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This article suggests that the growing literature on sonic warfare has not been as sensitive to the work of law and legal institutions as it might be, and that it is exemplary in this respect of a lot of work in sound studies more generally. Just as jurisprudence must learn to think sonically, sound studies must endeavour to listen jurisprudentially. Across a series of examples – some well-known, others less so – the article draws out some key elements of the jurisprudence of weaponised sound. It shows how law is necessarily implicated in the story of sonic warfare, and not just insofar as it is prohibitive or emancipatory. Law doesn’t simply oppose violence; it authorises and channels it, and increasingly towards the acoustic. In this respect, it is doing more than just expressing or clearing a path for the expression of other forms of power. Law itself is a form of power that, by means of complex institutional architectures across multiple jurisdictions, crucially shapes our sonic worlds.
Sound Studies
There is a strong connection between creative arts and building capacity for peaceful transformation of entrenched conflict. While governments, warlords, militias and bureaucrats may control or dominate the overt peacebuilding process, artists of all disciplines work behind the scenes, in communities, cultural centers, refugee camps and war zones, building resiliency and peace from the personal level. This project explores how the creative arts stimulate and support peacebuilding: the nature and definition of peace itself, and the aspects of creative arts that render them powerful in the role of peacebuilding. The substance of this project is an extensive literature review, to better illuminate both the current understandings of peace from social psychology, and the literature on creative arts applications and projects for building peace. By obtaining the views and experiences of a selection of identified creative arts groups working in the field, synergies and shared experiences are identified in more clearly defining the role of the creative arts in building peace. The driving question of the project is in what ways do hands-on, participative creative arts projects support peace building? Keywords: peace, peacebuilding, creativity, creative arts, art, transformation, conflict, participation, shift, resilience
Two musical moments on the edge: At a black site in Thailand, Abu Zubaydah, the first high-v alue detainee in the “Global War on Terror,” is placed inside a confinement box less than three feet square. All the while, music—from death metal to Barney the Purple Dinosaur’s “I Love You”—blasts unpredictably, unrelentingly. Not only in the box but day and night Zubaydah was subjected to a musical assault that was inescapable, nailing him to an existential hell with no future, no past. Ama, an elderly fishmonger, regularly gets possessed by the mother of a pantheon of deities from northern Ghana. At shrine celebrations, she is no longer herself but a dancing god being praised by drum and song. As long as the mother is there, Ama is away. One musical experience is the ontological inversion of the other. For the Brekete shrines of the Guinea Coast, musical experiences are energy producing, life affirming, a being-with-others through the sacrifice of the one possessed. In detention cells, whether in Thailand or in Guantánamo Bay, they are life diminishing, isolating, sacrificial, though not a sacrifice of the sacred kind. American torture and African trance, as delimited here, meet at the boundaries of musical experience and in so doing refract each other in a mirrored play, a ring dance of being-there and being-a way. What follows is a talk of extremes, of musical experience at the margins, on the edge, limit experiences where selves are torn asunder and thrust into musical existences not of their own making.
Ethnomusicology
This paper addresses some of the major issues of Peace Education in schools and relates music and music education to this field of knowledge. Music can be a tool to contribute to building peace. Throughout history, music and musical practices have been used to enhance relationships; learning and sharing music has been used to transform realities in diverse ways. In this regard, the paper aims to review major concerns of Peace Education in relation to music in schools, to encourage teachers to promote musical practices aimed at transforming societies and to offer examples of different projects that have made use of music education to contribute to peacebuilding.
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
Under the name Stregoni, Gianluca Taraborelli and Marco Bernacchia have been organising workshop-concerts involving more than two thousand economic migrants, asylum seekers and refugees (from Africa, Syria, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent) who are hosted in reception centres and camps. This non-institutional project explores a way to promote intercultural integration through the practice of improvised music in Italy and Europe. Sampling the music that refugee and asylum seekers usually listen to on their smartphones, the two Italian musicians create soundscapes to improvise together in a concert. Stregoni represents an attempt to understand what is happening within and outside the borders of the EU, while providing an opportunity to promote communal spaces and experiences in the field of intercultural integration with the objective of letting migrants express their own ‘sonic citizenship’.
Contemporary Music Review
Music may not be an obvious area for a criminologist's attention, but there are many areas appropriate for analysis in the relationship between sound, music, rights and harm. The Use and Abuse of Music: Criminal Records explores how music is utilised to include, exclude, dominate and silence. Analysing the connection between music and crime from an expressly critical criminological perspective, the book is divided into three main parts. Firstly, focusing on the concept of 'harmful' or deviant music, genres such as UK drill music and heavy metal are examined to highlight the connections between certain genres and criminalisation. Moving away from specifics of genre, the second section considers the use of music in war and conflict. Finally, the book reflects on the censorship and silencing of subcultures and individuals through music, highlighting the inequalities surrounding who is permitted to make noise which is often exemplified by racist, sexist and prejudicial actions. This illuminating exploration of the deviant and transgressive nature of music is ideal for researchers, scholars and students working within the fields of criminology, sociology and musicology.
Let’s talk music (LTM) is a community-oriented music therapy group that was developed to enhance dialogue between Arab and Jewish students. Participants, most of whom do not have prior music skills, are involved in various music activities alongside political discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this “perspective-on-practice” article, we reflect on the roles that music has in LTM. Based on students’ written and oral feedback reports at the end of two of these groups, we found that music had six roles: to enhance musical capabilities, to express feelings, to develop togetherness, to get acquainted with “the other,” to raise political issues, and to create distraction from inconvenient (political) content. In the discussion, we compared these roles to those of music in other music therapy groups and in music for peace initiatives, and found that LTM was unique in that it uses music to raise political (conflictual) issues. Other roles that were found in LTM were found in other music therapy groups, but in LTM they had an additional cultural/political layer of meaning. For instance, music helped not only to develop togetherness or to express feelings in a social sense, but also in a political/national sense.
Nordic Journal of Music Therapy
This article examines music and music scholarship vis-a-vis research findings in addictions sciences. It explains how music is socially useful for preventing and treating addiction. Making music with others, and all of the social and cultural activities that go into doing so—musicking—can foster psychosocial integration and social cohesion, via specific cultural and musical mechanisms, and in ways that can salve addictions. Alexander’s social dislocation theory of addiction serves as the theoretical framework for the study. I draw empirical support for the discussion from my long-term ethnographic fieldwork on Indigenous addiction rehabilitation settings in Vancouver, Canada. My analysis of those settings finds that connecting socially via musicking in ways that can prevent and treat addiction happens through different ways of being, ideas and focuses of attention—such as constructs of ethnicity, around spirituality/religion, and social and political values —that are shared among musicking people and perceived via their eight senses (the auditory, visual, tactile, gustatory, olfactory, vestibular, proprioceptive, and interoceptive). This article responds to a lack of music and cultural research on the correlation between social disconnection and addiction as well as a lack of study on the social potential of musical cultures to prevent and treat addictions. The article lays groundwork for future research on the roles that musicking can play in addiction recovery.
Music & Science
The affordances of musical experience, its capacity to become our mode of being‐in‐the‐world, especially in ritual situations, can be turned against us into an aversive sonic attack that bends the social arc into a liminality without end, a time in between that goes nowhere. And when this happens, we have entered the realm of music torture, a relatively recent innovation in that dark art that was ushered into the world in full force at the beginning of the 21st century. Music became part of a regime of no‐touch torture inflicted upon detainees in the ‘global war on terror’, itself a war without end. In this article, the author argues for an ontomusicology that understands music as ritual and ritual as music – in this case, ritual that inverts Victor Turner’s notion of communitas, with all of its attendant modes of being‐with, into a solitary mode of existence with no hope of escape, a musical ritual torture, a perpetual intermezzo.
Anthropology Today
The nine ethnomusicologists who contributed to this volume, balanced in age and gender and hailing from a diverse array of countries, share the goal of stimulating further development in the field of ethnomusicology. By theorizing applied ethnomusicology, offering histories, and detailing practical examples, they explore the themes of peace and conflict studies, ecology, sustainability, and the theoretical and methodological considerations that accompany them. Theory, Method, Sustainability, and Conflict is the first of three paperback volumes derived from the original Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology, which 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.
In the Senegambia Region of West Africa, performers have long played a central role in conflict mediation. Historically, this has included both small-scale conflicts, such as those between neighbours, and larger-scale conflicts between groups. This article draws on evidence from ethnographic research with Gambian performers to explore contemporary perspectives on conflict and conciliation. I use analysis of three Mandinka-language songs relating to conflict within the family to show that performers work to promote conciliation through appeals to shared values of oneness, positive relationships and empathy. Examples include songs by hereditary professional musicians (jaloolu), a hip hop artist and female fertility society performers (kanyeleng). These songs are rooted in cultural frameworks of morality and goodness, while also reflecting gendered dynamics of risk and inequality.
International Journal of Community Music
The study aims at highlighting the relevance of Pakhtun Hujra (a sociocultural institute) with peacebuilding in Pakhtun tribal society of Pakistan. A qualitative study was conducted in District Bajaur of Pakhtun tribal areas of Pakistan. Data were collected from 50 local in hibitants of the area through indepth interviews using interview guide as a tool. Participants of the study were purposively selected based on their knowledge and experience with local peacebuilding mechanisms. It was noted that Pakhtun Hujra is one of local intuitions with peacebuilding functions. The local people call Hujra “Da Aman Kor” (The House of Peace) as it‟s a sanctuary for people in trouble. Further, Hujra also functions as a court room and parliament for the local villagers. It is concluded that Pakhtun Hujra is a peace friendly space of Pakhtun villages and is of vital importance to peacebuilding organizations. It is suggested that Hujra can be used a resource center for peacebuilding related activities by government and non-governmental organizations.
