We tend to think of music as an object—a song, a score, a recording, a performance. Christopher Small invites us to see it instead as an activity: something people do together.

To capture that idea, he coined the verb musicking. It includes not only composers and performers, but also listeners, dancers, ticket-takers, instrument builders, stagehands, and everyone else who helps bring a musical event into being. Music, in his telling, is not entertainment delivered to an audience. It is one of the oldest ways human beings practice belonging.

Seen this way, every performance expresses a set of relationships. Who belongs? Who gets to participate? Who leads? Who listens? When do we improvise? When do we follow? What kind of community are we becoming together?

Small’s insight reaches far beyond music. Once you begin thinking in verbs instead of nouns, you start seeing similar practices everywhere: learning, neighboring, parenting, gardening, democracy. Culture itself is less a collection of books, songs, paintings, and performances than a collection of practices people enact together until they become recognizable ways of living.

That may be Small’s deepest contribution. He gives us a word for something we’ve been doing all along.

BOOK: Musicking‍

ARTICLE: Thinking About Musicking