author proposes a typology of four broad fields of intention (Music Education, Cultural Regeneration, Social Development, and Healing, Health, and Well-being) that underpin many of the music interventions documented in scholarly literature thus far. This is followed with an application of the typology to an early exemplar of a post-war music intervention, the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The typology of intentions provides an analytical framework for researchers wishing to examine post-war music interventions systematically, and a tool for organizers and practitioners wishing to position a music intervention (or other arts interventions) within the wider conflict recovery context. The concluding discussion considers the typology’s illuminating function within the intercultural, political, social, and economic complexity of post-war environments.