Pakistani Journal of Criminology
Peacebuilding is a contested concept. From liberal peacebuilding, to the emergence of hybridization and incorporating the local, to critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approaches, peacebuilding has increasingly become a space where competing epistemologies and ideologies converge. By examining the liberal peacebuilding model, we can explore how music programs could be incorporated into liberal peace initiatives to improve their effectiveness. Current peacebuilding practices have their roots in the liberal peace model. This approach to peace favors certain liberal ideals such as free markets, the rule of law, and democracy. Arts-based approaches to peacebuilding are a rather novel critical and emancipatory approach to peace. As such, this essay proposes a framework of music as emancipatory peacebuilding that is in response to the critiques of liberal peacebuilding. The aims of this essay are twofold: first, to describe the liberal peacebuilding model and second, to highlight the ways in which music-based programs, as a critical and emancipatory peacebuilding approach, can assist in the areas where the liberal approach falters.
Peace Review
In Croatia, campaigners for a more critical public reckoning with the memory of Croatia's 'Homeland War' (1991–5) and the national past confront embeddings of hegemonic myths of the war into everyday life. Among these are the stardom of a musician whose 'patriotic' music claims the same moral authority as the Croatian veterans' movement and whose public persona has embodied militarised masculinity since he became a wartime star. Popular music and youth engagement with it is thus among the sites where everyday understandings of peace are being contested. By exploring the audiovisual aesthetics of the song/video through which this musician re-engaged with veterans' activism in 1998, and showing that popular music spectatorship seeps into the everyday micropolitics of young people building and contesting peace, the paper argues that for critical peace and conflict studies to understand the affective politics of post-conflict masculinities, they must combine a feminist and aesthetic consciousness.
Peacebuilding
This paper discusses the link between community music improvisation and the integration of refugees, asylum seekers and local residents, and proposes a new way of thinking about priority-setting in refugee integration and rehabilitation support schemes. Drawing on observations and interviews with an integrated music group in Wales, we explore the effect of participating in structured musical activities and improvisation in weekly meetings, as well as at public performances in community arts events. We observed that embedding improvisation led to four outcomes. It (i) encouraged individual unscripted performances, instilling confidence in solo performance, (ii) gave individuals who had experienced displacement and marginalisation a chance to lead in a safe, performative space, (iii) gave other participants a chance to follow and accompany this piece instrumentally or vocally, drawing on their own cultural traditions and thus creating innovative cross-cultural pieces; and (iv) provided participants and audience members with a unique and unrepeated, uplifting experience that triggered their imaginations, and prompted questions and further discussion between participants. These findings suggest that the combination of structured musical activity and improvisation may help to foster a sense of wellbeing and social inclusion, shift power dynamics, and create a space for cross-cultural dialogue. These unique outcomes highlight how music can create a community of people from seemingly completely different locations or situations. Furthermore, the well-established Welsh choral traditions and local community arts provided a receptive environment for this diverse group of performers. Therefore, it was not just the musical activities but their connection to the wider local community arts scene that delivered these individual, collective and wider societal benefits.
Contemporary Music Review
Music listening is a ubiquitous pastime for teenagers, but when that music contains themes of extreme violence, questions arise as to who listens to this music andwhy. Here, we show that fans of violent music differ from nonfans in personality, with lower conscientiousness and agreeableness. They also have different motivations for listening to music and contrasting emotional responses to violent music, with fans reporting feelings of power and joy, and nonfans reporting feelings of tension, fear, and anger.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture
Although there has been an increase in research considering the positive effects of music with prosocial lyrics on people’s behavior, little is known about the process by which this happens or about the factors that influence the effect of listening to songs with prosocial content. This study focused on the interaction between attention level and familiarity, two factors that, to some degree, determine the effect of this kind of music. Based on the general learning model, the reciprocal feedback model of music perception, and the elaboration likelihood model, an online experiment (n = 220) was conducted to test how people listening attentively to familiar or unfamiliar music with prosocial lyrics are affected, in comparison with those listening inattentively. The results yielded a significant interaction effect between attention and familiarity on prosocial behavior, indicating that only familiar songs with prosocial lyrics affect inattentive listeners, whereas attentive listeners are affected similarly by familiar and unfamiliar songs. Effects on emotions and an indirect effect of familiarity on prosocial behavior via activated pre-knowledge and positive emotions were also found. The results are discussed regarding their role in understanding the music reception process and their meaning for listeners’ prosocial behavior.
Psychology of Music
Arts & International Affairs
In this response, I have nothing particularly critical to provide nor do I have the space to respond to all of the valid and essential questions he asks about business and peace. Those questions set the agenda for conversations that will unfold over a considerable period of time. Instead, my aim is to draw some connections between the work I and others have done in the field of business and peace and connect it to Urbain’s articulation of the issues pertaining to music and peace. Thus, in the first section, I rely on his themes in exploring music for peacebuilding and connect those themes to the research on business and peace. In Section II, I suggest a structural model that may be helpful in dealing with the inherent ambivalence of both music and business as relates to peace and squarely address how such a structure might approach normative issues. That is, given the fact that both business and music can be used for negative (violent) as well as positive (peaceful) purposes, what are the ethical norms that direct to, well, accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Finally, Section III extends some of these themes and structures in an experiment I currently am conducting with my business ethics classes where they are required to identify a piece of music that corresponds to a level of moral development as proposed by, and which I modified, by moral psychologists.
College Music Symposium
This paper considers the nature of work done in performances that seek to “create bridges” across cultures and to highlight shared heritage across political borders. What agendas are privileged, and what forms of representation are entailed? I explore these issues via case studies in musical collaboration along the “Silk Road,” the ancient trade routes brought to life in the contemporary imagination to link cultures from Europe to East Asia. I privilege the perspectives of the various actors involved, arguing that careful attention to the experiences of participants serve to texture our understanding of cultural border-crossings. Music-making, as a form of embodied practice, may serve as a way of deconstructing conventional narratives but it may also serve to uphold established hierarchies. I argue that in cross-border encounters musicians draw on diverse imaginaries—learned aesthetic norms, bodily habitus and imaginative resources—casting their collaborators as musical and social others in their efforts to make sense of what they hear.
The World of Music
While there is a bulk of studies about youth-led nonprofit organizations that advocates peacebuilding in postconflict areas, a very minimal research is available focusing on the factors that may influence their sustainability in post-external aid phase. Especially for youth-led non-profit organizations in developing and conflict-driven regions, there is a need to study their current sustainability status which will be the basis for proposing ways to enhance sustainability. Anchored on the organizational sustainability theory of Coblentz (2002) and of Hauser, Huberman, and Alford (2008), this research determines the current sustainability status of the organizations’ operations in post-external aid phase of Move This WorldPhilippines and Dire Husi Initiative, two youth-led nonprofits in Northern Mindanao. A total of 34 organizational sustainability indicators serve as basis in determining the current sustainability status of both organizations. Spiritual sustainability (89%) ranks first among the four dimensions, followed by technical sustainability (86%), then institutional sustainability (70%), and financial sustainability (38%) as the lowest. Challenges related to stakeholders, approach, and resources are identified. Especially for non-profit literature, the empirical data from this study contributes particularly on strategies of enhancing organizational sustainability of youth-led non-profit organizations from developing and conflict-driven regions.
Journal of Asian Review of Public Affairs and Policy
The Yale ISM Review
Over the years, the Music Center at the Jezreel Valley Center for the Arts has initiated many programs for peace education through music. Developing a child’s identity as an artist and a musician requires long term engagement. When children spend time making music together they have the opportunity to build a shared identity. This article presents past programs and analyzes the difficulties that occurred in their implementation. Conclusions include the need for a candid evaluation of success versus failure, and the need to better define the means and methods for each project’s implementation and evaluation.
Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online
Over the last two decades community music has grown from differing local activities into a global field of study and practice. Despite this development, the term still lacks an agreed international definition. Building on over three decades as a community musician, I will give an understanding of community music values and methods as they are practiced in Ireland, the UK and increasingly internationally. Additionally, I will link community music values and characteristics to aspects of peacebuilding, specifically initiatives that are bottom up. I will also talk about how I used these community music methods over eight years working in Northern Ireland on projects to further peacebuilding.
Music and Arts in Action
Community musical theatre projects have played important roles in engaging young people of diverse ethnicities in multicultural and religious Malaysia to cross borders, deconstruct stereotypes, appreciate differences, and build interethnic peace. This essay provides insights into the strategies and dialogic approaches employed in two such community musical theatre projects that promote peace-building in Penang. The emphasis is on the making of musical theatre through participatory research, collaboration, ensemble work, and group discussions about alternative history, social relationships and cultural change. The projects also stress partnerships with the multiethnic stakeholders, communities, traditional artists, university students, and school teachers who are involved in the projects. Equally important is the creation of a safe space for intercultural dialogue, skill training, research, and assessments to take place; this a working space that allows for free and open participation, communication, play, and creative expressions for all participants.
The Oxford Handbook of Community Music
The following capstone literature review explores music therapy (and allied creative arts therapies) and their impact within the realm of conflict zones and conflict transformation. It defines the traditional approaches music therapy has taken with conflict survivors as well as makes a case for a movement towards community music therapy frameworks rather than consensus model individual therapy models. Delving into the history of critical theory and the impact of critical psychology and liberation psychology, the literature review advocates for incorporation of critical theory into more music therapy education programs. This is identified as a means to facilitate more culturally reflexive anti-oppressive practices by Western music therapists working with non-Western clients.
Dialogue used within music in peacebuilding includes social, musical, and educational processes of rehumanisation, while also disrupting oppressive knowledge that has been learned and preserved through structural violence, cultural violence (Galtung, 1990), and conflict. According to educational philosopher Paulo Freire, dialogue is an ‘act of creation’ (2000) through which individuals raise their critical consciousness in order to name their world. Developing this praxis requires dialogical musical spaces and ‘communicative creativity’ (Urbain, 2016), within which to explore and reflect upon values, narratives, realities, and power dynamics, to build more inclusive and equalizing communities, and potentially a just peace.
