Participation in creative and artistic activities has been shown to produce personal and social benefits. Similarly, making music reduces stress, enhances confidence, facilitates social interactions and leads to an overall increase in the individuals’ wellbeing. However, access to music-making is reserved for people who can afford an instrument and the time to learn one. Furthermore, many individuals feel incapable of making music or unmusical, which leads them away from taking part in musical activities. Musical identities play a significant role in defining the individuals’ relationship with music and their self-perception of musicality. Musical identities concern both how we perceive ourselves in relation to music (for instance, if we think we are tone deaf or we think we are good musicians), and how music contributes to defining our identity as a person (for instance, how music facilitates making friends who share our tastes).
LoMus seeks ways to involve everybody in music-making regardless of their musical abilities. The aim is to explore new types of musicality in search of new ways of making music that do not require years of specialised training. LoMus tackled this problem by developing ways to make music with objects rather than only musical instruments. Sounding objects are easy to play and require very little training. Despite their simplicity, these objects and their sound convey strong personal, social and cultural meanings. Contemporary music practitioners have developed ways to include non-trained individuals in music-making. LoMus combined sounding objects with a participatory contemporary music practice. The research objectives were: (1) to study sounding objects, with a study case on traditional Calabrian sounding objects; (2) to study contemporary music resources that can be used with untrained individuals; (3) to develop a music-making method that combines contemporary music and sounding objects to allow everybody to make music regardless of their skills.
The LoMus method facilitates participation in musical activities, bringing the benefits of music-making to individuals who would be otherwise excluded. By broadening participation in creative activities, LoMus contributes to a healthier and more resilient society. This research combined various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, such as ethnomusicology, music psychology and community music studies. Ethnomusicology guided the research in Calabrian sounding objects. Contemporary music studies provided an overview of possible techniques and resources to be used with non-trained individuals. The method was developed through practice-led research which drew on community music studies and music psychology.
