LOcal sound for a new MUSicality. Enhancing musical participation through a local sonic practice

ended

Participation in music-making has shown to produce cognitive and behavioural benefits, enhance social participation, and contribute to shaping both individual and collective identity. However, access to music-making is reserved for people who possess some level of specialised musical training. LOMUS aims at developing a pioneering method that uses easy-to-use Calabrian sounding objects as a tool for facilitating non-trained individuals' participation in music-making: it unlinks music-production abilities from specialised instrumental training to enable non-musicians to make music without requiring mastery of an instrument, of specific musical idioms and techniques. By combining ethnomusicology, contemporary music and community music studies, LOMUS provides a sophisticated understanding of a local sonic practice and investigates how this could inform the emergence of a new global practice for music-making that challenges public conceptions of musicality and of a musician. The research will: study the Calabrian sounding objects to understand how they contribute to shaping the musicality of the community and how they could contribute to creating new types of musicality; investigate contemporary music practices and strategies that can be used to include non-trained individuals in music-making; develop a new method that uses Calabrian sounding objects and contemporary music strategies to enable amateurs and non-trained individuals to make music. The resulting method will be relevant to different rural or urban communities and it can be used to explore elements of a community’s soundscape as an inclusive tool for music-making. LOMUS challenges established concepts and practices around music and musicality, promotes social innovation by initiating new ways of relating with others and the environment through sound, and extends the personal and social benefits of music-making to everybody.