Music and Arts in Action
Throughout the world, violent conflicts negatively impact economies, cultural practices, and the social relations within societies. Focusing on a case study of a cooperative national and community effort that highlights musical and traditional cultural practices, this dissertation explores programs aimed at peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. The AfroCaribbean town of Libertad, Colombia, suffered violent ruptures during a rightwing paramilitary occupation between 1996 and 2004. In 2007, the Colombian national government began working with community members to implement a Collective Reparation Plan to assist in rebuilding the community and its social fabric. Based on local beliefs that cultural and artistic practices play key roles creating frameworks for collective action and community-building, they designed projects to revive traditional musics and cultural expressions as well as to create new works that resonate more directly with the youth. The revival of traditional funerary wake games and the construction of the musical genre bullenrap—a fusion of hip-hop and local bullerengue—exemplify local strategies for ameliorating problems such as the loss of traditional knowledges and intergenerational tensions in creative and nonviolent ways. Liberteño artists have built frameworks for solidarity and education through participatory performances that empower community members and address local issues through empathy. Based on long-term ethnographic research, this dissertation argues that these programs have been successful because they: 1) build upon a long history of using cultural expressions to foster community solidarity and collective action; 2) foster collective initiatives of local leaders and their social capital; 3) embody the creative resilience of artists in managing local cultural resources towards social ends, and 4) maximize the participatory approach within government programs, advocating sensitivity to local needs. Contributing to the literature in ethnomusicology and peacebuilding, this dissertation offers a methodology for research and design of programs that recognize the transformative potentials of musical and cultural practices in postconflict scenarios in Colombia and around the world.
The construction, popularisation and expression of emotions play a central role in peacebuilding pursuits, as well as the international and domestic conflicts they aim to address. The discourse surrounding peacebuilding is inherently emotion-laden, depending upon notions of hope, empathy and compassion (not to mention ‘peace’ itself). Relatedly, emotions such as fear, anger, solidaristic pride and disgust circulate freely during times of conflict. Because emotions are paramount in both musical practice and peacebuilding contexts, cross-cultural projects that aim to develop (or research) emotions must be informed by the ways the conceptualisation of various emotions is often culturally and historically bound.
Music and Arts in Action
This article outlines a reconfiguration of the “network” trope as a means of conducting reflexive, applied research on society, technology, and music, towards positive social transformation, with application in post-war Liberia. In the social sciences, the mathematical concept of graph or network has provided a powerful paradigm both for scientific explanation and humanistic understanding, through social network analysis. Its application in the present article transcends these applications through a shift in emphasis, from explanation and understanding to social transformations, induced by forging new transnational networks out of the collaborative, iterative cycles of participatory action research (PAR) centered on music, digital musical production, and sociomusical relationships. These networks are designed to address what the UN has identified as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), as a means of mitigating that dehumanisation underlying all human rights abuses. Beyond explanation or understanding, I emphasise PAR networks as tools and instances of social transformation, not only as means, but as ends in themselves, holding that the right sort of transnational social network—a harmoniously interacting global community—is precisely what is sought. Further, whereas the network actor is typically either human (in social network analysis) or non-human (in much network science), I combine the two in applied research, building on Latour’s “Actor Network Theory” (ANT) in two respects. First, beyond joining the human and nonhuman I consider also their double intersection: the expressive arts (including music) as the human nonhuman; and dehumanisation as the nonhuman human. Second, I extend such constructivism to transformative participatory action research. The chapter charts the iterative formation of a transnational PAR actor-network, including Liberian refugee musicians, academics, students, and producers, constituting both method and objective for applied ethnomusicology. I identify the digital song (manifesting in multiple remixes) as flexible mediator, its potential remixes enhancing connectivity, forging harmoniously interacting transna tional actor-networks via people, technology, and music. Such networks not only facilitate a better world, they embody it.
The World of Music
During the summer of 2017, a musically and culturally diverse group of fifteen young musicians from Haifa, Israel, and fifteen from Weimar, Germany, came together for ten days in each city to form the “Caravan Orchestra,” a new ensemble that sought to reopen lost musical connections between cognate Jewish, Arabic, and European repertories. Seeking to explore an “often-overlooked historical, transnational cultural matrix” rooted in the long arc of the Ottoman empire, the Caravan project proved to be a wider voyage of discovery, in which a large group of stakeholders from two countries—ethnomusicologists, musicians, students, funders and institutions—explored what such a conversation might entail. Like many intensive musical projects, the Caravan Orchestra was a transformative experience for many of those involved, marked by the exhilaration of producing good music on a concert stage and validated by audience applause, dancing and ovations. Yet beyond aesthetic satisfaction, what kind of insights can such a project offer into the “disrupted musical histories” that it seeks to explore? In this article, I explore this question via three elements of the Caravan experience: musicianship, repertory, and identities.
The World of Music
Harmony’s semantic links across music and the social domain mean that when evoked in the context of music in peacebuilding, harmony provides both a description of musical action, and an aspirational projection of the desired social outcome. However, in both domains, harmony’s foundational values and implied practices raise questions of how apt it is as a representation, tool, or goal of contemporary peacebuilding. This article seeks to answer these questions. Conceptual in scope, it examines the multiple concepts attached to harmony in the musical and sociocultural domains, and discusses these in relation to peacebuilding, illustrating some of the possible alignments and alliances with examples of cross-community music projects. It offers a heuristic for considering harmony and its values, practices, affordances, and implications from a more critical and nuanced perspective.
Music and Arts in Action
The article begins by making explicit its disciplinary standpoint. Research on music in indigenous settings occurs in both ethnomusicology and indigenous studies, but each of these disciplines brings somewhat contrasting expectations to the fore. I then focus on definitions and usages of indigeneity, which are complex, and sometimes apparently contradictory, when viewed from a global perspective. The complexities that emerge from this discussion underpin the main body of the article, which is a consideration of cross-sections of research on musical appropriation and musical enculturation in and around indigenous contexts worldwide. Each case provides an opportunity to touch on concrete practices that music researchers have developed in working to create an environment of justice, mutual respect and equality, which I see as a necessary foundation for peaceful co-existence. Finally, in the Conclusion, I raise two further spaces where the professional music researcher can make distinct contributions to the establishment or maintenance of an environment characterised by greater respect for the world’s indigenous peoples and by inclusive engagement with indigenous music.
Music and Arts in Action
This volume explores the interrelation of international relations, music, and diplomacy from a multidisciplinary perspective. Throughout history, diplomats have gathered for musical events, and musicians have served as national representatives. Whatever political unit is under consideration (city-states, empires, nation-states), music has proven to be a component of diplomacy, its ceremonies, and its strategies. Following the recent acoustic turn in IR theory, the authors explore the notion of “musical diplomacies” and ask whether and how it differs from other types of cultural diplomacy. Accordingly, sounds and voices are dealt with in acoustic terms but are not restricted to music per se, also taking into consideration the voices (speech) of musicians in the international arena.
Music and Arts in Action
the world of music (new series)
Make Arts for a Better Life: A Guide for Working with Communities provides a groundbreaking model for arts advocacy. Drawing upon methods and theories from disciplines such as ethnomusicology, anthropology, folklore, community development, and communication studies, the Guide presents an in-depth approach to researching artistic practices within communities and to developing arts-based projects that address locally defined needs. Through clear methodology, case studies from around the world, and sample activities, the Guide helps move readers from arts research to project development to project evaluation. It addresses diverse arts: music, drama, dance, oral verbal arts, and visual arts. Also featured are critical reflections on the concept of a “better life” and ethical issues in arts advocacy. The Guide is aimed at a broad audience including both scholars and public sector workers. Appendices and an accompanying website offer methodology “cheat sheets,” sample research documents, and specific suggestions for educators, researchers, and project leaders.
Around the middle of the 1970s some musicians and music educators living in the Norwegian capital of Oslo met to discuss ways to create better harmony between the nature and extent of music activities in the capital and the increasing cultural complexity of its population caused by a sharp increase in immigration. This gave rise to the founding of the Intermusic Center, a pioneer organization working towards bringing the population at large into living contact with the rich cultural heritage of the variegated immigrant population. The competence earned through this pioneering work was later to form the professional basis for launching the first official research undertaking evaluating the potential of a large scale school music program based on these resources. It was launched for the purpose of promoting better social relations among students in city public schools with differing populations of immigrant students. The paper attempts to discuss the methodical issues connected with an evaluative research program of this nature as well as those connected with practical teaching. An historical overview of institutionalized multicultural music teaching in Norway precedes a description of The Resonant Community project itself and is followed by an evaluative description of results and aftereffects. A concluding section discusses the future of multicultural education in Europe on the backdrop of the economic downturn and extremist actions.
Journal of Urban Culture Research
Arts & International Affairs
Music in relation to peace and conflict, whether constructive or destructive, has had deep and profound effects that unite people based on commonality and shared interest. The IsraeliPalestinian conflict is no different when it comes to these two dichotomies. There are those who use music for protest to either escalate conflict or use it as a social and political platform. Then, there are those who use music for resolving their differences, to promote peacemaking and peacebuilding, further unifying and embracing the diversity that’s between them. The ethnographic approach that I took in this research gives insight and a perspective to those who may dismiss the ethnomusicological aspect to this topic of study. Understanding how music speaks in the context of a culture can also give insight to understanding a people. Once we gain this understanding, then we know how to approach them. Additionally, through my exploration of the construct of modern identity, I examine musical identity and how both can affect each other. Moving through these identities and addressing them can bridge the interethnic gap. The applied methods and theories behind such movements, as peacemaking and music, is what I have sought to explore in my research; further aiming to discover if there is anything tangible and sustainable in their attempt to build lasting relationships through music.
