What is musicking?
"...all activities that contribute to a musical event. This includes enablers and organisers of musical events, as well as performers and the audience. The concept of musicking separates music from society’s currently valued “musical objects” such as particular composers or condoned performance spaces, and instead highlights that music is participatory and includes actions such as singing to oneself in the car, or listening to the radio."
- Karen Cortez, Honours Thesis (2020)
I'm not musical.
It's a phrase that we hear all the time when we speak with others, and it makes us sad to hear! Musicking is a term first coined by musicologist Christopher Small, and has quickly become one of the guiding principles of our work. Society continues to place higher value on certain "musical objects", such as particular composers, pieces of music, instruments and venues. In our experiences and interactions with others we have found this value-setting to needlessly degrade people's opinions of their own musicality.
We believe that when people say "I'm not musical", they could mean something a little different - perhaps, "I've never had formal music lessons", or "I only sing along to the radio when no one is in the car".
When we use the term musicking, we are recognising all people as musicians.
