Being Who You Aren't; Doing What You Can't: Community Music Therapy & the Paradoxes of Performance

This article gives some introductory thoughts on the 'paradoxes of performance' in contemporary music therapy, through the perspective of the evolving practice and discourse of Community Music Therapy—where aspects of the practice, theory and ethics of performance in music therapy are currently being debated. The article looks at these aspects in two ways: firstly, through a case study of a Community Music Therapy project in East London which is being tracked as part of a larger research study; secondly, from various interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives on music, performance, and personal and social development. It suggests that the new discourse of Community Music Therapy is usefully opening up professional and theoretical discussion within music therapy to the potentials and problems of working with clients across the full continuum of private to public music therapy, and to the rich potentials of music as a performance art within reflexive practice.