Music is often believed to be a universal cultural language that may bring different people together, in harmony. In this article, we review studies that examined interrelations between music and prejudice reduction during youth development. More specifically, our aim is to reflect on potential circumstances under which music listening and music making reduce cultural prejudice in childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. We argue that this research theme is important but understudied. Nonetheless, the rare published empirical studies that we found (N = 13) cover a broad repertoire of research methods and outcomes that point to pertinent research directions for cultural attitude change, intergroup processes, positive intergroup contact, and empathy. Overall, although more research is needed, these preliminary findings suggest that music may have some potential to reduce cultural prejudice during youth development.
Musicae Scientiae
Music is usually divided into two main types: liturgical music to encourage people’s faith in God and secular music for people’s entertainment, including music accompanying dance. Musicians and composers have developed their skills and musical abilities through the ages resulting in music of high quality, complexity and theoretical sophistication. Music masters of each school transmit their music heritage continuously. The growth of science and technology resulted in social change from agricultural to manufacturing economies and finally business services and music became a commodity. Businessmen produced music to suit people’s needs and tastes without awareness of musical value, good or bad. The question is “what is music for?” Music is supposed to be a beautiful object for appreciation, and should shape people’s minds and morality. Over 50 years of my experiences as a musician and teacher, I have learned that music is a good tool for breaking the ice between international colleagues and me, leading to us becoming good friends. But I still don’t know how to make friends with people who are fighting and bombarding out there, especially the weapons-makers and war-creators who are completely filled with greediness and selfishness. In term of “music as ambassador for world peace,” music itself must be good and powerful enough to reach the deepest mind of people to reduce their greediness and selfishness and help them become lovers of humanity and nature. This job cannot be accomplished by any one individual, but by composers, musicians, music educators and music education.
Academic Journal Bangkokthonburi University
This thesis will examine the peacebuilding discourse, alongside current findings in the music discourse, to determine whether the integration of music could enhance current peacebuilding practices. Music is an important albeit overlooked aspect of human development, having effects on health, communication and education. By examining peacebuilding and transformation this thesis will explore the potential contributions of music programming for peacebuilding practices. The influences of music can be found on the individual, community and international levels with varying degrees of success. There appears to be a stronger relationship between music and transformation at the individual and community level. This thesis will address the need for more research on the influence of music, to determine whether it could positively contribute to large scale peacebuilding programs. The case of El Sistema Venezuela is analyzed to determine if music can impact individuals and lead to desired social change.
This book explores the power music has to address health inequalities and the social determinants of health and wellbeing. It examines music participation as a determinant of wellbeing and as a transformative tool to impact on wider social, cultural and environmental conditions. Uniquely, in this volume health and wellbeing outcomes are conceptualised on a continuum, with potential effects identified in relation to individual participants, their communities but also society at large. While arts therapy approaches have a clear place in the text, the emphasis is on music making outside of clinical contexts and the broader roles musicians, music facilitators and educators can play in enhancing wellbeing in a range of settings beyond the therapy room. This innovative edited collection will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of music, social services, medical humanities, education and the broader health field in the social and medical sciences.
This paper addresses music’s role in social movements, using work in mediation, assemblage, and actor-network theories to address the complex, contradictory, and contentious status that music often assumes within political protest. Three premises guide the discussion. First, if music is multiply mediated, then it follows that music’s mediation of other activities (including protest) is likewise multiple. Second, this constellation of mediations may be productively conceptualised as an assemblage, with music forming part of movement-assemblages, and movements forming part of musical assemblages. Third, this mutual imbrication of musical and political assemblages—and the reversibility of positions it entails—introduces a source of potential friction. To illustrate these points, the second part of the article examines the controversies surrounding the drum circle that animated Liberty Park during the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011.
Contemporary Music Review
Music is part of every society, but it is not aesthetically isolated, being forever associated with a myriad of extra-musical parameters such as gesture, customs, settings and power relations. It has thus far been difficult for scholars to ascertain just what music accomplishes in the social world, since any analysis ends up being like analyses of other social activities. Despite this, the belief in the special status and power of music proliferates both within the professional musician classes, those who consume music and those with the means to organise social music programmes. Music strongly interacts with memory, identity, emotion and belief (Robertson, 2017), which goes some way to demonstrate how music is believed to have such power regardless of any evidence shown, and this is supported by recent neurological research (Patel, 2010). Conflict transformation, if it is to be successful, requires an understanding of the identity formation processes, since ideally a new shared identity evolving from those involved would emerge. How this process works requires an understanding of how identity belief is related to emotions and memory, and how all these affect behaviour, past, present and future. It has been suggested by a number of international mediators that music and the arts provides a metaphor or amalgam for conflict transformation, albeit in a safer environment (Lederach and Lederach, 2010, p. 206). This paper shows how two choirs, one in Sarajevo and one in London, have approached music as a metaphor for the conflict transformation process.
Music and Arts in Action
Music therapy has previously been identified as a way to foster processes of mental health recovery. However, little is known about the specific factors apparent in group singing which can promote recovery. The current project aimed to address this gap by exploring the conditional and contextual factors involved in group singing which may promote recovery for people with mental illness. Adults who were in mental health recovery were recruited from a number of different singing groups in inpatient and community mental health contexts around Melbourne, Australia. Twentythree people participated in interviews, and a grounded theory approach was adopted for analysis. The findings of this study are presented as a grounded theory of group singing which describes how participants experienced triggering encounters with music, and used the supportive conditions of the group singing context to regain a sense of health. A new term, musical recovery, was developed which depicts a process of regaining healthy relationships with music to promote mental health recovery.
Nordic Journal of Music Therapy
In this article, two musical projects organised at the beginning of the French military intervention in Mali lead me to question the politicisation of Malian musical stages that went along the start of the armed conflict in 2012. These projects allow me to consider firstly the role of musical interactions in the making of often contrasted ideals of peace and national reconciliation. Secondly, I study the backstage of the representations of peace, and the ambiguous place occupied by Tuareg musicians, considered as spokespersons of the « rebels » but also as guarantors of national cohesion. Finally, I draw on the articulation of ethnic, national and global representations to advance some considerations on the construction of contradictory identity markers that characterise the Malian nation in the midst of conflict
Politique africaine
In this article, two musical projects organised at the beginning of the French military intervention in Mali lead me to question the politicisation of Malian musical stages that went along the start of the armed conflict in 2012. These projects allow me to consider firstly the role of musical interactions in the making of often contrasted ideals of peace and national reconciliation. Secondly, I study the backstage of the representations of peace, and the ambiguous place occupied by Tuareg musicians, considered as spokespersons of the « rebels » but also as guarantors of national cohesion. Finally, I draw on the articulation of ethnic, national and global representations to advance some considerations on the construction of contradictory identity markers that characterise the Malian nation in the midst of conflict.
Politique africaine
For musicians and students of human musicking, advances in scientific and philosophical research and scholarship in recent years offer an opportunity to address some enduring questions about this universal human behavior and its role in our daily lives and the development of our species. This paper will suggest an integrated perspective on musicking, specifically by exploring and linking together insights from a range of disciplines. While ethnomusicology has demonstrated the diversity of specific functions attributed to music around the world, a meta-analysis of this work reveals a common thread across diverse cultures; we express the sense that musicking connects us to our environments – social, physical, and/or metaphysical. To explore the significance of this seemingly abstract sense, I will draw on work in neuroscience and cognition, beginning with the Santiago theory of Maturana and Varela. One of the several components of the Santiago theory important to this paper is the idea that with a sufficiently complex nervous system, we “bring forth” both inner and outer worlds, and connect them through structural coupling. Put another way, we have as a foundation a biological correlate for the discourse concerning the value of music found in cultures around the world. Musicking can be understood as essentially an emergent connective or ecological behavior, a view consonant with current work in evolutionary musicology, “4E cognition” and auditory neuroscience. In turn, this view suggests areas for further research, including the potential of musical activities aimed at improving the state of our relationships with our various environments. These might include, for example, education, peace-building, or fostering ecological awareness. The text that follows is a synopsis of the paper presented at the conference.
Proceedings of ICMPC15/ESCOM10
This article argues that when recent writers in sound studies claim primacy for nonrepresentational experiences of the sounds of military weaponry in definitions of the “ontology” of wartime sound and audition, the result is that a universalised, Western, male listener and the sounds of weaponry are positioned as the proper subject and object for writings in sound studies on war. Turning to the sonic lifeworlds of women and children (as soldiers, civilians, mothers, widows, and so on) in Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983–2009), I argue that wartime sound and audition are best described as processes that structure wartime endurance at several overlapping temporal registers, through culturally-determined ontologies of personhood, violence, sonic efficacy and sonic protection.
Sound Studies
This article examines the early stages of the development of an intercultural lullaby choir in Melbourne, Australia. The community choir emerged from an applied ethnomusicology collaboration between researchers from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne, and Victorian Cooperative on Children’s Services for Ethnic Groups (VICSEG) New Futures, a not-for-profit community organisation that provides training and support to newly arrived and recently settled migrant communities. The project’s shift from an open-ended exchange of personally meaningful lullabies to a formal ensemble will be interrogated, revealing how ethnomusicological research is defined by the relational dynamics and social arenas within which it is conducted. By way of ethnographic vignettes, this article outlines key stages of the project’s chronological development while also providing insight into participants’ experiences of the resulting musical encounters. Given this dual focus on process and outcome, ethnographic research findings are framed by theoretical work on intercultural contact zones and organised cultural encounters. Sites of intercultural encounter will be brought into view, highlighting how organisational decisions are experienced by participants in corporeal, temporal and affective ways. Like many applied ethnomusicology projects with intercultural objectives, by virtue of its institutionalisation the choir does not embody the transgressive and unexpected characteristics of sites of encounter. At the same time, the sensory embodiment of actively participating in intercultural music-making, learning and teaching manifest key components of “meaningful encounter.” In addition to exploring how participants‘ multiple social identities are constructed, legitimated and challenged in musical contact zones, this paper addresses the procedural, ethical and theoretical methodological implications that have arisen from the research.
