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From 2000 on, the emergence of activist choirs has greatly influenced practices of political activism in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In this article, I analyze how activists, singers, and listeners repurpose antifascist music legacy in order to experiment with new forms of political engagement. I propose the concept of radical amateurism, a political community that fuels the politicization of a field of leisure, which enables people to form new audiosocial alliances at local, regional, and global scales. Locating my theoretical framework within the field of affective politics of sound, I show that political potentiality, when related to music and sound, is inscribed in the complex relationship between imagined and real, exception and everydayness, emerging and routinized, and impossible and possible. In conclusion, I scrutinize contingencies of affective politics and discuss the ways affective encounters enable a new framework for practicing political engagement in a moment of apathy and neoliberal exhaustion.
Ethnomusicology
Numerous studies have borne out the effects of cultural and music education on individuals’ well-being, considering music as a mainly systematic practice or skill or as established educational supply. However, few studies assess the impact of music programmes designed to achieve specific goals, where music is considered as a tool for social change. As a case study, we take the Medellin Music School Network (Colombia), whose education programme for music initiation has been running for 23 years. Our aim is to evaluate the economic and social impact generated by participating in this programme. We use a quasi-experimental propensity score matching technique as the evaluation method. Results show that the programme significantly reduces the probability of participants’ becoming involved in conflict, added to which they perceive a better quality of life. Students achieve better academic performance and intensify cultural consumption and participation in artistic activities. Institutional efficacy is reflected through beneficiaries expressing a positive and significant willingness to pay in order to maintain the programme. The work also aims to evidence the usefulness of the methodology for evaluating the impact of cultural policies, particularly in developing areas.
Journal of Cultural Economics
Music is an important presence in our world, thought to be universal in human societies. The ubiquity of music has led some to postulate that it might have an important evolutionary purpose. One theory about the purpose of music is that it helps facilitate the social aspects of our existence. If this is the case, music has the potential to be a powerful tool for change. Indeed, some research has suggested that music can increase positive intergroup interactions. Thus far, the research has shown that music may produce change in intergroup attitudes when accompanied by other intergroup interactions, such as cohabitation. It has also shown promise in relation to music preference and witnessed musical interaction. However, evidence for increased positive intergroup attitudes following actual (instead of imagined, vicarious, or witnessed) musical interaction in a controlled environment is still lacking. The purpose of this study was to test this idea. One hundred eighty-two undergraduate psychology students were recruited to complete musical tasks in collaboration, a non-musical task in collaboration, or a musical task alone (isolation). I hypothesized that (1) relative to intergroup non-musical collaboration, intergroup musical collaboration will lead to an increase in positive intergroup attitudes; and (2) musical isolation will lead to minimal or no increase in positive intergroup attitudes. The results of this study did not support these hypotheses.
In “Engaging the ‘Other’: Contemporary Music as Perspective-Shifting in Post-conflict Northern Uganda,” Opiyo explores the relationship between music and peacebuilding in developing constructive relationships in Northern Uganda, the site of over two decades of conflict between the Ugandan government and various rebel groups, particularly the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). By focusing on three popular and poignant conflict-era songs, this essay suggests that there is significant potential for transformative peacebuilding when music strategically engages with groups labelled by society as the “other.” Building on a discussion of the songs themselves, Opiyo makes a case for recognizing the value of music for nurturing perspective-shifting within groups and between groups polarized by protracted conflict.
Peacebuilding and the Arts
Cultural exchange and internationalization—the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the functions and delivery of higher education—have increased markedly in significance within higher education in the last few years. In the broadest sense, this agenda is about preparing students for living in and contributing to an increasingly connected global society. At a time when the political and social trend seems to be toward exclusionism, exposing students to a vibrant blend of ideas, opinions, and experiences within the stimulating, yet safe, space of university resonates all the more strongly. However, historically it has been difficult to encourage students to participate fully, particularly with regard to student mobility and studying abroad. Socioeconomic and cultural factors play an important role here. This case study investigates the design and rollout of an innovative online international exchange program carried out between Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, and DePaul University in Chicago, IL. As part of their core mission, both institutions are committed to widening participation, and both have a high proportion of first-generation students from the lowest socioeconomic groups. Consequently, the student mobility rate at both universities is low, which limits opportunities for students to situate their learning within a global context. Recent developments in digital communications and platform sharing technologies have allowed universities to explore online collaboration and virtual exchange, but this raises new challenges. In particular, how do you embed a sense of genuine cultural exchange and collaboration between students who are geographically remote, very possibly in different time zones, and—crucially—still enmeshed in their local culture? This paper outlines an innovative and practical response to that problem, using a collaborative project in which students must serve as both directors and clients in the production of creative sound works to facilitate a profound and meaningful cultural exchange. The paper outlines the design and implementation of this online student exchange program; discusses the challenges, benefits, and drawbacks to the approach; and concludes by generalizing from this particular case to discuss how discipline-specific skills can be used as a mechanism to build cohesive and outward-looking cohorts of students, even when they are not colocated on campus.
International Journal on Innovations in Online Education
This article documents relationships, strategies, and activities involved in developing and carrying out collaborative community-engaged research for reconciliation, based on Indigenous methodologies and research-creation. It documents an example of Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration in Unama’ki (also known as Cape Breton, Canada), providing data towards the refinement of models of research designed to foster reconciliation, and contributing to a literature on Indigenous/ non-Indigenous collaborations in ethnomusicology and related fields. While revealing some challenges in the process with respect to addressing local needs, it also describes transformations that can be achieved through effective collaboration, including ways in which universities can be involved.
Yearbook for Traditional Music
Jean-Marc Rouillan is one of the founding members of Action directe (1977–1987). In this interview, he talks about the connection between his musical practices and his political activism since the May 1968 events in France, the role of music and sound in the armed struggle of Action directe, and the place he attributes to music in the history of political struggles.
Transposition
Going Underground situates the demand for “free music” as part of a broader contestation of the terms of cultural consumption in the radical milieu of the long 1960s. At stake in the mobilizations recounted in the reflections of Action Directe-member Jean-Marc Rouillan was not just access to popular music, but the validity of the subversive meanings ascribed to cultural production under capitalism. Struggling with the system’s ability to co-opt challenges to its hegemony by putting them up for sale, activists insisted that it was they, and not promoters or other financially-interested middle men, who had the right to determine the conditions under which liberatory cultural expression such as rock‘n’roll would be consumed. The insistence that music be “free” embodied a characteristic demand of the radical moment around 1968: that culture actually matter.
Transposition
A growing body of evidence points to a wide range of benefits arising from participation in group singing. Group singing requires participants to engage with each other in a simultaneous musical dialogue in a pluralistic and emergent context, creating a coherent cultural expression through the reflexive negotiation of (musical) meaning manifest in the collective power of the human voice. As such, group singing might be taken—both literally and figuratively—as a potent form of ‘healthy public’, creating an ‘ideal’ community, which participants can subsequently mobilise as a positive resource for everyday life. The experiences of a group of singers ( n = 78) who had participated in an outdoor singing project were collected and analysed using a three-layer research design consisting of: distributed data generation and interpretation, considered against comparative data from other singing groups (n= 88); a focus group workshop (n = 11); an unstructured interview (n = 2). The study confirmed an expected perception of the social bonding effect of group singing, highlighting affordances for interpersonal attunement and attachment alongside a powerful individual sense of feeling ‘uplifted’. This study presents a novel perspective on group singing, highlighting the importance of participant experience as a means of understanding music as a holistic and complex adaptive system. It validates findings about group singing from previous studies—in particular the stability of the social bonding effect as a less variant characteristic in the face of environmental and other situational influences, alongside its capacity for mental health recovery. It establishes a subjective sociocultural and musical understanding of group singing, by expanding on these findings to centralise the importance of individual experience, and the consciousness of that experience as descriptive and reflective self-awareness. The ways in which participants describe and discuss their experiences of group singing and its benefits points to a complex interdependence between a number of musical, neurobiological and psychosocial mechanisms, which might be independently and objectively analysed. An emerging theory is that at least some of the potency of group singing is as a resource where people can rehearse and perform ‘healthy’ relationships, further emphasising its potential as a resource for healthy publics.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
This short commentary reflects on Luis Velasco-Pufleau’s interview with Jean-Marc Rouillan. Picking up on the connections made between musical practice and political struggle, it locates Rouillan’s life and thoughts in relation to punk and the subversive charge more general to rock‘n’roll. By so doing, questions of freedom, action and commodification are considered, relating how cultural revolution may feed into political insurrection.
Transposition
Participatory music engagement has the capacity to support well-being. Yet, there is little research that has scrutinized the processes through which music has an effect. In this meta-ethnography [PROSPERO CRD42019130164], we conducted a systematic search of 19 electronic databases and a critical appraisal to identify 46 qualitative studies reporting on participants’ subjective views of how participatory music engagement supports their mental well-being. Synthesis of first-order and second-order interpretations using thematic coding resulted in four third-order pathways that account for how participatory music engagement supports mental well-being: managing and expressing emotions, facilitating self-development, providing respite, and facilitating connections. Our interpretation suggests that people benefit from participatory music engagement by engaging with specific and multiple processes that meet their individual needs and circumstances. These findings inform research directions within the field of music and well-being, as well as guiding the development and delivery of future music interventions.
