Introduction
This introduction considers the author’s position to the subject matter and book, including its insistence that people who experience poverty should enjoy human rights all of the time, even at the time of music-making. A critical ethnography of human rights in artistic practice, it introduces what musicking, or the social processes of engaging music, does and does not do for urban poor from the perspective of capability development and human rights. Developing capabilities is a key element of struggling toward human rights, but these capabilities may not be human rights in themselves. The prelude describes the author’s roles as a violinist, arts organizer and researcher in urban poverty as well as how she overcame methodological challenges faced during the study.