The World of Music
The problem of peace education is in the sharp demand in the modern world. The art in general, and music in particular, have significant impact on a person and the content of his usual activities. Music, as a logical and expressive construction and a psychological phenomenon, contains possibilities for harmonization of personal, social and planetary life. Temporality of music, its actualization of the present, orientation to the eternal meanings and values, archetypeness and plasticity of the content and the ways of its perception, form the basis for understanding music as a universal communication mediator and an important factor in stabilization of contradictions and conflicts. The study demonstrates the potential of arts education to act as one of the instruments of peacebuilding at the present stage of human development.
Philosophy and Cosmology
What Politics?: Youth and Political Engagement in Africa
Music- and art-based interventions in organizations have become more common, yet to date little research-based evidence has existed to support the claims of efficacy of such approaches. This article presents a mixed methods research study that explored the effects of introducing a music-based metaphor and pedagogical approach to teaching, learning, and resolving conflict. The study provides insights into whether and how the musical ensemble metaphor might assist in shifting adversarial, combative, and competitive approaches toward more collaborative, settlement-oriented mindsets and outcomes. In addition, the study offers an understanding of whether and how music-infused pedagogy might assist in developing enhanced skills and practice behaviors that would lead to more desirable outcomes. Results from this initial study suggest that non-musicians in non-musical contexts are able to learn from musical metaphors and concepts related to ensemble music-making and that such cognitive, affective, and behavioral learning translates into changed and more effective behavior in practice. In simulated scenarios, study participants who were introduced to the musical metaphor and other music-based learning outperformed colleagues who were not exposed to similar music-based learning. Engagement with music appears to reconnect people to their creative potential and thus to lead them to see the value of employing creative thinking in professional settings that traditionally over-emphasize analytical and critical thinking. Such music-based collaborative approaches appear to have the potential to shift traditional norms and behaviors.
Journal of Business Research
The Future of Interfaith Dialogue
Social media and music are fundamental components of everyday life for today’s youth. The uses and functions of social media and music provide valuable insights for a better understanding of marginalized groups, subcultures, and gangs. Data are based on in-depth, semistructured interviews with gang members and gang affiliates in Trinidad and Tobago and combined with an analysis of social media content. The findings reveal that street gangs use music and social media to glorify gang life, to display power and send threats, to generate motivational support for criminal activities, and to bond socially and mourn collectively. In our analysis, social media, music, and music videos appear to be intimately interconnected phenomena; we thus call for a broader focus on gangs’ online behavior.
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice
This book contributes to key debates in peacebuilding by exploring the role of theatre and art in general. Premaratna argues that the dialogical and multi-voiced nature of theatre is particularly suited to assisting societies coming to terms with conflict and opening up possibilities for conversation. These are important parts of the peacebuilding process. The book engages the conceptual links between theatre and peacebuilding and then offers an in-depth empirical exploration of how three South Asian theatre groups approach peacebuilding: Jana Karaliya in Sri Lanka, Jana Sanskriti in India, and Sarwanam in Nepal. The ensuing reflections offer insights that are relevant to both students and practitioners concerned with issues of peace and conflict.
This article argues for a shift in how we relate to legal thought, practice and experience. It argues for a specifically acoustic jurisprudence, an orientation towards law attuned to questions of sound and listening. The argument is made in the abstract before moving on to an example intended to establish the political stakes of the intervention. My example is the Long Range Acoustic Device, invented at the turn of the century and used increasingly today by military and police forces as a way of amplifying the authority of the state and, in some instances, enacting serious acoustic violence.
Law, Culture and the Humanities
The task of increasing trust is central to restorative peacebuilding. Between confidence and faith, trust bridges actions, beliefs and feelings of the past, present and future. Musical interaction can help build trust between participants. This is one of the reasons musical projects can be an effective part of conflict transformation. In this contribution I consider answers to key questions about trust offered by competing universalizing theories and culturally distinct groups of people, before suggesting a broad processual definition. I also show some of the ways music making relates to trust through a consideration of musicological literature and my own research in Colombia.
Music and Arts in Action
Colombia's protracted civil war is characterized by cycles of pervasive distrust and violence. The people I work with are involved in projects across the north of the country aimed in part at breaking these cycles. In this dissertation I offer an applied ethnographic analysis of the dynamic relations between local forms of trusting, music making and (non)violence. While I recognize music's impact is sometimes minimal or negative, I focus on projects with demonstrable positive impact as part of my commitment to the struggles of my interlocutors. My account is comparative, describing individuals and groups from different towns, sub regions, and positionalities within the conflict, and engaging with similar but contrasting musical styles and projects. I show that musical practices in which participants aim to maximize the breadth of participation (the number of people engaged) tend to foster thin trusting across a broad radius of people, whereas musical practices aimed at the maximum depth of experience of a reduced number of performers tend to generate thick trusting among reduced pools of people. Peacebuilding requires both thin and thick trusting, but the latter can preclude broad organization. I consider festivalization of the musical practices I describe as a means of constructing a parallel peace. While partly successful it can reproduce in miniature some of the violences associated with clientelistic coercive trusting. I present one national project as an exemplar of best practice. The Legión del afecto works to generate an imbricated peace through radically inclusive projects in which young people practice and champion both thick and thin trusting, and peaceful living together, using a wide range of musical practices as part of an integrated, reflexive methodology. My arguments are based in, and seek to finesse, semiotic and phenomenological accounts of music as social life.
This article outlines the development of an appropriate research approach, including methods from diverse disciplines, for researching the Colombian state-funded social music programme Music for Reconciliation (Música para la Reconciliación) . After outlining the Colombian context and the literature, a pilot with ten participants is discussed. Findings show the contributions of sound postcards as part of life histories for capturing the experiences of displaced people in a country recovering from war. Their evocative capacity enriched the interviewees’ narrative, illustrating diverse sonorous landscapes throughout their lives that evidenced the changes generated by both the violence and programme participation. The conclusions offer suggestions for readers based in the arts, health, social sciences and beyond, interested in the uses of music and music education for other-than-musical purposes.
British Journal of Music Education
The article provides a critical review of a wide cross-section of ethnomusicological research into violence, conflict, and music, leading to proposal of a new model for field researchers. The article begins with a contextualization of selected analytical positions, as offered by theorists of violence and conflict. The main body of the essay then assesses notable contributions from the already substantive ethnomusicological literature on music and violence. Music is not inherently peaceful: instead, it frames and commemorates conflict, making its impacts resound. Music is put to contrasting, and even conflicting, usages by those in, or recovering from, situations of hurt, hostility, or overt conflict. The article provides examples from research carried out in many parts of the world and in the shadow of numerous types of violence, from the re-imagining of a heroic individual to the systemic antagonisms of colonization or poverty, and from the recruitment of extremists to the selfregulation of inmates. Finally, a new model for applied ethnomusicological involvement in the area is briefly presented. Its component parts – naming, witnessing, intervention, and survival – are briefly explained and discussed, showing how an ethnomusicologically trained researcher can contribute to peacebuilding via musical research, listening, and participation.
Music and Arts in Action
This article examines how some Irish republicans have used ‘rebel songs’ as a means to resist the hegemonic power of the British state, and how militant republicanism is invoked musically, through sonic and physical references to gunfire. It explores how the use of rebel songs has changed, the inherent tensions within today’s scene, and how republicans attempt to co-opt other conflicts as a means to strengthen their claim as resistance fighters. The article also analyses more nuanced resistances within the rebel music scene, exploring how competing republican factions use the same music to express opposing political positions, and why some musicians ultimately leave the scene on account of the musical and political restrictions placed upon them. In so doing, the article connects with ongoing attempts to rethink, remap, and develop new approaches to resistance within anthropology, while contributing to the developing subfield of ‘ethnomusicology in times of trouble’.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
This thesis examines what happens when the worlds and knowledges of war, international development, and music education intersect. It investigates the practices and experiences of music interventions, a term used in this thesis to describe structured programs for music learning and participation in places that have been unmade by war, taking shape within the structures and funding arrangements of largescale international aid and assistance. It explores the work of three specific music interventions—the Pavarotti Music Centre in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hadahur Music School in Timor-Leste, and the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Afghanistan—with the goal of identifying how these kinds of projects are shaped, and their potential for sustainability in a volatile and mutable environment. These case study sites offer interesting contrasts of timeframe (longevity of the music intervention and retrospective distance from the wartime experiences); scale (of ambition, funding, and external drivers); and approaches to the teaching and learning of music, in particular their efforts to regenerate local music traditions. The research was designed as an ethnographic, multi-sited, multi-case study project. Semi-structured interviews and document review were the principal data sources, offering diverse perspectives that bring both positive and critical voices of participants and local community members to the fore, alongside those of organisers and practitioners. Data were coded and analysed thematically, using grounded theory methods. As a result of this process, the thesis argues that the phenomenon of music interventions can be understood as evolving across six critical junctures—sites of negotiation between the various actors—that produce decisions and actions that critically shape each project. The critical junctures—Aims and Motivations, Buildings and Facilities, Pedagogy and Learning Materials, Organisational Culture, Internal Engagement, and External Engagement—also have implications for sustainability, as they represent points of active interface between contrasting constructs and ideals, and therefore can generate instability and conflict as well as harmony and growth. The critical junctures model offers practitioners and scholars a tool for understanding, planning, operationalising, evaluating, and handing over music interventions in waraffected contexts. It sheds light on internal practices, and helps to reveal the influence that the complex wider context can have on shaping and sustaining the music activities. The model of critical junctures for shaping and sustaining music interventions is the central theoretical contribution of this research. In addition, the thesis makes methodological, empirical, and practical contributions to what is a nascent subject of inquiry, mapping three radically different music interventions in their achievements and their missteps, and presenting empirical data from multiple perspectives. In a world that is as much at war as ever, and an aid environment that is increasingly recognising the importance of cultural development and creative expression to human development, this study has deep and immediate relevance to an audience of music and development practitioners, policy makers, and scholars in the fields of (applied) ethnomusicology, music education, community music, music sociology, music therapy, cultural development, and international development.