Qualitative Health Research
Over the last six years I have worked in music and inclusion as a researcher, practitioner and coordinator. This work has been embedded in a variety of settings: in community music, disability arts, youth work, education, professional arts and academia. I have been involved in the social act of connecting people across differences in disabilities and health statuses, generations, social backgrounds and ethnicities. In each case, an ethos of inclusivity was adopted and every single person’s participation was desired. Some of these activities have been labelled ‘inclusive’ and some not, some have been more successful at bridging across differences between participants and others less so. In each case, musical activity has been used as a resource around which people are brought together, to share in time, space and the act of musicking.
Music and Arts in Action
This is a book about peacebuilding. Given that we will be considering throughout the possibility, processes and practices of peacebuilding, it is perhaps most appropriate to begin at the end, that is, with some consideration of the end of the peacebuilder’s labours. How is peace to be understood?
Peacebuilding and the Arts
Music and Arts in Action
Listening can become a tool for exploration of, engagement with and sensorial knowledge of the world. Music can be a device for projecting, framing and preparing for confrontation with the enemy. How can the study of sound and music help us to understand collective violence and war? How can the study of war and collective violence help us to understand the importance of musical practices and listening for human beings? This special issue of Transposition explores these questions through an analysis of the links between sound, music and violence.
Transposition
In December 2016, the Gambia appeared on the brink of violent conflict when Yahya Jammeh, the country’s dictator of 22 years, refused to concede defeat in the presidential election. This article investigates the way griot performers responded to the Gambia’s political crisis, using the platform of the popular kora mbalax style as a medium for political engagement and conflict resolution. It shows that performers’ responses to the Gambia’s political crisis drew on longstanding practices of conflict mediation while also demonstrating creativity and flexibility in engaging with social media and more direct forms of political critique.
Ethnomusicology Forum
This article addresses the possibility that Western classical music might be used as a source of hope for a post-conflict future by considering a literary depiction of music and conflict resolution. As a case study, Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo is identified as a “musico-literary novel,” and established within the framework of Stephen Benson’s “literary music” and Hazel Smith’s methodological development of musicoliterary studies through extended interdisciplinarity. The novel features three Sarajevan citizens who hear a cellist play in the rubble-strewn streets, and their music-listening experiences motivate them to work toward a post-conflict future. To consider the potential insights and blind spots surrounding ideas about music’s potential power in this narrative, the soundscape of the novel is identified to establish the significance of sound, music, and active listening in the text; parallels are highlighted between the ending of The Cellist of Sarajevo and Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, revealing music as an active moral force; and similarities between Galloway’s novel and Craig Robertson’s “Music and conflict transformation in Bosnia” are illustrated, demonstrating how interdisciplinary analysis of a musico-literary novel can offer a valid contribution to discussions surrounding the use of music to exit violence.
Violence: An International Journal
International Journal of Community Music
Transposition
Music Downtown Eastside explores how human rights are at play in the popular music practices of homeless and street-involved people who feel that music is one of the rare things that cannot be taken away of them. It draws on two decades of ethnographic research in one of Canada’s poorest urban neighborhoods, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Klisala Harrison takes the reader into popular music jams and therapy sessions offered to the poorest of the poor in churches, community centers and health organizations. There she analyzes the capabilities music-making develops, and how human rights are respected, promoted, threatened, or violated in those musical moments. When doing so, she also offers new and detailed insights on the relationships between music and poverty, a type of social deprivation that diminishes people’s human capabilities and rights. The book contributes to the human rights literature by examining critically how human rights can be strengthened in cultural practices. Harrison’s study demonstrates that capabilities and human rights are interrelated. Developing capabilities can be a way to strengthen human rights.
Music Saved Them, They Say: Social Impacts of Music-Making and Learning in Kinshasa (DR Congo) explores the role music-making has played in community projects run for young people in the poverty-stricken and often violent surroundings of Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The musicians described here – former gang members and so-called "witch children" living on the streets – believe music was vital in (re)constructing their lives. Based on fieldwork carried out over the course of three-and-a-half years of research, the study synthesizes interviews, focus group sessions, and participant observation to contextualize this complicated cultural and social environment. Inspired by those who have been "saved by music", Music Saved Them, They Say seeks to understand how structured musical practice and education can influence the lives of young people in such difficult living conditions, in Kinshasa and beyond.
Peacebuilding and the Arts
Yorùbá culture has music as a fundamental motivator in communal development projects, war, attendance to dispute, conventional gathering, exigent meeting, and peace maintenance and so on. Presently, attention is gradually shifting focus from the obtainable mediation and impartation of traditional music towards popular urban culture. This calls for a reevaluation in order to preserve and make the best of the embedded impact of traditional musical contents. Hence, the study sets out to identify the possible potency of Yorùbá traditional songs as a means of peace advancement and to ascertain the status of its usage for peace social stability in contemporary dispensation. Anchored on functionalism and communicative theories, the research used Yorùbá traditional song repertory, and bibliographic modes of enquiry to achieve its set goals. The result shows that Yorùbá traditional music for peace advancement is in three dimensions, namely peace conservative songs, peace recovery songs and peace conceptual songs. There are also traditional songs for ritual peace advocacy. The paper concludes that traditional repertory is convincingly potent in the maintenance of peace culture in the Yorùbá context. It facilitates communication, though it is currently being underutilized.
Port Harcourt Journal Of History & Diplomatic Studies
This article explores a religious community in Algeria where, with the ignition and structure of ritual music, a wide spectrum of trance processes are explicitly cultivated so that pain and suffering can be engaged, moved, and expressed through trance dancing. The way that trance is described in d ̄ıw ̄ an indicates that it is understood as emerging primarily from the realms of feelings, particularly the dialectical role of painful feelings. Furthermore, varieties of trance are named and indexed either by the sorts of affects they involve or as types of actions that trance feels like. Thus, rather than trance being something of the “mind” here, it is an affective experience, ordered by how it feels. This article takes a close-up, sensory ethnographic approach to flesh out the rich, detailed taxonomy of feeling intensities that are used to describe how trance feels, examining what tranced suffering does both socially and personally. [affect, body, suffering, Sufism, trance]
Ethos
After the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the post-genocide government spearheaded the creation of genocide commemorations. Over the past two decades, political elites and survivors’ organizations have gone to great lengths to institutionalize the memorialization, including creating laws to protect the memory of the genocide from denialism. Ordinary Rwandans have responded to the annual commemorations using creative means of support for and disagreement with the government’s interpretation of their shared violent past. Music has been used as citizen-driven tool to both spread and criticize genocide memorialization nationally and beyond. While scholars have explored the politicization of state-organized mechanisms such as memorials, citizen-driven creative means remain largely unexplored. Addressing this gap in Rwandan memory scholarship, I examine how Kizito Mihigo, a famous post-genocide musician, used his individual memory of surviving the genocide against the Tutsi through music to contribute and respond to the annual commemorations of the genocide. I argue that Mihigo’s story and commemoration songs were politicized from the start but were intensified when he used his music to go beyond promoting genocide commemorations to questioning the events and when he pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.
Memory Studies
This article-based doctoral thesis contributes to the multifaceted debate concerning the role of music in “development.” By development, I refer to the international aid sector and the deliberate actions of states and/or development agencies to promote equity between various localities and between social groups or classes in the Global South, previously referred to as developing or third world countries. Development studies is an academic field of its own, but it is interdisciplinary in nature, due to heterogenous understandings of what it means and what it takes to create such equity. Applying an academic lens that bridges development studies with musicological thought as well as peace studies and postcolonial theory, my work addresses questions about “arts development” versus general views on development assistance in a bid to unpack a particular asymmetry between mainstream development models and the need to strengthen—and therefore empower—the arts sector in the interests of its sustainability. There are, in fact, perpetual tensions between “two opposing professional paradigms: the largely intuitive, practice-led world of the arts and the increasingly evidence-based, bureaucratically driven approaches of international development” (Dunphy 2013: 3). This study examines how these tensions were negotiated by Concerts Norway (Rikskonsertene), a governmental music organization and key cultural partner of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, between 2000 and 2018. In this period, Norway branded itself as a pioneer and principal international funder of cultural expression as a tool for development, based on a distinct twin-track policy seeking to value the social utility of art as well as the art itself. My thesis offers an academic exploration of the ways in which three musical development projects were initiated and conducted by Concerts Norway together with local partners in Palestine, India, and Sri Lanka. The origins and development goals of these three projects differed, in the sense that they were each based on distinct geographical contexts and needs. Yet, many of the key program features were the same. This study shows how Concerts Norway and its local partners contributed to strengthening cultural infrastructure in these countries, especially in the concert, festival, and educational fields. Their collaborations furthermore facilitated the transfer of artistic and technical skills, as well as the documentation and preservation of intangible heritage. They were also deemed to be successes by external development evaluators. Yet, a close look at the operational mechanisms of these projects reveals that their framing as “development” initiatives narrowed the scope of their potential agency. The current development system, despite its good intentions, is imbued with outdated binary conceptions and inherited colonial hierarchies, in addition to a result-based management approach that does not work particularly well for the arts. I therefore argue here that the mainstreaming of these musical activities as development limited rather than enhanced their potential furtherance of equity. A central theoretical contribution of this research is a “post-development framework for music and social change”—that is, a proposal suggesting how a rethinking and restructuring of such projects might contribute to a more humane and fairer global (art) world. The framework pays particular attention to local assessments and processes of change. It urges stakeholders and artists to continuously—and reflexively—analyze their own positions, identities, attitudes, and power relations within the project’s structure, as well as its musical repertoire, teaching methods, and performance arenas. It also opens up for a wider assessment of development “results” than what is currently undertaken.
