Queering Freedom: Music, Identity and Spirituality

This book is intended to challenge the status quo of music learning and experience by intersecting various musical topics with discussions of spirituality and queer studies. Spanning from the theoretical to the personal, the authors utilize a variety of approaches to query how music makers might blend spirituality’s healing and wholeness with queer theory’s radical liberation.

Queering Freedom: Music, Identity and Spirituality represents an eclectic mix of historical, ethnomusicological, case study, narrative, ethnodramatic, philosophical, theological, and theoretical contributions. The book reaches an international audience, with invited authors from around the world who represent the voices and perspectives of over ten countries. The authors engage with policy, practice, and performance to critically address contemporary and historical music practices. Through its broad and varied writing styles and representations, the collection aims to shift perspectives of possibility and invite readers to envision a fresh, organic, and more holistic musical experience.

Karin S. Hendricks is Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music and Assistant Professor of Music, Music Education at Boston University. A regular presenter of research papers and research-to-practice workshops, Karin has served as an orchestra clinician and adjudicator throughout the United States and abroad. She has served in a variety of local, national, and international leadership positions. She conducts research in social psychology and social justice, with a particular focus on student motivation and musical engagement. She has published dozens of papers in peer-reviewed and professional journals and books, and is author of the books Performance Anxiety Strategies and Compassionate Music Teaching.

June Boyce-Tillman read music at Oxford University and is Professor of Applied Music at the University of Winchester and Extra-ordinary Professor at North West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. She has published widely in the area of music and education and spirituality, most recently Experiencing Music and Spirituality and Music Education. Her doctoral research into children’s musical development has been translated into five languages. She has written about and organized events in the area of interfaith dialogue using music. She is a composer and conductor concerned with radically inclusive musical events and an international performer, especially on the work of Hildegard of Bingen. She is a hymn writer and an ordained Anglican priest. She is artistic convenor of the Winchester Centre for the Arts as Wellbeing and Convenor of the Tavener Centre for Music and Spirituality.