A contribution that music education provides society with is its making of education and culture of peace. In this paper we analyze the theoretical assumptions that research in both areas has in common nowadays. A catalog of shared categories is proposed; the development of them entails a strengthening of their transversal meanings, while describing how the convergence between the two subjects constitutes an emerging topic of research. Besides, an explanation of the political implications that are discovered in the curricular relegation that they have suffered in the last years thanks to the neoliberal policies is offered, together with a proposal of epowerment from their own resources. | Una aportación que la educación musical hace a la sociedad es su contribución a la educación y la cultura de paz. En este trabajo se analizan los presupuestos teóricos que la investigación en ambas áreas tiene en común a día de hoy y se propone un catálogo de categorías comunes cuyo desarrollo comporta un fortalecimiento de sus significados transversales, a la vez que se describe como la convergencia entre ambas constituye una línea emergente. Además, se propone una explicación de las implicaciones políticas que se descubren en la relegación curricular que han sufrido en los últimos años merced a las políticas neoliberales, y una propuesta de empoderamiento desde los propios recursos.
Revista Electrónica Complutense de Investigación en Educación Musical - RECIEM
Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art engages with a diversity of contexts, locations and arts forms – including theatre, music and fine art – and brings together theoretical, political and practice-based perspectives on the question of 'evidence' in relation to participatory arts practice in social contexts. This collection is a unique contribution to the field, focusing on one of the vital concerns for a growing and developing set of arts and research practices. It asks us to consider evidence not only in terms of methodology but also in the light of the ideological, political and pragmatic implications of that methodology. In Part One, Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe reflect on evidence and impact in the participatory arts in relation to recurring conceptual and methodological motifs. These include issues of purpose and obliquity; the relationship between evidence and knowledge; intrinsic and instrumental impacts, and the value of participatory research. Part Two explores the diversity of perspectives, contexts and methodologies in examining what it is possible to know, say and evidence about the often complex and intimate impact of participatory arts. Part Three brings together case studies in which practitioners and practice-based researchers consider the frustrations, opportunities and successes they face in addressing the challenge to produce evidence for the impact of their practice.
A Distinctive Voice in the Antipodes: Essays in Honour of Stephen A. Wild
This article explores the ways in which the relationships between music, health, wellbeing, medicine, and ethnomusicology are being researched internationally. It shows that while there is a widespread global interest among a variety of disciplines in studying these relationships, there is still an absence of disciplinary and international collaboration. This absence of collaboration, I argue, is caused by a variance between disciplines and countries in epistemologies, modes of dissemination, professional jargon, and national languages. This diversity of professional practice influences the sharing of information about music and wellbeing, often slowing down the creation of new knowledge, potentially to the detriment of those receiving musical care. Here I present the results of a short participatory action research study investigating the professional practices of ethnomusicologists, (neuro)psychologists, and music therapists researching the links between music and wellbeing. My findings are based on observations made in the United Kingdom, Austria, Finland, the United States, and Australia. I conclude by urging researchers to examine their practices and epistemologies reflexively, and not to assume other disciplines are homogenous. I also suggest that, for ethnomusicologists, grounded theory and community music therapy might be areas for future collaboration and that a proactive approach is needed to ensure knowledge about the links between music, health, and wellbeing are examined at a faster, more collaborative pace.
Journal of Folklore Research
The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure
Zimbabwe has a history of violence stretching back to the pre-colonial period. The country gained political independence in 1980 after a protracted armed war with the illegal Smith regime. The liberation movement, under whose banner independence was gained, has carried over and almost normalised the cultures of obliterating difference, muting dissent, cronyism and systematic economic marginalisation of citizens. Incidences of ethnic, religious inter- and intra-political party violence, and individualism are rife. As a result, most of the local conflicts experienced in Zimbabwe are symptomatic ‘electoral conflicts’ fuelled by political competition and polarisation, leading to economic collapse and social fragmentation (Ncube 2014, Heal Zimbabwe Trust 2015: 5). The conflicts have arguably weakened Zimbabwe’s strongest attributes and institutions, which include the church, the family unit and good-neighbourliness. This thesis aims to show how conflict transformation can be brought about in the Mkoba community, using Participatory Action Research. It engages a select group of musically gifted citizens into establishing a cosmopolitan music and dance ensemble with a view to strengthening the community’s social capital and improving the quality of life of the residents. The study therefore brings out how music and dance, and by extension participatory performing arts, can serve humanity as a platform to initiate dialogue and cooperation among conflicting residents. In addition, the study details how entertaining and interactive gatherings in broken communities have the power to heal residents psychologically, replacing pessimism and lassitude with optimism and a proactive approach. Unique to this multi-disciplinary study is its binding together of theories concerning music for social change, social entrepreneurship and asset-based community development, all of which are undergirded by conflict transformation. This ethnographic account suggests how to develop and sustain community-based organisations and/or activities using the holistic sustainability frame, which emphasizes the importance of artistic vibrancy, community relevance, capitalisation and good governance. This holistic and eclectic approach thus creates an organic platform through which the community can act for social change.
This study has been done to understand the role of music in inter-community reconciliation and to examine music as a cultural solution area between Turkish and Greek communities in Cyprus. The main focus of the study is on musical dialogues towards the reconciliation between Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities. Accordingly it touches upon the contributions of music to the reconciliation between two communities and how it is being used to create a mutual identity. Therefore, bi-communal gatherings, sense of entertainment, songs as a method of a self-expression, and instrument sessions of two communities have been reviewed in the contribution of music in the reconciliation. Although people are still researching whether music can be effective in inter-community reconciliations or not, the role it plays in reconciliations and conflict has been discussed with examples. The view of music creating conflict and reconciliation between communities has been examined under the concepts such as cultural reconciliation, cultural identity, the pragmatic use of music and multiculturalism.
Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies
Dance answers the call for creativity in peacebuilding through diverse perspectives of space, relationality, and embodied interactions. While there is growing interest in using the performing arts in peacebuilding, there remains limited theory or research regarding dance in this context. This study contributes to the scope of arts-based peacebuilding research through practice-based field research focusing on dance in peacebuilding in the Asia–Pacific region. It focuses on two island nations, the Philippines and Fiji, each with complex conflict histories, and investigates the experiences of local facilitators, participants, and the researcher as both a reflective practitioner and practitioner-researcher. The qualitative research methods employed include strategies of the reflective practitioner, participant semi-structured interviews, and sensory ethnography. This thesis argues that dance activates multiple ways to observe, create, and understand space, dialogue, and relationality. Through these embodied ways of knowing, dance contributes diverse approaches and knowledge to expand the range and diversity of peacebuilding practice and research. It first considers space from an embodied perspective and then explores dance as a form of non-verbal communication and dialogue in peacebuilding. This thesis introduces micro-storytelling and the “embodied dialogic moment” as ways dance can potentially diversify dialogic approaches and analysis. Next, dance is explored in terms of creating options for increased practitioner self-awareness and connections to quality of life and options for building relationships across difference. Last, it considers that movement activates multiple ways of understanding and that dance provides a pathway to explore and understand diverse concepts of space, including Indigenous approaches that, from a dance perspective, potentially provide new lenses in peacebuilding. These diverse and embodied ways of knowing open the possibility for further exploration of multidimensional approaches in peacebuilding while acknowledging the potential limitations and risks of using dance in peacebuilding.
Music and Empathy
Diversos estudios han puesto de manifiesto la capacidad de la práctica musical conjunta para contribuir a la construcción de espacios de paz en aquellos lugares en los que sus ciudadanos han sufrido situaciones de violencia. Sin embargo, no existe en la literatura científica un estudio de revisión que analice los impactos de este tipo de espacios musicales colectivos sobre el tejido social. Este artículo explora los efectos de experiencias con prácticas musicales colectivas en diferentes contextos con comunidades que sufren o han sufrido situaciones de conflicto armado o guerra. Con este fin, se ha realizado una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica y un análisis exhaustivo de los estudios localizados. La muestra final seleccionada comprende un total de quince estudios en los que se muestra la capacidad de los espacios musicales colectivos para servir de soporte a las personas y comunidades víctimas, tanto durante como después del conflicto.
Co-herencia
A rising number of public and nongovernmental organisation (NGO) leaders are employing the arts in efforts aimed at encouraging social change. Meanwhile, scholars have offered a number of theories concerning the character of political agency and its exercise, and contended that effective use of the arts may result in individual and group epistemic change. Far fewer analysts, however, have married such theorisations of aesthetics with empirical investigations of how professionals actually use the arts to promote such shifts. This article addresses this concern by studying the strategies adopted by two international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs), American Voices and Bond Street Theatre, that have worked to encourage peace through music and theatre-making in light of changing conceptions of agency and the power of aesthetics to stimulate its exercise. We outline the approaches these NGOs adopt to do so and the mechanisms by which their leaders believe their work catalyses changes in values at the individual and community levels. We argue that understanding these dynamics more thoroughly and in light of conceptions of agency and aesthetics leads to a stronger theorisation of whether and how arts-based peacebuilding efforts can lead to sustainable community cultural change.
Global Society
This monograph offers a unique analysis of social protest in popular music. It presents theoretical descriptions, methodological tools, and an approach that encompasses various fields of musicology, cultural studies, semiotics, discourse analysis, media studies, and political and social sciences. The author argues that protest songs should be taken as a musical genre on their own. He points out that the general approach, when discussing these songs, has been so far that of either analyzing the lyrics or the social context. For some reason, the music itself has been often overlooked. This book attempts to fill this gap. Its central thesis is that a complete overview of these repertoires demands a thorough interaction among contextual, lyrical, and musical elements together. To accomplish this, the author develops a novel model that systemizes and investigates musical repertoires. The model is then applied to four case studies, those, too, chosen among topicsthat are little (or not at all) frequented by scholars.