This dissertation explores the relationship between music, ethnicity, and violence in Gambella, a region in western Ethiopia that borders South Sudan. Ethnic identity in Ethiopia and South Sudan has become increasingly politicized in recent decades and is cited as a cause of protests and conflicts in both countries. The multi-ethnic region of Gambella particularly struggles with ethnic tensions and cycles of violence, especially between the two majority ethnic groups in the region, the Anywaa and Nuer. The present study focuses on these two ethnic groups, exploring how local music-making and interpretive frameworks of listening reflect, shape, and produce Anywaa and Nuer ethnicity in the context of the Ethio-South Sudanese border. As scholars now recognize, ethnicity is not a self-evident category but is socially constructed, produced in encounters with perceived Others. Ethnic differences also tend to arise under circumstances of inequality, as ethnicity is a mode of identification by which marginalized social groups can organize themselves and vie for recognition, political representation, and access to resources. Gambella is one of the most underdeveloped and neglected regions of Ethiopia, and its populations are the targets of cultural denigration in Ethiopia’s national imaginary. The marginalization of peoples has played a role in the rise of politicized ethnicity in Gambella. Cycles of state-sponsored and ethnically-based violence on both sides of the border further sharpen ethnic divisions, a heightened need to defend the ethnic Self against threatening Others. Communities on the Ethio-South Sudanese border utilize music to define a cultural identity and history, cultivate a shared ethnic consciousness, and delimit ethnic boundaries. In Ethiopia, traditional musical styles are frequently linked with ethno-cultural identities, and song lyrics overtly or covertly appeal to ethnic identification and affiliation. In Gambella and South Sudan, music-making is also inspired by experiences of ethnicized violence, as singers compose songs that recount instances of ethnic massacres, encourage ethnic cohesion based on shared experiences of trauma, and, in some cases, overtly threaten others and valorize warfare. In the face of cycles of violence, state neglect, and the pressures of globalization, ethnicity for Anywaa and Nuer has existential stakes. Music protects the ethnic Self by generating ethnic solidarity; artists furthermore garner their musical abilities to attempt to make their ethnic groups visible to governments and other constituencies that can potentially offer security and ensure their livelihood. Song is a particularly privileged medium in Gambella region: singers pointedly use their songs to teach and advise their ethnic communities, and people often listen to songs specifically for their lyrical messages. At the same time, the ambiguity of musical aesthetics opens up space for multiple interpretations and recontextualizations based on each individual’s personal history and concerns. Ethnic groups are not monoliths, and this dissertation includes many variations in musical interpretation, exploring the multi-layered and sometimes unpredictable meanings and significances of these songs and highlighting the complex and contradictory processes of making ethnicity.
A sense of belonging within social groups is determined in part by observed commonalities, but this can be self-assigned, assigned by others, unintentionally developed over generations or imposed by social hierarchies. Conflicts sometimes arise around the borders of these categories. Peacebuilding efforts sometimes find success through softening these borders to the point where conflicting social groups recognise their commonalities while respecting their differences. These social constructs are complicated by the understanding that everyone possesses simultaneous identities that can be foregrounded or backgrounded depending on life experiences, social and cultural influences and time. Due to these influences, new identities emerge throughout time and old ones may fade. In short, the concept of identity is a social construct that helps individuals and groups make sense of their world and where they feel they belong. Likewise, music is a social and cultural activity; many scholars, especially in the social sciences, claim that a sense of identity from the producer and the receiver of the music is required in order to interpret the phenomena. The experience of the phenomena, especially repeated experiences, can form, shape or alter these senses of identities. As such, it follows that music and peacebuilding can connect in and through the concept of identity.
Music and Arts in Action
In this article, I bring together research from ethnomusicology, ecology, neuroscience, ‘4E’ cognition theory and evolutionary musicology in support of the idea that musicking, human musicking in particular, can best be understood as an emergent ecological behaviour. ‘Ecological’ here is used to mean an active process of engaging with and connecting ourselves to our various environmental domains – social, physical and metaphysical – and although I will focus on musicking, these concepts may apply to other artistic behaviours as well.
idea journal
Transposition
Zimbabwe is in the grips of a socio-political crisis which is rooted in the question of the legitimacy of the ruling ZANU-PF party following several disputed national elections. In the face of this growing challenge to its reign, the country’s ruling elite has used the military to entrench itself in power. This has resulted in the breakdown of the rule of law, and allegations of abductions and torture of dissenting voices have become a common chorus. Endemic corruption has crippled the economy with the masses struggling to make ends meet. It is in this context that this article discusses the nuances of political satire, advocacy for peace and development expressed in songs from the popular Tuku music genre. I selected six songs by Oliver Mtukudzi and did a textual analysis of the lyrics to show how they are laced with implicit political protest undertones. An analysis of the themes of the selected songs reveals the underlying dissent, and advocacy for peace that characterizes Tuku music. I also interviewed music fans to solicit their opinions on the perceived political innuendos in these songs. Tuku music captures and subtly portrays these cultural experiences, at times leaving people arguing about the intended meanings. I argue that the selected songs by Oliver Mtukudzi express the experiences and challenges faced by people in a country that has been politically polarized and economically unstable.
Mankind Quarterly
Transposition
This essay explores the late engagement of music research with the long-standing yet overlooked association between music, violence and terror. In mapping this new field, it seeks to understand this latency as a disciplinary trauma. It examines music’s integral role in new technologies of terror emerging during the Cold War, the cultural biases that have turned it into an elusive means of torture, and the effects stemming from the overshadowing of its damaging potential. Focusing on the notion of witnessing, it highlights the need for more nuanced soundscapes of detention that explore the entanglement of negative and positive uses of music as they are imposed from above and reclaimed from below.
Transposition
This essay interrogates methodological, analytical and representational issues that continue to challenge scholars addressing bellicose violence: Is it ethical to write about terror, pain and despair from afar? Can sensationalism ever be justified in analyses of bellicose violence? What kind of silences might we allow for? These questions are explored in relation to necropolitical Mexico, drawing from empirical research with musicians commissioned to write narco rap, producers and consumers of rap del barrio, and hip hop artists protesting the disappearances, homicides, systematic violence and impunity enjoyed by criminal organisations and state institutions alike.
Transposition
Pau Casals (1876-1973) is well known as a cellist, but his facet as a composer is not widely known, especially the fact that he composed piano music. Taking into consideration that Casals was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, a case can be made for a reassessment of Casals’ place not only in the history of the twentieth century music but also in the struggle against totalitarianism – specifically with regard to the Spanish Civil War but also the Cold War following the new political dispensation after the Second World War. Casals saw his activities both as a composer and as a performer as a means of lobbying for world peace. My methodology will include a qualitative analysis of the biographical and cultural context; an examination of unpublished archival material and live performances of Casals’ music to present my findings and to test the experience of his music in performance. As a concert pianist, and moreover, one who shares Casals’ culture, I have a strong and appropriate interest in bringing my experience of his music into the public domain. It is through the eyes of performance-led research and autoethnography that one can fully grasp what Casals’ compositions are about; through the interpreting of Casals’ music, one becomes an ‘agent of culture’ and, consequently, one creates a dialogue between the culture at the time of Casals’ life and the culture that surrounds a performance of Casals’ works now. Casals’ music is still valid today insofar as it attempts to touch the core of our humanity.
That the global community is experiencing great upheaval and conflict is not in doubt. That nations of the world have made concerted efforts to stem rising conflicts is also not in doubt. That several hardware, war equipment and nuclear warheads have been developed, stored and deployed, in some cases, to crush rising tensions and growing conflicts is also well-known. That there is failure in the expected results from such attempts in establishing peace is unquestionable, given the continued lack of peace. With the rising devastating conflicts and fading away of global peace, security, human and material safety, the global community is challenged and constrained to seek alternative approaches to peace and stability. So far, diplomatic missions have failed to achieve the desired trust and cohesion they are meant for. Hardware deployed for suppression, forced peace and wars have also failed in the achievement of global peace. Instead, such attempts have stimulated and escalated national exclusions, displacements, cold war and real conflicts. The question remains whether peace, with its fragile nature, can be achieved by means of extreme deployment of hardware of war in human conflicts? The near impossibility of such attempts so far, recommends alternative sources of peace in consonance with the fragile nature of the peace phenomenon. Thus, this study explores peace, its fragile nature and the application and contributions of alternative soft and fragile art of music and dance in peace building across traditional and contemporary African societies and how they apply to the quest for global peace. Using the historical, descriptive and analytical designs as well as secondary sources and personal observations, the paper presents recommendations that highlight the potency of music and dance arts in global peace building.
