As a volatile educative space, musical education must be interwoven with other concerns and other more encompassing constructs if it is to build robust, meaningful, and complex learning outcomes. This paper attempts to do this by placing music education and a complex understanding of policy side by side, and outlining what people can learn from pedagogical places outside the realm of schooling--such as communities and those fostered by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It provides the rationale for an education in and through music that is centered on "place", arguing that it can offer a rupture in persistently reproductive patterns within education. The author offers "place-centered" education which presents complexity not as an anathema to learning, but as the essential quality for reflexive action and thought--a quality best established when local knowledges are claimed in conjunction with global insights. The author follows Janvry and Sadoulet (2003) and looks at policy language as a conceptual and metaphoric space for change in music education, and NGOs as a practical model for immediate and reflective practice in the field. Through these lenses, the paper emphasizes how education in and for the public is a substantial discussion today, particularly as people attempt to address immediate, tangible, and local needs while fostering the development of compelling and globally legible outcomes. (Contains 8 notes.)