This how-to guide explains how to make music a lasting and joy-filled force in shul and Jewish life. Weisenberg presents a veritable treasure house of musical opportunities. 104 pp.

Why have thousands of young Jews, otherwise unengaged with formal Jewish life, started more than sixty innovative prayer communities across the United States? What crucial insights can these grassroots communities provide for all of us?

"Music is the soul's native language: a prayer, a divine ladder upon which we climb between the Earth and the Heavens. But music also reaches horizontally across our social fractures and dogmas and connect us one with the other. Just as it cuts the nonsense away from our hearts, music opens our ears so that we can listen to the subtle nuances and sacred whispers of the world around us. In every moment, music encourages us to ask ourselves: Can we hear the songs that are already being sung by all of creation? In The Torah of Music, Joey Weisenberg brings together a comprehensive collection of 180 curated texts from the Jewish musical-spiritual imagination. In the first half, Weisenberg reflects on ancient texts alongside stories from his life as a musician. In the second half, Weisenberg presents a bilingual 'open library' of traditional texts on the subject of music and song, garnered from over three thousand years of Jewish history, to open up the world of Jewish musical thought to all who are willing to join the song"--front flap.

How to lead groups in singing and build community through music.

This valuable book encourages music leaders to step-up and persevere in low-resource contexts, and challenges all those who lead music in worship to focus not just on producing musical results but on building Christlike communities.

Contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship itself. Author Monique M. Ingalls argues that participatory worship music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations, or "modes of congregating". Through exploration of five of these modes--concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations--Singing the Congregation reinvigorates the analytic categories of "congregation" and "congregational music." Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology and congregational studies, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice--in this case, the musically-structured participatory activity known as "worship." "Congregational music-making" is thereby recast as a practice capable of weaving together a religious community both inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a powerful way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that comprise this global religious community. The interactions among the congregations reveal widespread conflicts over religious authority, carrying far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

'An open door to the joyous world of singing.' - Cerys Matthews Singing is one thing, but singing together is something else. Powerful and uplifting, group singing creates deep human connections and benefits our wellbeing. And it's fun. Vocal leader James Sills believes that group singing has the power to change lives. It is a joyful expression of our humanity that gives us purpose, encourages us to be fully present, and helps foster social bonds. In Do Sing, James invites us to reflect on our own singing journey. Was there a time when you stopped singing, or were told you couldn't sing? Do certain songs trigger happy memories? With exercises to help unlock your voice, improve breathing, release tension, and a few simple songs to get started, Do Sing will help you to overcome (often deep-rooted) inhibitions and reawaken a love of singing. Do Sing is a welcome remedy to the demands of modern life – and an invitation to experience the joy of group singing for yourself.

A practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community, online or IRL. Although communities feel magical, they don’t come together by magic. Get Together is a practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community. Whether starting a run crew, connecting with fans online, or sparking a movement of K–12 teachers, the secret to getting people together is this: build your community with people, not for them. In Get Together, Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto of People & Company share true stories of everyday people who have created thriving communities, both in person and online. They provide clear steps to untangle the challenge of getting passionate people together, helping individuals and organizations navigate the intricacies of leading a community, including: - How to rally the first people - How to get people talking - How to attract new, authentic folks - How to develop leaders and expand globally. The People & Company team reminds us that we each hold the potential to spark a community. Get Together shows readers that if we join forces—as company and customers, artist and fans, organizer and advocates—we’ll do more together than we ever could alone.

Music and World-Building in the Colonial City investigates how nineteenth-century migrants to Australia used music as a resource for world-building, focusing on coalmining regions of New South Wales. It explores how music-making helped British migrants to create communities in unfamiliar country, often with little to no infrastructure. Its key themes are as follows: people’s relationships to music within specific contexts; how music-making intersects with class, gender and ethnic background; identity through music. Situated within a wider discourse on music and identity, music and well-being and music and emotions, this is an authoritative study of historical communities and their relationship with music. It will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers working in the fields of sociomusicology, colonial studies and cultural studies.

"The Oxford Handbook of Community Singing shows in abundant detail that singing with others is thriving. Using an array of interdisciplinary methods, chapter authors prioritize participation rather than performance and provide finely grained accounts of group singing in community, music therapy, religious, and music education settings. Themes associated with protest, incarceration, nation, hymnody, group bonding, identity, and inclusivity infuse the 47 chapters. Written almost wholly during the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic, the Handbook features a section dedicated to collective singing facilitated by audiovisual or communications media (mediated singing), some of it quarantine-mandated. The last of eight substantial sections is a repository of new theories about how group singing practices work. Throughout, the authors problematize the limitations inherited from the western European choral music tradition and report on workable new remedies to counter those constraints"--