University of Nigeria Interdisciplinary Journal of Communication Studies
To explore the meanings of ‘peacebuilding,’ this article is divided into three parts, first looking at different conceptualizations of the idea of peace. The section titled Peace is based on the observation that the kind of changes peacebuilding actors are trying to implement will depend on their definition of peace. It starts with a critique of the liberal peace and then goes back to the origins of peace studies as a field to see what founding concepts of peace might continue to hold relevance today. In the second section, Peacebuilding, I explain why I consider this word as an umbrella term that includes various activities. I also point out the similarities between my concept of peacebuilding and that of other scholars. In the third part, Sound and Proactive Peacebuilding, I propose the formulation of a specific type of peacebuilding, in order to facilitate the emergence of numerous links between music and peacebuilding. This concept includes four modes: Inner Peacebuilding, Communicative Creativity, Planetary Awareness and Preventive Peacebuilding. My goal in this article is to advance a vision of peace in which anyone can play a role, with an emphasis on the concrete actions people can take in everyday life, building peace day by day.
Music and Arts in Action
Displacement, relocation, dissociation: each of these terms elicits images of mass migration, homelessness, statelessness, or outsiderness of many kinds, too numerous to name. This book aims to create opportunities for scholars, practitioners, and silenced voices to share theories and stories of progressive and transgressive music pedagogies that challenge the ways music educators and learners think about and practice their arts relative to displacement. Displacement is defined as encompassing all those who have been forced away from their locations by political, social, economic, climate, and resource change, injustice, and insecurity. This includes: - refugees and internally displaced persons; - forced migrants; - indigenous communities who have been forced off their traditional lands; - people who have fled homes because of their gender identity and sexual orientation; - imprisoned individuals; - persons who seek refuge for reasons of domestic and social violence; - homeless persons and others who live in transient spaces; - the disabled, who are relocated involuntarily; and - the culturally dispossessed, whose languages and heritage have been taken away from them. In the context of the first ever book on displacement and music education, the authors connect displacement to what music might become to those peoples who find themselves between spaces, parted from the familiar and the familial. Through, in, and because of a variety of musical participations, they contend that displaced peoples might find comfort, inclusion, and welcome of some kinds either in making new music or remembering and reconfiguring past musical experiences.
My Body Was Left on the Street: Music Education and Displacement
In the sensitive post-genocide cultural landscape of Rwanda, this research considers the significance of the recent revival of a musical group that was first popular in the pre-genocide Habyarimana era. Orchestre Impala was perhaps the most popular musical group of the late 1970s and 1980s, and its revival represents something of a novelty in Rwanda’s national cultural politics. Perhaps, we suggest, this may reflect a certain ‘normalization’ of culture, and a sense of continuity in Rwanda. Drawing on personal contacts with musicians, supporters, and observers, we conducted informal interviews, and analysed lyrics of songs still sung, those left behind and those newly created. What emerged was a careful and conscious process of selective recovery of past songs, and the creation of new songs, unified by their association with a genre known as igisope, a term explained in the article. Song texts, translated from the Kinyarwanda, are analysed as a form of historical commentary on the times that Orchestre Impala musicians survived and now find themselves in. We found that Orchestre Impala has been revived with great caution and sensitivity for the post-genocide context in Rwanda. Its popularity draws on shared social imaginaries across generations of Rwandans, and the band’s revival seems to signal improved possibilities in future for coming to terms with Rwanda’s pre-genocide past. We tentatively propose that revival of Orchestre Impala both reflects and helps to generate elements of cultural continuity in Rwandans’ musical landscape. The demands of surviving commercially as a band, implies that political praise-songs remain part of Orchestre Impala’s song repertoire today as during the Habyarimana era.
Cultural Studies
Transposition
In this essay, I interrogate the ideas that concern music and violence which are presented by scholars in this Transposition special issue. Although each article is very different, common themes emerge. I interpolate these with reference to my own research into the sounds of music in the Gallipoli Campaign (1915-1916). Following Nikita Hock, I examine the notion of metaphor as it relates to underground hideouts in a war zone. Following Victor A. Stoichita, I look at how music affords distinctive pathways in the fulfilment of or disengagement from acts of violence. Following Sarah Kay, I examine the ways in which contrafactum helps clarify the ambivalent positionality of Allied recruits in a foreign campaign. I also refer to Kay’s notion of “extimacy” when interpreting expressionist representations of warfare in the Dardanelles.
Transposition
What makes communities ‘sound’? One key feature noted in this article is resilience, though a more extensive list of features of sound communities is also addressed. The term ‘sound communities’ is intentionally polysemous and perhaps especially for this reason demands an intensely interdisciplinary approach to its definition for use within ethnomusicology. The keyword ‘sound communities’ builds on the work of ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon (2015) and puts the discussion in a much wider context of studies of community, communities of practice and performance, ‘sound praxis’ (Araujo, 2009), applied ethnomusicologies and peacebuilding. Case studies presented in this article are largely based on applied ethnomusicology approaches.
Music and Arts in Action
Transposition
Abstract This article sets out to bring sound and music to the field of visual studies in International Relations. It argues that IR largely has approached the visual field as if it was without sound; neglecting how audial landscapes frame and direct our interpretation of moving imagery. Sound and music contribute to making imagery intelligible to us, we ‘hear the pictures’ often without noticing. The audial can for instance articulate a visual absence, or blast visual signs, bring out certain emotional stages or subjects’ inner life. Audial frames steer us in distinct directions, they can mute the cries of the wounded in war, or amplify the sounds of joy of soldiers shooting in the air. To bring the audial and the visual analytically and empirically together, the article therefore proposes four key analytical themes: 1) the audial–visual frame, 2) point of view/point of audition, 3) modes of audio-visual synchronization and 4) aesthetics moods. These are applied to a study of ‘war music videos’ in Iraq and Syria made and circulated by Shi'a militias currently fighting there. Such war music videos, it is suggested, are not just artefacts of popular culture, but have become integral parts of how warfare is practiced today, and one that is shared by soldiers in the US and Europe. War music videos are performing war, just as they shape how war is known by spectators and participants alike.
International Affairs
The word ‘space’ has gained visibility in peacebuilding literature over the last few years, especially in literature on the dynamics of local peacebuilding processes. Regarding these processes, spatial approaches have extended knowledge of the role that narratives of space play in shaping individual and collective experiences of peace. These narratives include the contested meanings attributed to local landmarks or how notions of ‘safe space’ inform the design of peace-focused activities in particular communities. Adding to the complexity of usage around the term, musical performance itself has been described as a space through which communities can imagine and enact peace. Given these multiple understandings, engaging in a sustained discussion of the word space is an opportunity to identify ideas and approaches that can bridge emerging discourses on local peacebuilding processes and their relationship to music.
Music and Arts in Action
The armed conflict in Colombia leaves many families with no other option than to be displaced, which affects their social status and identity. This article reprises a qualitative study that analyses the life histories of eight families, all of whom were victims of the armed conflict, whose children participate in the Batuta National Foundation’s ‘Music for Reconciliation’ programme. The results of the study indicate that displacement impacted identity, resulting in the unsettlement of the social place of the participants. This was due to their anonymous state on arrival at their new places, with no support networks or social recognition. Together with the distrust created by the violence experienced, this led to attitudes of isolation, through which the individual became increasingly vulnerable to the dynamics of violence. This text analyses the concept of temporary musical identity, and the results show the possibilities that collective musical spaces offer for restoring the social place of the participants.
International Journal of Community Music
Individuation is the tendency to treat targets according to their unique traits and characteristics and not their categorical memberships such as race, gender, age, etc. An individual‘s musical identity can be considered a unique trait or characteristic; therefore, the purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of melodic and labeling individuation training on young children‘s implicit and explicit outgroup biases. Forty-two young children served as participants and were assigned to one of three conditions: melodic individuation training, labeling individuation training, and mere exposure as a control condition. Pretests and immediate, intermediate, and long-term posttests were administered on the Implicit Racial Bias Test (Qian et al., 2017a, 2017b) and a sociometric explicit racial bias test. Significant differences were found between time points using IRBT test scores. Significant differences found were short-term. No significant differences were found between groups using IRBT scores. Further, no interactions between the two factors were found using IRBT scores. No significant differences were found between time points or conditions using explicit racial bias test scores. Further, no interactions between the two factors were found using explicit racial bias test scores. Descriptive analysis showed lower IRBT scores for the melodic individuation training condition than other groups at all time points following the pretest. Open-ended questions following the sociometric explicit racial bias test revealed that participants most frequently cited facial features, clothing, and fantasized scenarios as reasons why they selected targets in hypothetical relationship scenarios. The findings of this study indicate, that for this population, melodic individuation training may be an effective intervention for reducing short-term implicit racial bias scores; however, explicit racial bias may be more resistant to remediation.
