Revisiting ‘Community music therapy and the winds of change’ (2002): An original article and a retrospective evaluation

Abstract

Abstract This article contains my article ‘Community music therapy and the winds of change’, which was written twelve years ago. It also contains my reflection on this article. In this I explore some of the circumstances in the United Kingdom that prompted writing the original article, and consider these in relation to subsequent developments of community music therapy (CoMT) as an international movement. I also evaluate what I think I got wrong and right in the original article, and what I could not have anticipated in 2002. I finish by suggesting that CoMT has functioned as a ‘trojan paradigm’: smuggling into an increasingly reductionist, individualized and medicalized culture of treatment and care a more flexible ecological understanding of the complex relationships between music, people, health, illness and well-being.