Often labeled "neo-Nazis" or "right-wing extremists," radical nationalists in the Nordic countries have always relied on music to voice their opposition to immigration and multiculturalism. These actors shook political establishments throughout Sweden, Denmark, and Norway during the 1980s and 1990s by rallying around white power music and skinhead subculture. But though nationalists once embraced a reputation for crude chauvinism, they are now seeking to reinvent themselves as upstanding and righteous, and they are using music to do it. Lions of the North explores this transformation of anti-immigrant activism in the Nordic countries as it manifests in thought and sound. Offering a rare ethnographic glimpse into controversial and secretive political movements, it investigates changes in the music nationalists make and patronize, reading their puzzling embrace of lite pop, folk music, even rap and reggae as attempts to escape stereotypes and craft a new image for themselves. Lions of the North not only exposes the dynamic relationship between music and politics, but also the ways radical nationalism is adapting to succeed in some of the most liberal societies in the world.
Mexico is consistently ranked as one of the least peaceful countries on Earth, which impacts citizens’ negative perceptions about their government. A study conducted by Meschoulam, Hacker, Carbajal, De Benito, Blumenkron, and Raich (2015), detected significant distrust of the mass media, which is another factor that, according to prior studies (Institute for Economics and Peace [IEP], 2016), may encourage peacelessness. This study sought to broaden the perspective of those investigations through 80 semistructured qualitative interviews with Mexican residents. The interviews explored the factors that caused participants to distance themselves from the media and the aspects that attracted participants to specific media outlets. In addition, this study explored the perceived relationship between the media and the government, and also perceptions regarding the news coverage of violence. The results of this investigation revealed that the interviewees distrusted the media because they perceived that it is controlled by the government. Furthermore, participants reported sentiments such as anger, fear, frustration, and apathy as a result of what they perceived to be an excessive exposition of violence by the traditional media in their news coverage. Most participants preferred to use social media as alternative sources of information. However, many of the interviewees also reported that they distrusted social media. Therefore, the participants stated that they valued journalists who demonstrate objectivity and critical thinking, provoke reflection, question the government, uncover corruption, and promote debate about solutions. If, as prior studies have indicated (IEP, 2016b), corruption and the lack of a free flow of information are correlated with peacelessness, then every effort should be made to better understand how to develop a healthier relationship between the media and society to improve conditions for Mexico’s future.
International Journal of Peace Studies
This article explores the ways music might serve as both a vehicle and a model of God’s peacemaking, the peace God intends and has made possible between groups in conflict. Attention to various senses and types of musical harmony can do much to illuminate and clarify different conceptions of peace and peace-building already in use, as well as generate fresh and perhaps neglected ways of conceiving them and practicing peacemaking in the future.
Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
This article explores the ways music might serve as both a vehicle and a model of God’s peacemaking, the peace God intends and has made possible between groups in conflict. Attention to various senses and types of musical harmony can do much to illuminate and clarify different conceptions of peace and peace-building already in use, as well as generate fresh and perhaps neglected ways of conceiving them and practicing peacemaking in the future.
Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
In recent years, empathy has received considerable research attention as a means of understanding a range of psychological phenomena, and it is fast drawing attention within the fields of music psychology and music education. This volume seeks to promote and stimulate further research in music and empathy, with contributions from many of the leading scholars in the fields of music psychology, neuroscience, music philosophy and education. It exposes current developmental, cognitive, social and philosophical perspectives on research in music and empathy, and considers the notion in relation to our engagement with different types of music and media. Following a Prologue, the volume presents twelve chapters organised into two main areas of enquiry. The first section, entitled 'Empathy and Musical Engagement', explores empathy in music education and therapy settings, and provides social, cognitive and philosophical perspectives about empathy in relation to our interaction with music. The second section, entitled 'Empathy in Performing Together', provides insights into the role of empathy across non-Western, classical, jazz and popular performance domains. This book will be of interest to music educators, musicologists, performers and practitioners, as well as scholars from other disciplines with an interest in empathy research.
This article describes the ways in which music is an important part of identity, and hence serves some similar functions to other forms of identity-related communication (e.g., language). It will describe how music is used to incite intergroup hatred (e.g., among soccer fans, military music) and to support valued identities (anthems, etc.). Relevant literature on stereotyping (including stereotyping of groups related to music) is included. The article also discusses how music is used to reduce intergroup hostility (e.g., via cross-cultural musical collaboration and contact). The article connects the various literatures from communication, social psychology, sociology, and ethnomusicology, providing a broad overview of the many connections between communication, music, and social identity. It closes with a research agenda for those interested in studying intergroup communication and music.
Review of Communication Research
Recent empirical evidence suggests that – like other synchronized, collective actions – making music together with others fosters affiliation and pro-social behaviour. However, it is not yet known whether these effects are limited to active, interpersonal musical participation, or whether solitary music listening can also produce similar effects. This study examines the hypothesis that listening to music from a specific culture can evoke implicit affiliation towards members of that culture more generally. Furthermore, we hypothesized that listeners with high trait empathy would be more susceptible to the effects. Sixty-one participants listened to a track of either Indian or West African popular music, and subsequently completed an Implicit Association Test measuring implicit preference for Indian versus West African people. A significant interaction effect revealed that listeners with high trait empathy were more likely to display an implicit preference for the ethnic group to whose music they were exposed. We argue that music has particular attributes that may foster affective and motor resonance in listeners.
Psychology of Music
Music therapy has been employed as a therapeutic intervention to facilitate healing across a variety of clinical populations. There is theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest that individuals with trauma exposure and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition characterized by enduring symptoms of distressing memory intrusions, avoidance, emotional disturbance, and hyperarousal, may derive benefits from music therapy. The current narrative review describes the practice of music therapy and presents a theoretically-informed assessment and model of music therapy as a tool for addressing symptoms of PTSD. The review also presents key empirical studies that support the theoretical assessment. Social, cognitive, and neurobiological mechanisms (e.g., community building, emotion regulation, increased pleasure, anxiety reduction) that promote music therapy’s efficacy as an adjunctive treatment for individuals with posttraumatic stress are discussed. It is concluded that music therapy may be a useful therapeutic tool to reduce symptoms and improve functioning among individuals with trauma exposure and PTSD, though more rigorous empirical study is required. In addition, music therapy may help foster resilience and engage individuals who struggle with stigma associated with seeking professional help. Practical recommendations for incorporating music therapy into clinical practice are offered along with several suggestions for future research.
Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain
Music move us personally and with more meaning than any other medium in the world. In the past few decades, modern advances in neuroscience have proved via neuroimaging that musical processing involves almost every region of the brain, a task that no other stimulus can achieve. Science can show what is happening in our brain, but humans have intuitively known and utilized music for healing purposes since the beginning of humanity. This research examines the dynamics of continued scientific advancement in light of Non-Western ways of knowing. The study is an attempt to shorten the distance between music, healing and conflict. Through a qualitative research methodology, the correlation of music and healing was explored by interviewing musicians and healing practitioners in New England. Musicians and healers shared stories that help explain the role of music and healing in Western society and how they might transform conflict. This paper offers space for the peacebuilder interested in music and healing to pause and consider the weight of their work.
Music, Theology, and Justice
Abstract Young people in the criminal justice system experience significant health and wellbeing issues that often stem from poverty and disadvantage and, in turn, are linked with offending and reoffending behaviour. There is ongoing interest in interventions such as participatory music programmes that seek to foster social reintegration, support mental wellbeing and equip young offenders with life skills, competencies and emotional resilience. However, there is a need for a situated understanding of both positive and negative experiences that shape potential outcomes of music projects. This article reports on a research study undertaken between 2010 and 2013 with 118 young people aged 13–21 years across eight youth justice settings in England and Wales. Using mixed methods we explored the experiences of young people and their responses to a participatory music programme led by a national UK arts charity. Here, we explore the impact of young people's encounters with music and musicians with reference to the notion of ‘musical affordances’ (DeNora,). We examine the ways that such affordances, including unintended outcomes, are mediated by features of the youth justice environment, including its rules and regulations, as well as issues of power, identity and social relations.
Sociology of Health & Illness
This article analyses how intangible cultural heritage can contribute to peacebuilding processes during post-conflict periods. In so doing, it aims at enriching the debate about the current peace process in Colombia. The research uses a qualitative methodology with data collection techniques, such as observation, interviews with experts, communications with relevant people, and documentary analysis. It argues that the use of cultural heritage enables a greater participation of the population in peacebuilding and a greater ownership of the process. It can help rebuild the social fabric affected by the war, and reduce the cultural and structural 282 violence present in post-conflict societies. More specifically, it can promote transitional justice, the social reintegration of former combatants and the peaceful transformation of conflicts. However, despite this potential, cultural heritage can also perpetuate exclusionary practices against certain social groups or extol the use of direct violence. Post-conflict periods are propitious to carry out reforms in the intangible cultural heritage and to make it more inclusive. | Este artículo analiza cómo el patrimonio cultural inmaterial puede contribuir a los procesos de construcción de paz durante periodos posteriores a la firma de acuerdos de paz. Asimismo pretende enriquecer el debate alrededor del proceso de paz que vive actualmente Colombia. La investigación utiliza una metodología cualitativa con técnicas de recolección de información como observación, entrevistas a expertos, comunicaciones con personas relevantes y análisis documental. Argumentamos que el uso del patrimonio cultural permite un mayor involucramiento de la población en la construcción de paz y apropiación del proceso. Puede ayudar a reconstruir el tejido social afectado por la guerra y reducir la violencia cultural y estructural presente en la sociedad posconflicto. Más específicamente, puede promover la justicia transicional, la reintegración social de los excombatientes y la transformación pacífica de los conflictos. A pesar de este potencial, el patrimonio cultural también puede perpetuar prácticas de exclusión hacia ciertos grupos sociales o ensalzar el uso de la violencia directa. Las etapas de posconflicto son propicias para acometer reformas en el patrimonio cultural inmaterial y hacerlo más inclusivo.