Can music effect social change? This is a complex question, because both music and social change exist in multiple forms and within diverse contexts. What types of music cause social change and what kinds of social change are generated by music are questions that deserve systematic empirical investigation. Addressing these questions may have important benefits for advancing society and for revealing the important aspects of the human connection to music. Several studies have begun to explore such questions, so it is useful at this stage to pause and consider what is actually meant by social change and what are the cognitive and emotional processes that underlie musical responses and behaviour, which is the goal of this interdisciplinary review paper. Social behaviour appears in different forms (e.g., collaboration, helpfulness), and contexts (e.g., dyad, group, community). At the same time, engagement in music involves a variety of behaviours (e.g., synchronisation). In order to better understand how these different musical and social behaviours interact, and in order to produce high-quality research in this area, it is necessary to carry out more investigations of the mechanistic basis of the links between music and social change. Such a research agenda will include a thorough deconstruction of music into its essential elements and, subsequently, and may involve a reconstruction of the most socially relevant components into novel forms of music.
Music & Science
Jourdan’s “The Role of Music-Making in Peacebuilding: A Levinasian Perspective” begins by contrasting two case studies from earlier chapters, one which celebrates the transformative role of songs in peacebuilding in Northern Uganda and the other which highlights the problematic “importation of music-making in the Western classical tradition into the West Bank Palestinian territories.” Jourdan argues that music-making, especially conceived as “ethical encounter,” has the potential to contribute to peacebuilding. Drawing on the work of the French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas she explores both the limitations and the extraordinary potential of music ‘to put a world in common’, to ‘look into the face of the Other’ and build non-violent relationships that can change societies.
Peacebuilding and the Arts
The aim of this article is to consider questions, issues, and debates about music in public policy, a topic that featured in the final session of the Musics, Selves and Societies workshop at the University of Cambridge in June 2018. The first part of this article provides a backdrop by defining key terminology and describing the political environment in relation to music, specifically in the UK. It deciphers the scope of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) alongside public, professional, and charitable bodies as well as learned societies. The second part highlights three main areas of focus that were identified in the final session of the workshop: considerations about the value of music; considerations about the meaning of music; and considerations about policy-making. Each of these areas are discussed in turn before final remarks are put forward about steps for managing change.
Music & Science
This article presents findings from the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation (SLNMC, 2009-2018) launched immediately after a twenty-four year long civil war in Sri Lanka. The project responded to a stated need of rebuilding a fractured society and re-establishing relations between Sinhala and Tamil populations of the island. The SLNMC comprised school concerts and public concerts, music education, heritage documentation and digitalization, in addition to skill training for musicians and technicians, festival organizers and other actors in cultural life.
Asian-European Music Research Journal
Conflict has detrimental effects on the dynamics in a community. The purpose of this research is to investigate to which extent music as an integrated part of a community project can contribute as a unifying factor in the community. The research included an investigation of the level of social transformation that may be possible through hosting a community project and utilised Brown’s model of social enhancement. Other important matters of interest were how the music of a community project such as the Lady Grey Passion Play serves as an emotive reward enhancer, as well as a helpful tool for persuasion and manipulation. Community projects have the possibility to accommodate change regarding mutual respect, reciprocity, group forming, cohesiveness and creating positive energy. Fourteen participants, selected by means of purposive sampling because of their specific knowledge and lived experiences of the Lady Grey Passion Play, were interviewed using open-ended, non-leading questions. The data was analysed using inductive analysis. It allowed me to build and decode its subjective reality and create meaning within the social context of the Passion Play. The main findings of the study can be summarised as follows: Through the annual presentation of a community event with integrated music, unity can be nurtured, boundaries may subside with resulting higher levels of tolerance, and conflict between the members of different communities may decrease. The practical implications of this study’s findings are that beliefs, ideologies and attitudes may lead to persuasion and manipulation through music. Music has an impact on mood and behaviour, and people become inspired by listening to it. There is, therefore, a possibility that unity can be promoted in a community through the use of music in a recurring community event.
In recent years, music-based interventions have been utilised as a tool for improving public health, reducing inequalities and promoting well-being of young people. Although some researchers have begun to draw links between music-related interventions and positive health outcomes, there is little understanding as to how such effects are produced. Realist evaluations—understanding what works, for whom and under what circumstances—are a particularly apt means by which we can open this ‘black box’. In this paper, we use a realist evaluation to assess a community-based music initiative designed and implemented to support the well-being of disadvantaged young people in Scotland. In order to gain perspectives on the range of contextual characteristics, mechanisms and outcomes, we collected quantitative and qualitative data in the form of pre- and post-questionnaires, as well as conducting interviews with beneficiaries and stakeholders. Our findings show that the intervention achieved a positive impact on the self-confidence, well-being and engagement of disadvantaged young people. This impact was achieved via an approach personally tailored to the individual needs of the young people; and an organisational environment characterised by trust, whereby young people felt safe to express themselves.
Health & Social Care in the Community
Look beyond - make a difference. Experiences from a music project in Lebanon
This article provides a review of literature from a variety of disciplines on the relationship between musical practices and transitional justice in the context of violence and human rights violations. In the first part, I give an overview of selected scholarly works on transitional justice, with an emphasis on truth commissions and commemorations as catalysts for collective memory. I also touch upon the interplay between memory and reconciliation. In the second part of the paper, I focus on the literature that deals with musical practices in the context of transitional justice. Taking into account existing critiques of transitional justice mechanisms as primarily topdown approaches that often do not consider local practices of transitional justice, but also survivors’ needs and expectations, I contend that scholars of music can contribute significantly to putting more emphasis on and increasing the visibility of such local practices and survivors’ voices. By practicing ethnographic methods and sensitivity towards cultural specificities, ethnomusicologists are well equipped to contribute to a better understanding of the culture-specific ways in which people affected by violence engage with a traumatic past. I conclude with some further suggestions for addressing the relationship between music and transitional justice.
Music and Arts in Action
The alignment of researchers’ and researched communities’ values is common in music research methodologies of applied ethnomusicology, applied musicology, community music studies, music therapy and some areas of music psychology and music for health studies. Such fields focus on use-inspired research (Stokes 1997). I define value alignment as occurring when values among different research participants seem consistent, complementary or aligned. In such areas of applied and community-based music research, researcher and researched community value alignment emerges often in the context of musical interventions made in community. What are the benefits and risks of aligning one’s values as a researcher with values in a music community, within research processes? What are directions and methodologies for related future research on researcher values, researched community values and intersections between the two? I argue that a critical approach to useinspired research on music, when it comes to values, could minimize various risks and maximize benefits of value alignment. I also call for new work on value fluidity. Value fluidity refers to the intersections of values of individual human beings and institutions (organizational or otherwise social) as well as which value systems these intersections create and how those fluctuate over time.
Musiikki
The high escalation of a conflict that occurred in the Middle East became a global issue which until now still has not found a solution. This situation is also complicated by the presence of US President Donald Trump's controversial immigration policy, which targets the Middle Eastern countries. Various efforts have been made by each state to reduce tension and maintain social and political stability in each country. In the midst of the many efforts made, the Divan Orchestra, an international music organization that runs Musical Diplomacy in the conflict countries emerged as a non-state actors trying to resolve the conflict. In this study, researchers will try to discuss The Divan Orchestra diplomatic roles as a representation of the message of peace from its members. The researcher will use the concepts of Musical Diplomacy, Soft Power, and Non-State Roles as Analysis Tools. While the research method used is a Qualitative Method using Literature Study.
Jurnal Ilmiah Hubungan Internasional
Esta investigación contribuye a comprender el concepto de tejido social y su relación con el campo de la música colectiva para la construcción de paz. La investigación tuvo como objetivo identificar los aportes de los espacios musicales colectivos con víctimas del conflicto armado a la reconstrucción del tejido social de sus participantes. Específicamente se centró en el programa Música para la Reconciliación de la Fundación Nacional Batuta en Colombia. A través de la metodología de historias de vida la investigación se acercó a 17 familias participantes en los espacios de formación musical y psico-social de cuatro centros musicales diferentes del país. La investigación encuentra que el conflicto armado y los procesos de desplazamiento forzado posteriores a las vivencias violentas dejan a las familias frente a pérdidas humanas, económicas y sociales que les generan una alta desconfianza y les avocan al aislamiento. Lo anterior genera un no-lugar donde el sujeto rompe su vínculo con la sociedad. El espacio musical colectivo logra generar las condiciones para brindar a los participantes una identidad musical temporal que les devuelve su lugar social aportando al alivio emocional, la reconstrucción de sus redes y la circulación de recursos intangibles cohesionadores que permiten la confianza en sí mismo y en los demás. This research contributes to understand the concept of social fabric and its relationship with the field of collective music for the construction of peace. The research aimed to identify the contributions of the collective musical spaces with victims of the armed conflict to the reconstruction of the social fabric of its participants. Specifically, he focused on the Music for Reconciliation program of the National Batuta Foundation in Colombia. Through the methodology of life stories, the research approached 17 families participating in the musical and psycho-social training spaces of four different musical centers in the country. The investigation finds that the armed conflict and the processes of forced displacement after violent experiences leave families with human, economic and social losses that generate a high distrust and lead them to isolation. The foregoing generates a non-place where the subject breaks its link with society. The collective musical space manages to generate the conditions to provide participants with a temporary musical identity that gives them back their social place contributing to emotional relief, the reconstruction of their networks and the circulation of cohesive intangible resources that allow self-confidence and the rest.
