What's with the K? Exploring the implications of Christopher Small's ‘musicking’ for general music education

In this article, we discuss Christoper Small's concept of musicking in order to explicate his understanding of music as a practice and the implications of such an understanding for today's general music education. Our main argument is that, armed with Small's concept of musicking, we can deal with music in its full social-cultural significance. From this standpoint, music is not only just a collection of specifically musical practices but also a community of practice that affirms our existing social habits and helps us to transcend these habits through exploring and celebrating new relationships. Rather than taking music merely as something that people do, Small suggests that it is one of the most important ways of living as a human being, comparable to verbal communication. We also argue that based on this view, music should be seen as a central part of general education, not to be compromised by taking it out of school.