Organizations hosting music-making for urban poor

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Music Therapy ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Urban Redevelopment ◽  
Music Programs ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Downtown Eastside ◽  
Institutional Contexts

This chapter examines how human rights and capabilities emerge within organizations hosting music initiatives and targeting Downtown Eastside urban poor. It observes that music facilitators having considerable freedom about how to engage human rights, which are rarely specified in organizational frameworks—aims, missions, and mandates—of aid organizations that host participatory musical events, and of organizations that facilitate public music performances, for instance, performing arts companies and music academies. The chapter notes a susceptibility of jams and music therapy in aid organizations to closure. The popular music initiatives for urban poor unfold within institutional contexts of financial inequity where some music facilitators are paid very little or nothing, and certain administrators are handsomely rewarded. During the contentious urban redevelopment process of gentrification, the vulnerability of the aid organizations and their music programs, as well as the financial inequities across all organizations intensify.

Music Downtown Eastside

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Community Centers ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Downtown Eastside ◽  
Therapy Sessions

Music Downtown Eastside explores how human rights are at play in the popular music practices of homeless and street-involved people who feel that music is one of the rare things that cannot be taken away of them. It draws on two decades of ethnographic research in one of Canada’s poorest urban neighborhoods, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Klisala Harrison takes the reader into popular music jams and therapy sessions offered to the poorest of the poor in churches, community centers and health organizations. There she analyzes the capabilities music-making develops, and how human rights are respected, promoted, threatened, or violated in those musical moments. When doing so, she also offers new and detailed insights on the relationships between music and poverty, a type of social deprivation that diminishes people’s human capabilities and rights. The book contributes to the human rights literature by examining critically how human rights can be strengthened in cultural practices. Harrison’s study demonstrates that capabilities and human rights are interrelated. Developing capabilities can be a way to strengthen human rights.

Music in urban poverty

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-30
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Capability Development ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Downtown Eastside ◽  
Broad Array

In urban contexts internationally, organizations, administrators, culture workers, artists and academics put vast effort into facilitating music and other arts in attempt to alleviate “poverty.” Poverty, according to recent definitions, refers to a broad array of social deprivations. These include deprivations of entitlements, which are widely understood as rights, and deprivations of human development, of which capability development is an example. Drawing on two decades of ethnographic field research in one of Canada’s poorest urban neighborhoods, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, this book asks: Which kinds of capabilities are developed via music initiatives in the Downtown Eastside, and, particularly, what is their relationship with human rights? Are specific human rights promoted, strengthened, threatened, violated, and respected in music-making by urban poor?

Musical Economics of Urban Poverty: City Redevelopment and Gentrification in the Financing, Organization, and Interpretation of Music

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Urban Redevelopment ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Formal Organization ◽  
Urban Neighborhood ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Impact

In this chapter, I consider the impact of urban redevelopment on the financing, organization, and interpretation of local, urban musics. I focus on gentrification, which refers to the redevelopment of a socio-economically depressed urban neighborhood during which urban poor are displaced as it becomes reconstructed for and by the middle and upper economic classes. I argue that gentrification has specific relationships to the formal organization of music-making in a neighborhood—which financing and infrastructure patterns are found there, as well as which musical styles and representations occur. Often success with gentrification positively correlates with the flourishing of (performing) arts districts, and so-called creative economies to be consumed by the affluent. Which economic and social forces lead to gentrification, and what is gentrification’s relationship to music-making? During gentrification, which kinds of musical activities and expressions tend to be economically supported, and which left out, by formally organized music initiatives?