The complexity of the Colombian conflict has multiple origins in such issues as socio-economic inequality, social injustice, the fight for land, the use of violence and dispossession as a means to obtain individual wealth. This shows how the current peace agreement will require a long and sustainable process that involves combined strategies from academia, civil society and the government that allow sustainable peace to be built across the country. Besides, following the peace agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government (post-agreement stage), strategies for reincorporating ex-combatants into civil society are crucial for the process. In fact, academic communities and Colombian society in general have known very few aspects of ex-combatants’ cultural identities, their uses of culture, the role of arts in everyday life and, especially, their artistic experience, interactions and practices. Consequently, basic elements useful for understanding the role of arts in their identities are largely unknown. This chapter aims to describe the artistic and cultural practices of ex-combatants based on a study of interviews carried out in Colombia. This text will present a literature review and the initial findings from this work. As the ex-combatants come from different cultural backgrounds, it will conclude with a reflection on arts and cultural diversity for peace building.
Arts Education and Cultural Diversity: Policies, Research, Practices and Critical Perspectives
This chapter analyzes the theoretical concept of social fabric, as well as the damage which armed conflict has caused it and how art can contribute to rebuilding it. Affective and symbolic characteristics of art, engaging the body, and the act of collective interpretation-creation may provide the conditions required for the necessary intangible and tangible factors to rebuild a social fabric damaged by war. Artistic spaces, as shown by a case in Colombia, can be an important place to generate, especially, intangible factors which keep the flow of social fabric active, such as values and beliefs, sense of community, confidence, and emotional stability of the individual and the group.
Handbook of Research on Promoting Peace Through Practice, Academia, and the Arts:
The study explores the potential of arts education to contribute to the development of intercultural competencies and the challenges and possibilities for harnessing its potential. It does so based on an analysis of the impacts of a 2-year-long arts education project implemented in schools characterized by high levels of cultural diversity in Catalonia, Spain, and a focus group discussion with the participating teachers and artists. The results suggest that arts education can contribute to enhancing cultural awareness and knowledge, improving relations among classmates, raising awareness of cultural expression as a human right and enhancing perceptions of schools as places for expression of one’s own culture. However, impacts are not automatic and arguably differ by discipline. More targeted evaluation frameworks that capture a broader range of intercultural competencies would contribute to generating better understanding on the topic. At the same time, increased opportunities for specialized training for both artists and educators could contribute to better harness the potential of arts education to contribute to the development of intercultural capacities among students from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Arts and Cultural Education in a World of Diversity: ENO Yearbook 1
There are many possible readings of a music project taking place in a territory under occupation. By paying attention to the context, values and interests of actors involved in the Music Collaboration between Palestine and Norway (2002–2017), this chapter uses Boltanski and Thévenot’s framework of justification to examine possible narratives of the project. Three main narratives stand out, namely, a civic, inspirational and (development) industry one, all of which are tightly interwoven.
Kunst og konflikt
When group identities are collectively believed in, groups tend to behave collectively (Scheitle, Corcoran and Halligan, 2018). This means that group identity can lead to group cohesion and vice versa. Music is one social activity that has the potential to strengthen this process, creating a more resilient identity for practitioners. Ultimately, however, resilience is based on what the group believes, rather than what is empirically evident and thus, it could be considered a type of fiction. According to Harari (2015), collective belief in fictions is necessary for collective cooperation beyond small, personal social groups. This article attempts to illustrate how music can afford increased resilience of group identity through the shared belief in its own agency and how music therapy might provide an even more specifically useful approach in this context.
Music and Arts in Action
Ethnomusicology
This study examined the impact of a cross-cultural musical program on young Portuguese adolescents’ national prejudice. Two-hundred and twenty-nine sixth-grade pupils who attended public schools in the area of Lisbon, Portugal, were first presented with two tasks measuring national prejudice: a trait attribution task comprising positive and negative personality traits, and an overall affective evaluation of in-group and out-group people. Half of the pupils were subsequently exposed, at school, to a six-month musical program that included Cape Verdean songs as well as Portuguese songs. The other half was exposed to the usual program, which comprised no songs from Cape Verde but included all the Portuguese songs. Measures of national prejudice taken at the end of the program showed that the impact of the program was specific. In the experimental group, prejudice towards Cape Verdean people was reduced whereas attitudes to other groups were not altered (Portuguese and Brazilian). In the control group no reduction for any group was observed. Measures taken three months later showed that the impact of the experimental program was enduring.
Psychology of Music
Occurring widely at local levels, dance is a potential asset for the peacebuilding field especially as related to positive peace. The construct of positive peace is concerned with much more than the absence of war or direct violence, encompassing quality of life as a whole. Using an artistic and qualitative methodology, the authors discuss the politics of incorporating dance in peacebuilding programs as connected to quality of life. This chapter builds its case in two main ways: first, by identifying and mapping out some key ways dance is deployed in peacebuilding contexts; and second, by more deeply exploring an empirical case focusing on the dance experiences of peacebuilders in the southern Philippines. By engaging in a discourse from both international relations and dance studies, the authors seek to bring further light to the role of dance in peacebuilding. We propose that the personal, relational, and educational benefits participants described from involvement in creative dance and movement workshops show the intersections between processes of building positive peace and quality of life.
Dance and the Quality of Life
The nine ethnomusicologists who contributed to this volume present a diverse range of views, approaches, and methodologies that address indigenous peoples, immigrants, and marginalized communities. Discussing participatory action research, social justice, empowerment, and critical race theory in relation to ethnomusicology, De-Colonization, Heritage, and Advocacy is the second of three paperback volumes derived from the original Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology. The Handbook can be understood as an applied ethnomusicology project: as a medium of getting to know the thoughts and experiences of global ethnomusicologists, of enriching general knowledge and understanding about ethnomusicologies and applied ethnomusicologies in various parts of the world, and of inspiring readers to put the accumulated knowledge, understanding, and skills into good use for the betterment of our world.
Latin American leaders frequently deploy narratives that centralize youth, and yet young people are among those most vulnerable to rights violations in the region. To address this circumstance, and help youth engage with moral deliberations, nongovernmental organizations encourage young people to partake in events and debates mediated increasingly through hip-hop—a genre that is presented as an empowering device due to its counterhegemonic origins in the United States. With youth at the forefront, organizations promote the genre through a dual process of spontaneity and institutionalized training, to encourage mediated practices of peacebuilding. Based on research conducted in Bogot ́ a between 2014 and 2016, I argue that through hip-hop interventions, young people and their organizational sponsors perform peace while (re)creating images of urban youth. [youth cultures, hip-hop, peacebuilding, Colombia]
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
In spite of a commendable proliferation of Muslim-Christian initiatives in recent years, progress has been slow. Islam and Christianity are essentially two rival belief systems each claiming doctrinal and theological superiority. Any serious dialogue that goes deeper into these issues and attempts to discover new hermeneutical bridges inevitably reaches its explanatory limit. In this article, I argue that there may perhaps be new ways to overcome this historic standstill. Borrowing from insights gained from a sociological approach to the study of religion, it becomes evident that it is necessary to distinguish between religion as a set of normative beliefs and the concrete implementation of those beliefs through religious practices. The application of theory into authentic forms of embodied religiosity is the responsibility of believers themselves. They concretize the normative prescriptions through a contextualized, local interpretation that is both pragmatic and meaningful in order to make sense of their everyday lives. To understand religion intellectually, it is necessary to consider its fundamental anthropological dimension. Hence, the study of religion must ultimately include the study of human beings in their natural context and from their point of view. Moreover, I provide evidence that true insight is contingent upon actual participation in the religious practices themselves. Building on this argument, this article suggests that Muslim-Christian relations would significantly benefit from including shared participation in sacred religious performances as part of the strategy for a successful encounter.
Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies
Peace Review
This book gathers international voices from the field of ethnomusicology discussing the socio-political relevance of the discipline. The articles draw from contemporary discourses that take into account the role of music and dance in shaping social and political realities. An important field connected to political relevance is heritage, either in connection with the UNESCO or with archives. Ontologies of indigenous groups and their relevance in knowledge production is discussed in ethnomusicology nowadays as well as the possibilities of decolonising the discipline. Two articles from ethno-choreology explore dance from the gender perspective and in the post-socialist political structures. Different approaches from applied ethnomusicology deal with social justice, participatory dialogical practice, and the socio-political relevance of performance. Forced migration is seen as comprehensive topic for future ethnomusicology. The contents of the book mirror influential discourses of ethnomusicology today that will definitely shape the future development of the discipline.
While sports and music diplomacy between North Korea and South Korea in 2018 revived hopes for peace and reconciliation, it is not so clear what impact exchanges like these have over the long term. This paper traces the historical context of inter-Korean music and sports ventures examining the motivations and reception of them in each half. It argues that sustained music and sports interactions between the Koreas have moved gradually yet decisively towards mutual accommodation. Nevertheless, there is some ambiguity regarding the simultaneous objectives of reaching out to the other side and legitimizing one's own political system.