Estudios Políticos (Medellín)
Music is commonly used in political contexts, to strengthen attitudes and group cohesion. The reported research examined reactions to music representing national values or contesting them in individuals with different political orientations, on issues related to national pride, cohesion and free expression. In Study 1, 100 Israeli participants heard three “patriotic” or “protest” songs and rated their agreement with statements regarding them. Beyond a number of main effects of music and of political orientation, several interactions between these two variables were found. For rightwing participants, patriotic music increased pride whereas protest music increased shame and fear of social disintegration. For left-wing participants, protest music led to higher agreement with the right to free expression. Study 2 included 78 participants and repeated the procedure with parallel texts. Main effects of texts were found, but no main effects of political orientation or interactions were found. Results are discussed in terms of the role and impact of music in political settings.
Psychology of Music
Music and Empathy
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of middle school music ensemble participation on the relationship between school connectedness, bullying perpetration, and peer victimization. Participants (N = 470) selected for this study attended 2 middle schools located in central Illinois and voluntarily responded to the questionnaire by self-reporting demographic information, including their enrollment in a music course, and their behaviors as perpetrators and victims. Data were secured from a large-scale, 2-year randomized clinical trial funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (no. CE3240). Results indicated that nonensemble students in this sample perpetrate aggressive behaviors, on average, more frequently than do music ensemble students. While participant self-reports of bullying behaviors were relatively low, their perceptions of school connectedness were relatively high. Multiple-group structural equation modeling analyses demonstrated that a stronger negative association between perceptions of school connectedness and cyberbullying perpetration exist for music ensemble students than for adolescents not enrolled in a school-based music ensemble. Included are implications for the better support of preservice and in-service music teachers with regard to bullying in schools, alongside recommendations for continued examination of adolescent musicians’ levels of school connectedness and suggestions for future research.
Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education
Legacy
A choir is a group of people singing together. The choir is the oldest of all musical groups. Before humans thought of making musical instruments, they used their own voices to make music together. Choral music comes directly from the people and it has a powerful and emotional impact than instrumental music. It is quite moving to hear a choir throw their hearts into a song, singing in harmony, various types of songs in various pitches, high and low. The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of forming a choral group in an African society with a view to standardize its formation and to take it to the next level of development and patronage. This paper will give a brief history of choral music and provides for adequate knowledge available to communities who need to form choral groups in order to make music accessible to the society and how a good choral group can be assembled in a society outside the church organization to foster peace and unity.
International Journal of Innovative Language, Literature, and Art Studies
The use of music in peacebuilding is a new and emerging field. Yet there is sparse empirical evidence on its outcomes. The Nile Project is a musical collaborative from East Africa that brings together musicians from all of the countries that border the Nile River and is aimed at finding a solution to the dire water crisis in the region. This study explored how musicians from The Nile Project, despite their linguistic, cultural, musical, and political differences collaborated to create a unified sound. Using a combination of qualitative and arts-informed research methodologies, original members of the collective, as well as the co-founder, were interviewed. Observations were also done of the musicians’ rehearsals, performances, and classroom visits at two New England Universities and at their “gathering” in Aswan, Egypt. Findings suggest that an outcome of The Nile Project’s work is that the process of making music with those from diverse musical traditions can act as a way to practice peacebuilding skills. The act of music making encouraged musicians to “bend” in effort to play together often altering or adapting their musical scales. This may have been a chance for musicians to embody “unity in diversity.” This study seeks to add to the limited research on the use of music for peacebuilding offering the musicians’ perspective, which has been identified as a need.
Music and Arts in Action
'Music has an elaborate history in human civilization' (Washington/Beecher 2010: 129) by providing one of humanity's most essential cultural expressions and being instrumentalized in diverse ways. The power of music to mobilize people through propaganda, express rights claims through protest songs or simply define one's cultural identity has been examined in various disciplines. Yet, music as a research subject in the field of human rights is still in its infancy. This thesis analyses the field of music through four human rights perspectives. The first perspective focuses on the instrumentalisation of music in order to promote human rights. The case study of the East-Western Divan Orchestra shows an example of a musical sphere where musicians from Palestine, Israel, Iran, etc. meet in respect of the principle of non-discrimination and equal treatment. The second perspective presents the inherent role of music in the field of cultural rights. Within this context the Austrian association United Heartbeat has served as a case study. This case study can be relevant for the human rights discourse on two levels. Firstly, the association gives people, who were forced to leave behind almost every cultural right, part of their cultural identity back. This access to music does secondly, not only give them the right to participate in their 'own' cultural life but also in the culture of the receiving country. The third perspective demonstrates the challenges and discriminations that minorities and musicians of colour face within the field of music. Especially in the world of classical music, cultural stereotypes and social constructions often hinder non-discriminatory policies and equal treatment. Music does not only function as a medium for inclusion but also for exclusion and as a marker of hierarchy. The fourth perspective approaches the area under scrutiny through the field of freedom of expression through music. Two case studies of Iranian musicians serve as empirical approaches to censorship on music and the violation of freedom of artistic expression. Finally, this thesis suggests avenues for further research within the field of music and human rights.
The use of music in reconciliation and peacebuilding efforts has long been assumed with many times its importance and potential being unrecognized. This academic study sought to cover Kenya by assessing the various programmes and activities of actors involved in music ,within and outside Nairobi, who have used music as a tool and channel of communicating peace and dialogue particularly after the 2007/2008 elections violence that rocked the country. It therefore assessed the goals that were set in the peacebuilding efforts such as the Agenda Four items in correlation with the messages sent and campaigns undertaken by music agents in the process. This is through investigating the process in four spheres: the role of music in post conflict community dialogues; in social and economic empowerment of communities including women and youth; in trauma healing and recovery of victims; and in conflict prevention; the main hypothesis being that music has played a crucial role in the process of peacebuilding and reconciliation in the case of Kenya‟s 2007/2008 post election violence. Eight organizations and their activities were assessed and analysed. This thesis details the background, scope and objectives of the research as well as an analysis of past studies, research design and methodologies, an analysis of the data collected, findings and recommendations. This study revealed that music greatly assisted in establishing community dialogues and urged leaders to set up mechanisms that support the victims of post-election violence. Further, the self-esteem of participants, especially of women and youth, was boosted and it brought people together by encouraging them to stop fighting. Music really aided in trauma healing and recovery, however the full attainment of the recovery is dependent on other factors such as counseling and other community engagements. It was realized that such initiatives need support from government and other agencies for sustainability and consistence. Further details on findings are indicated in chapter five. The study thus observes that music has played a crucial role in the process of peacebuilding and reconciliation in the case of Kenya‟s 2007/2008 post election violence.
This article reviews and analyses educational policies and curricula for general education in Australian and Spanish systems, in relation to their concerns for arts education to contribute to values education and the acquisition of peaceful, social and civic competences in schools. The use of the arts to shape individual and community identities, to enhance relationships between people, to promote positive conflict transformation, development and, in general, contribute to peacebuilding, has been acknowledged worldwide. Curriculum helps to legitimise what is considered to be important to learn within a society and therefore determines what is included to be understood as good artistic knowledge and practices. The documentary analysis of both Australian and Spanish educational documents in relation to teaching and learning of the arts gives responses on the extent the arts are expected to contribute to build peaceful and sustainable societies, and faces some current challenges of the role of the arts in schools.
International Journal of Education and the Arts
Music is commonly used as a tool in political organizations in general. Due to religious norms and interpretations, Islamist organizations use anashid as the main musical genre for political aims. By exploring how anashid is used in Hamas and Hizbullah, two major political players in the Middle East, this thesis adds to the sparse academic analysis about the role of anashid and its relation to Islamist organizations. By merging the academic fields of politics, music, and Islam, the study makes sense of anashid theoretically in organizations. Of central importance is how music is used intentionally and collectively with the aim of influencing peoples ́ behavior and mindset, as well as how the interpretation of music goes beyond primary intentions. The thesis is based on long term field work inside Hamas and Hizbullah. Trough observations and interviews with supporters and leaders, the thesis inquiries the political function of anashid in different settings of the two organizations and how informants give meaning to anashid. On the basis of these data, the thesis shows that anashid is the main soundtrack of politics in Hamas and Hizbullah. It implies that anashid serves the function of delivering the political messages of the organizations while simultaneously aiming for maintaining religious values. Hence, anashid embraces the unique function of serving as a core messenger of the organizations ́ ideology and goals. Moreover, the thesis reveals that integrating the political and religious through anashid creates an overlap of its usage in the organizational and the private domains of Hamas and Hizbullah. Hence, through anashid, the distinction between the private and the public becomes blurred. The thesis concludes that anashid functions in a politically powerful way in Hamas and Hizbullah, mainly collectively.Anashid possess influence on peoples ́ emotions in order to frame identities in a collective manner through the political activities it initiates.
There is much debate on the value of the arts and humanities in our society. Each side provides strong arguments, but there has been little empirical research to draw on. A key reason for the lack of scientific evidence is the absence of a conceptual model on which to base investigations of the ways the arts and the humanities might contribute to human flourishing. To address this, we present a model to demarcate the domain of the arts and humanities by means of an extensional definition (e.g. majors, disciplines, and occupations) integrated with a functional analysis (i.e. modes of engagement and activities of involvement). We suggest immersion, embeddedness, socialisation, and reflectiveness as mechanisms by which the arts and humanities may enhance various forms of human flourishing. We conclude with implications of the model and ideas for future research to investigate the effects of the arts and humanities on human flourishing.
The Journal of Positive Psychology