Self-determination

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-165
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Music Therapists ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Downtown Eastside ◽  
And Performance

Self-determination is at issue for urban poor participating in jams and music therapy using popular songs in the Downtown Eastside. Self-determination, in one meaning, refers to an individual’s capability to determine his or her own actions. The human right to self-determination refers to legally defined peoples that (seek to) determine their own governance. A people cannot emerge, though, if individuals and small groups cannot self-determine to form a larger social unit. The popular music scene of the Downtown Eastside is a social setting that may block the capability of urban poor to determine their own actions as individuals and in small groups. Some music therapists limit and erode the self-determination of urban poor, coopting the poor’s self-determination of their own music-making and music-learning. Suppression of self-determination also emerged when music jam participants excluded original popular songs composed by other participants. Rejecting original songs suppressed the capabilities involved in creating new music, and human rights included in song creation and performance. Other music facilitators respond to various self-determination tensions among music initiative organizers and participants with the social work method of noninterference adapted to music-making. Many of these examples result in human rights conflicts and violations.

The power to do something

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-198
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Socioeconomic Inequality ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Musical Practices

This book has examined human rights, and the development of capability—the “power to do something”—in musical practices. It has explored if (popular) music-making can enhance human rights and capabilities of the poorest of the poor, such as homeless and street-involved people, who feel that music is a “thing” that can never be taken away from them. This conclusion points out how the book defined capabilities in a novel and useful way. When synthesizing the book’s main findings, it describes a causal relationship between developing human capabilities, and strengthening human rights which operate in complex ways musical and cultural moments. Specific human capabilities can be nurtured so as to develop specific human rights. The chapter reflects and elaborates on critiques of human rights pertinent to music in and as culture. With attention to socioeconomic inequality, it offers inspiration for making, and thinking about, musical and cultural efforts to promote human rights and capabilities.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Capability Development ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

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.

The human right to health: Autonomy

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Downtown Eastside ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Therapy Sessions

Taking its cue from how human rights activists frame human rights in cultural moments, this chapter begins to map how human capabilities are instrumentalized to develop human rights in the Downtown Eastside, and how human rights circulate in music. The music jams and music therapy sessions promote the human right to health of urban poor in different ways, including through enabling their capability to connect socially through music-making; facilitating their capability to psychologically process stress using music; promoting these participants’ senses of autonomy (i.e., control over life situations); and encouraging their use music to grieve early deaths in urban poverty. According to the medical literature and building on human rights discourse of the health equity movement, such capabilities potentially enhance their health and arguably strengthen their human right to health.

The right to the city during gentrification

2020 ◽  
pp. 166-186
Author(s):  
Klisala Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Music Theater ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Downtown Eastside ◽  
Complete Obliteration ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

As important and sometimes troubling as the previously described music projects can be, they are threatened with complete obliteration during gentrification in such socioeconomically depressed urban neighborhoods as the Downtown Eastside. Gentrification transforms a socioeconomically depressed urban area for middle- and upper-class use. As urban poor are displaced, this threatens their right to the city, which refers to their abilities to exercise the human rights involved in living in their chosen city area. At the same time, funding becomes more available for capability building through the arts and for professional arts. Resultantly, popular music theater has flourished during the gentrification of the Downtown Eastside. What has been the role of urban poor, and particularly participants in jams and music therapy, in the music theater productions? Which human rights regarding the right to the city have those performances supported for urban poor?

Housing as a Basic Human Right: A Reflection on South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mziwandile Sobantu ◽  
Nqobile Zulu ◽  
Ntandoyenkosi Maphosa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper reflects on human rights in the post-apartheid South Africa housing context from a social development lens. The Constitution guarantees access to adequate housing as a basic human right, a prerequisite for the optimum development of individuals, families and communities. Without the other related socio-economic rights, the provision of access to housing is limited in its service delivery. We argue that housing rights are inseparable from the broader human rights discourse and social development endeavours underway in the country. While government has made much progress through the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the reality of informal settlements and backyard shacks continues to undermine the human rights prospects of the urban poor. Forced evictions undermine some poor citizens’ human rights leading courts to play an active role in enforcing housing and human rights through establishing a jurisprudence that invariably advances a social development agenda. The authors argue that the post-1994 government needs to galvanise the citizenship of the urban poor through development-oriented housing delivery.

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