Culture and Empathy: International Journal of Sociology, Psychology, and Cultural Studies
This report was commissioned by Musicians Without Borders (MWB) in 2019 This report considers MWB’s peacebuilding agenda and examines how, and in what ways, it accords with the perceptions, needs and expectations of beneficiaries in two project localities, namely, Soy Música in El Salvador and Palestine Community Music in the West Bank. The report responds to a call by peacebuilding researchers and practitioners for more in-depth ethnographic research to better understand the psychosocial and political complexities that characterise conflict and post-conflict environments. It draws on interviews and focus group discussions held with a range of stakeholders in both project areas to build evidence of their respective needs and perspectives, and considers this data against MWB’s Theory of Change (TOC). Results from the study indicate that MWB projects are highly attuned to local social, cultural and political conditions and experiences, as well as responsive to shifting political parameters. Projects work with an adaptive definition of ‘peace’, as situations demand, and seek to build a range of local capacities to ensure cultural sensitivity, agency and local ownership. Some structural adjustments are advised to ensure trainee support in El Salvador and to strengthen training capacity and trainee networking in the West Bank. More broadly, the report aims to contribute insight to the recurrent conceptual and methodological problems that arise in many arts-based interventions from a one-dimensional understanding of conflict dynamics, and to demonstrate how cultural programmes such as those implemented by MWB may strengthen the place of culture in low intensity conflict and post-conflict peacebuilding agendas.
What does sound, whether preserved or lost, tell us about nineteenth-century wartime? Hearing the Crimean War: Wartime Sound and the Unmaking of Sense pursues this question through the many territories affected by the Crimean War, including Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Dagestan, Chechnya, and Crimea. Examining the experience of listeners and the politics of archiving sound, it reveals the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the media through which wartime sounds became audible--or failed to do so. The volume explores the dynamics of sound both in violent encounters on the battlefield and in the experience of listeners far-removed from theaters of war, each essay interrogating the Crimean War's sonic archive in order to address a broad set of issues in musicology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, the history of the senses and sound studies.
The current study investigates the psychosocial benefits of a cross‐community, intercultural dance programme for youth in Northern Ireland. Psychological theories, including contact theory and the ecology of childhood development, underpin the study, and results are discussed in relation to the programme's aims. The present study used qualitative, inductive methods; data consisted of interviews before and after the programme with facilitators (n = 2) and 10 (n = 10) programme participants (11–15 years old) of diverse races and nationalities. Latent themes were identified using thematic analysis. Findings reveal that participants have complex senses of identity. Worryingly, they also reported many instances of bullying, relating both to themselves and others. Results reveal three main psychosocial benefits of the programme, all of which promote positive mental health in adolescents. The benefits are increased self‐confidence, the formation of new crosscommunity friendships, and improved intercultural awareness and pride. It is argued that the programme is an exemplar of how the arts can promote peace as well as resilience in the face of adversity. Recommendations for future research are included.
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology
This article explores how concepts of love, in particular compassionate love, can provide a way of promoting empathy and conciliation in intercultural community music contexts. Drawing on the work of Deborah Bird Rose and bell hooks, it considers how love is first and foremost a verb, a participatory emotion and a social practice that can both inform and underpin efforts at building connections with others through music. The article then seeks to ask two thorny and critical questions that can arise when community musicians conceptualize their intercultural music-making through the lens of love. These questions point towards the oftentimes irreconcilable complexities, cultural politics and legacies of colonization that underpin peace-building and conciliation efforts. To illustrate and unpack these ideas, the article draws on stories and experiences of a ten-year intercultural music collaboration with Warumungu and Warlpiri musicians in Central Australia.
International Journal of Community Music
Global music experts such as Campbell (Teaching music globally. Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2004) suggest a “culture-bearer” may be helpful in negotiating the challenges associated with learning and engaging with music from unfamiliar musical cultures and traditions. Burton (World musics and music education: Facing the issues. MENC, Reston, VA, pp. 161–186, 2002) describes a culture bearer as “one raised within the culture who is a recognized practitioner of the culture’s music” (p. 178). The culture bearer approach makes sense, but also raises concerns (Vaugeois in Exploring social justice: How music education might matter. Canadian Music Educators’ Association/L’Association canadienne des musiciens éducateurs, Toronto, pp. 2–22, 2009). Will the culture bearer be able to effectively communicate with the musicians, and enable them to gain meaningful understanding of the music? Is it possible for one person, in a protracted period of time, to reasonably provide adequate knowledge of an entire musical tradition, let alone adequate knowledge of the entire culture in which the musical tradition developed? An Ontario adult community choir was recently visited by a guest conductor who taught and conducted music from the African-American Gospel tradition. This qualitative case study examines the impact on choir members of working with a culture bearer (the guest conductor) on repertoire from a particular musical tradition. Of primary interest is the intercultural understanding that choir members developed through their music making and learning in this context, and how any such development of intercultural understanding was facilitated. Qualitative data were collected through a focus group discussion and interviews with the choristers, and interviews with the guest conductor and regular conductor. Grounded theory practices informed data analysis: open coding followed by axial coding of emergent themes (Strauss and Corbin in Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 1990). Two broad categories of findings are presented: the understandings that choir members gained, including musical understandings, social-historical understandings and understandings of self, and details of the culture bearer’s “cultural immersion experience” approach that helped the choir members achieve those understandings.
Arts Education and Cultural Diversity: Policies, Research, Practices and Critical Perspectives
In the phenomenon of the divided city – urban environments partitioned along ethno-religious lines as a result of war or conflict – projects seeking to bring segregated people together through community music activities face many operational and psychological obstacles. Divided cities are politically sustained, institutionally consolidated, and relentlessly territorialized by competing ethno-nationalist actors. They are highly resistant to peacebuilding efforts at the state level. This article uses an urban peacebuilding lens (peacebuilding reconceptualized at the urban scale that encompasses the spatial and social dimensions of ethno-nationalist division) to examine the work of community music projects in three divided cities. Through the examples of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, BosniaHerzegovina, the Mitrovica Rock School in Mitrovica, Kosovo, and Breaking Barriers (a pseudonym) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we consider the contextspecific practices and discourses that are deployed to navigate the local constraints on inter-communal cooperation, but that also contribute to the broader goal of building peace. We find that music-making is a promising strategy of peacebuilding at the urban scale, with both functional and symbolic contributions to make to the task of transforming an ethnoscape into a peacescape.
International Journal of Community Music
The ethics of musical repatriation become especially murky when representative members of the originating culture disagree over whether certain musical artifacts should be repatriated at all. This may be due to linkages between the artifacts and violent histories, such that the artifacts carry the risk of inducing traumatic memories and contributing to ongoing political conflict. Centering on postgenocide Rwanda, this chapter employs a series of ethnographic vignettes to illustrate these ethical tensions. In 2007, the author came into possession of songs by Simon Bikindi, which were used by government-affiliated propagandists to incite the 1994 genocide. The songs are presently de facto censored by the current regime. In carefully reintroducing the songs to genocide survivors and witnesses, the author found that many did indeed support measures to suppress them, while others expressed an earnest desire to own and listen to them again, primarily as a facilitator for therapeutically remembering and narrativizing their own experiences of terror, loss, and recovery. In conclusion, this chapter does not aim to resolve this conflict, but to present it for the purposes of reflection and dialogue.
The Oxford handbook of musical repatriation
In this paper, I discuss the recent merging of two Irish traditional performances, the house-visiting tradition of mumming and the competitive tradition of Lambeg drumming, in the Shared Education Program in Northern Ireland. While the traditional tunes and rhymes performed by the professional mummers, the Armagh Rhymers, tend to be associated with Irish Catholic culture, the Lambeg drum is typically associated with Protestantism and particularly with the private fraternal Orange Order. I use participant observation and draw on several performance studies articles to argue that the process of folklorization made it possible for the Armagh Rhymers to perform in the unprecedentedly political setting of an Orange Lodge. By establishing themselves as a professional and international performance group, rather than amateur local actors as mummers traditionally are, the group was invited by the county council to take part in its initiative of developing children’s crosscommunity education with a focus on honoring Orange Order heritage. The emphasis on Orange heritage in this year’s project encouraged the Portadown Orange Lodge to open their doors to the Armagh Rhymers and Lambeg drum educator, Billy Hill to engage children of local Catholic and Protestant schools in 6 weeks of ritual drama involving the Lambeg drum. I draw on studies that discuss narrative in ritual drama and mythic storytelling, as well as in soothing social tensions in a political context. I examine the formal similarities in the rhyming and drumming traditions, and consider the project’s effectiveness in building friendly relations between the children, adults, and communities involved.
International Journal of Social Policy and Education
Peace Review
The purpose of this thesis was to examine the work of two Israeli ensembles that bring diverse musicians together through music and dialogue. Dialogue is a key tool for transforming conflict and building peace that hinges on critical, empathetic listening.1 Music ensembles, with their opportunities for participants to practice listening, are contexts in which participants and instructors can learn how to communicate and engage in dialogue to improve interpersonal relationships in pursuit of peace. The Polyphony Foundation and the Jerusalem Youth Chorus bring Arab and Jewish youth together in Israel to make music and practice dialogue. This thesis examines the techniques, programs, structures, and missions of these groups to illustrate how they use music and dialogue to promote understanding and empathy. Qualitative data from interviews conducted with members of both the Polyphony Foundation and the Jerusalem Youth Chorus are presented within a peacebuilding framework. Key findings from the literature review and field research speak to dialogue and empathy as existing at the heart of conflict transformation and the ways in which they may be enhanced through music-making. Application of this research can be used by ensemble directors to incorporate dialogue, listening, and empathy to the ensemble classroom. Implementation of these principles into higher education curricula may also follow the growth-trend of literature on music and conflict transformation. Both of these areas of application can equip musicians and leaders to create ways of using music and dialogue to transform conflict within their own lives.
The article describes 30 years of cultural activities in the field of music in Norway. From a small start multicultural music programs and intercultural communication has become a significant factor in the music field in Norway. The activities have also been of interest for several countries in Africa, Asia, South America and Middle East, which has led to several long-term music cooperation programs with Norway, as a part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ` Development Aid Program. Children and youth have been a major target group, and the schools have been an important arena to show the power of music as an agent of change.
Journal of Urban Culture Research
This article considers ways in which music can contribute to the development of social synchrony in situations of social uncertainty generated by global conflict and widespread population movements. Noting Lederach’s view that conflict resolution has an aesthetic and creative dimension, music can be seen to form a dialogic space in which shared meanings can be co-created and through which multiple and sometimes conflictual viewpoints can be expressed in order to facilitate peacebuilding. At the same time, the dialogic spaces entailed in musical interactions can promote empathy, whether these are initiated by individuals in naturally occurring social settings or on a larger scale by institutions committed to developing social inclusion or promoting conciliation. In exploring these issues, I draw on my current research involving newly arrived forced and voluntary migrant children and young people in Australia, in addition to research from the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, evolutionary musicology, psychology, refugee studies and peace studies.
International Journal of Community Music
Can music development programs such as large-scale public festivals help to repair the sociocultural divisions wrought by war and violent conflict? If so, under what facilitating conditions? This chapter engages with these questions, presenting research into the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation, a partnership between Sri Lankan development NGO Sevalanka Foundation and Concerts Norway, the Norwegian state concerts agency that was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2018.
Kunst og konflikt: Teater, visuell kunst og musikk i kontekst
Peace Review
This book is the first in the field to explore the use of music in negotiation, conflict resolution and leadership development. Presenting grounded empirical data, it examines how adopting an ensemble approach to negotiation and problem-solving might assist in shifting adversarial combative and competitive frames towards a collaborative mindset. The book introduces a music-based cognitive metaphor and music-based pedagogy into the study of negotiation and problem-solving, considering the impact of arts-based learning strategies on the theory and practice of dispute resolution and enriching readers’ understanding of the design and implementation of such strategies. Specifically focused upon the rise of arts-based learning in professional business management education and training, this book explores the need for foundational change in conflict culture and leadership development, and how we might achieve it.
Music is not innocent. It often embodies many people’s hopes for peace in the aftermath of war, violence, and mass atrocities. And yet, already more than four decades ago, Jacques Attali warned us in Noise: a Political Economy of Music, that music may be as much connected with dissonance and violence, as it is with peace and social harmony. Attali’s study warrants a closer reading as he anticipated later critiques of a rather naïve belief in “music and peacebuilding” as somehow a natural paring or a means of social healing. Ambivalence regarding musical connections with violent and peaceful forms of social action and change, is now widely acknowledged both by practitioners and researchers, and those who combine both hats. Although human beings have played music for a very long time to promote peaceful outcomes (perhaps even before they could talk), they can use the same sounds, tones, and rhythms to stir up emotions that promote violence and send humans, and mainly men, into battle. Those of us who may advocate and research musical experiences as means of promoting well-being, common understandings, and peace, have to grapple with the “other side” of music’s power to move us—the “flip side” of music’s power to heal is its association with tendencies to incite violence and victimization.
Peace Review
This article analyses the function music has played in the construction of identities in Mali, arguing that these constructions have directly impacted the process of national cohesion since independence in 1960. The link between this idea and the implications of the 2012 crisis - involving the prohibition of music under Shari’a law - will then be explored. The absence of music, a crucial mechanism for social cohesion, contributed to the complete breakdown of social relations and brought into question the concept of a “Malian” identity. Therefore, amidst ongoing Islamist activity, music’s ability to reconstruct national cohesion has been impaired.
Contemporary Voices: St Andrews Journal of International Relations
Building Open Infrastructure at CUNY
Peace Review
International Journal of Community Music
Members of societies in conflict hold stable positive and negative views, and emotions of the in‐group and out‐group, respectively. Music is a potent tool to express and evoke emotions. It is a social product created within a social and political context, reflecting, and commenting it. Protest songs aim to change views and attitudes toward ongoing conflicts. Their message may be expressed positively (pro‐peace songs) or negatively (anti‐war songs). Previous research has shown that evoking emotions such as guilt toward the in‐group or empathy toward the out‐group may influence attitudes toward reconciliation. The present research, conducted in Israel, presents three studies investigating whether emotions evoked by positive or negative protest songs may influence in‐group members' guilt toward the in‐group (Israeli Jews) and empathy toward the out‐group (Palestinians). Studies 1 and 2 show that negative emotions evoked by negative protests songs predicted both empathy and guilt when the out‐group is considered as a whole (Study 1) or as a particular individual (Study 2). Study 2 in addition showed that empathy predicts an altruistic decision regarding an out‐group member. Emotions evoked by lyrics alone (Study 3) did not contribute to explained variance in either guilt or empathy, nor the altruistic decision. Results suggest that negative emotions expressed by negative protest songs, focused on the in‐group, are more effective in influencing attitudes toward out‐groups. Results are discussed in the context of group emotions in conflict and the role of protest songs in intergroup relations.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
The seven ethnomusicologists who contributed to this volume discuss the role and impact of applied ethnomusicology in a variety of public and private sectors, including the commercial music industry, archives and collections, public folklore programs, and music education programs at public schools. Public Ethnomusicology, Education, Archives, and Commerce is the third of three paperback volumes derived from the original Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology. The Handbook can be understood as an applied ethnomusicology project: as a medium of getting to know the thoughts and experiences of global ethnomusicologists, of enriching general knowledge and understanding about ethnomusicologies and applied ethnomusicologies in various parts of the world, and of inspiring readers to put the accumulated knowledge, understanding, and skills into good use for the betterment of our world.
Peace Review
In this article, we examine the contribution of a distinctive participatory intervention, the Brighton-based New Note Orchestra (NNO), to our understanding of the sources of subjective wellbeing for people who are dealing with addiction. The focus of the article is upon Solace, a performance piece generated through collaborative improvisation by NNO and presented at several public venues from December 2017 to March 2018.
Contemporary Music Review
This article explores how singing and ritual can constitute justice. Specifically, I look at how Arsi Oromo women in Ethiopia use ateetee, a sung indigenous women’s dispute resolution process, to protect, defend, promote, and assert their rights. I use thick descriptive ethnography, narratives, and experiences from fieldwork, musico-poetic analyses, and the voices of Arsi Oromo community members to explore how the sung ateetee ritual is a necessary and effective means for Arsi women to claim their rights in rapidly changing social environments.
Ethnomusicology
Music in “refugee camps” is commonly understood as ancillary to the more pressing issues of food, shelter, and healthcare. With a different ear, one can hear how songs and dances provide people with important ways of thinking, communicating, and feeling in places rife with precarity and inequality. In this dissertation, I examine the ways music, dance, and ritual intersect with subject formation and humanitarian politics through critical analysis informed by the histories and social life of the Kakuma Refugee Camp in East Africa. My analysis stems from eleven months of politically engaged ethnomusicological research conducted over two visits between 2013 and 2015. Guided in part by logics and sentiments of care, the United Nations refugee agency and their contracted agencies supported cultural engagements through funding and organizing public festivals and local music projects. More than just a site of altruism, however, Kakuma’s inhabitants enacted their social practices within a context of extreme social control beset with nightly curfews, cultural bans, and restrictions on movement and employment. Through delving into the musical experiences of hip hop artists, Dinka pastoralists, and religious congregations, my findings demonstrate the various ways Kakuma’s social actors used creative expressions to make claims to citizenship rights and related practices in a place where state and humanitarian forces impinged upon basic civil liberties. Some may view refugees and asylum seekers as individuals stripped of all political rights once they enter a “refugee camp.” Contrastingly, this study demonstrates that Kakuma’s inhabitants drew on a far-ranging array of cultural expressions to legitimize their needs and demands for citizenly rights and recognition amidst their subjection to wider disciplinary social forces. Through examining a range of sonic practices, this dissertation challenges and reimagines reductive and dichotomous distinctions between refugees and citizens.