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When music education is formalized within schools and non-governmental organizations, it often becomes aligned with justice-oriented aims of providing universal access to music education. This qualitative case study examines the formation of a marching band within a Haitian school in northeastern Haiti. Data sources collected and analyzed included participant-observation experience, participant interviews, non-governmental organization Facebook posts, and newsletters. Findings indicate the marching band became a form of justice, solidarity, organizational legitimacy, and community leadership. The marching band was related to justice because it made the honorable humanity of participants visible and satisfied a moral calling for talent development. A case study of the cholera epidemic in Haiti reveals how the marching band afforded the school a forum for legitimate community leadership. Students, teachers, parents, and administrators had differing views about the purpose of formalized music education. Students saw music education as important because it cultivated the beautiful.
International Journal of Music Education
While the decline of protest music in the USA has often been noted, a global perspective reveals that progressive, activist protest musics occupied lively niches in many music cultures worldwide (e.g., of Jamaica, India, Spain, Latin America) during similar periods, roughly the 1950s-80s. While on one level these music movements were embedded in particular socio-political movements, on a broader level they reflected an ardent commitment to the secular universalist ideals of the Enlightenment. The subsequent dramatic decline of all these protest musics—roughly since Fukuyama’s much-debated “end of history”—reflects a broader transformation of the global political climate. This transformation has both salutary aspects—notably the spread of democracies—and dismaying ones, notably the decline of Enlightenment metanarratives and their replacement by new tribalisms, which have found their own passionate expression in music.
Music and Politics
Recent years have seen a growing interest in research linking musicking and peacebuilding, and the establishment of the Min-On Music Research Institute (MOMRI) in 2014 in Tokyo follows this trend. Its mission statement is: ‘To pursue a multidisciplinary investigation of the potential application of music in peacebuilding activities,’ in short, ‘music in peacebuilding.’ In this article, I attempt to define the values that inspire the MOMRI team in our collective research. I present a synthesis of two conceptual frameworks that offer a vision for peacebuilding: Johan Galtung’s ‘Transcend method’ for the nonviolent and creative transformation of conflicts and Daisaku Ikeda’s ‘philosophy of peace’ that places the protection of human dignity at the center of all endeavors. The result of this new synthesis is the articulation of four major value concepts that can help us explore the links between music and peacebuilding, namely Inner Peacebuilding, Communicative Creativity, Planetary Awareness, and Preventive Peacebuilding. Two case studies demonstrate how these concepts can be useful when trying to analyze complex musicking events, the first based on Vegar Jordanger’s research on collective vulnerability through Guided Imagery with Music, and the second on Jason McCoy’s study of the popular musician Simon Bikindi’s role in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
Journal of Peace Education
Peacebuilding cannot be imposed from above. A sustainable peaceful order can only be reached if it is embedded in the everyday life of a society. What is needed, then, are political approaches that do more than just impose a set of pre-determined political rights and structures, such as elections and democratic institutions. Important as such features are, they can only work if they have legitimacy at a grassroots level. For peacebuilding to be sustainable, it must operate at numerous levels, and win over not only elites in power but also the actual people who make up post-conflict communities.
The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace
Use of the arts in international aid is common in an ad hoc form, but it has not been systematically theorised or evaluated. The arts have the potential to be a culturally contextualised and sustainable intervention for adults and children in the aftermath of war or disaster. On the micro level, the arts are a method to enable the retrieval and reprocessing of traumatic memories that are often encoded in images rather than in words. On a macro level, they can help to reconstruct a group narrative of a disaster as well as mobilise people back into control of their lives. This paper researches a long-term project using arts in Sri Lanka following the civil war and tsunami. A central finding is the need to understand arts within their cultural context, and their usefulness in strengthening the voices and problem-solving capacities of the victims of the disaster.
Disasters
The paradox of enjoying listening to music that evokes sadness is yet to be fully understood. Unlike prior studies that have explored potential explanations related to lyrics, memories, and mood regulation, we investigated the types of emotions induced by unfamiliar, instrumental sad music, and whether these responses are consistently associated with certain individual difference variables. One hundred and two participants were drawn from a representative sample to minimize self-selection bias. The results suggest that the emotional responses induced by unfamiliar sad music could be characterized in terms of three underlying factors: Relaxing sadness, Moving sadness, and Nervous sadness. Relaxing sadness was characterized by felt and perceived peacefulness and positive valence. Moving sadness captured an intense experience that involved feelings of sadness and being moved. Nervous sadness was associated with felt anxiety, perceived scariness and negative valence. These interpretations were supported by indirect measures of felt emotion. Experiences of Moving sadness were strongly associated with high trait empathy and emotional contagion, but not with other previously suggested traits such as absorption or nostalgia-proneness. Relaxing sadness and Nervous sadness were not significantly predicted by any of the individual difference variables. The findings are interpreted within a theoretical framework of embodied emotions.
Frontiers in Psychology
The Oxford handbook of social justice in music education
The study examined the impact of a cross-cultural musical programme on young Portuguese adolescents’ anti-dark-skin prejudice. A sample of 229 sixth-grade pupils who attended public schools in the area of Lisbon, Portugal, were presented with the Implicit Association Test (IAT) – an instrument that measures the strength with which dark-skinned faces or light-skinned faces are associated with attributes that can be considered as negative or positive, and with a test measuring explicit anti-dark-skin prejudice. Half of the pupils were subsequently exposed, at school, to a 6-month musical programme that included Cape Verdean songs and Portuguese songs. The other half was exposed to the usual programme. Measures taken at the end of the programmes showed a reduction in anti-dark-skin prejudice, either implicit or explicit, among pupils in the experimental group and no reduction among pupils in the control group. Measures taken 3 months later and 2 years later showed that the impact of the experimental programme was enduring.
Psychology of Music
Este artículo explora diferentes marcos de trabajo en la relación de la música, la guerra y la transformación de conflictos. Este estudio reflexiona sobre cómo la música puede aportar a las posibilidades de una paz duradera en sociedades situadas cerca al final de un conflicto histórico violento. Así mismo propone que los factores culturales, y especialmente la música, pueden a) identificar los conflictos sociales; b) pensar sus diversas soluciones en comunidad; y c) reflexionar a partir de algunos casos específicos las formas en las cuales la música posibilitó catalizar el dialogo y la transformación conflictual a través de la práctica y la reflexión musical. ; This article explores different frameworks between the relationship of music, war and conflict transformation. This study considers how music can contribute to the possibilities of a lasting peace in societies located near the end of a violent historical conflict. It also suggests that cultural factors, especially music, can; a) identify social conflicts; b) think its several solutions in the community; and c) consider, based on some specific cases, the way in which music allowed catalyzing dialogue and conflictual transformation through musical practice and reflection.
Revista CS
This book concerns an examination of the totality of the musical experience with a view to restoring the soul within it. It starts with an analysis of the strands in the landscape of contemporary spirituality. It examines the descriptors spiritual but not religious, and spiritual and religious, looking in particular at the place of faith narratives in various spiritualities. These strands are linked with the domains of the musicking experience: Materials, Expression, Construction and Values. The book sets out a model of the spiritual experience as a negotiated relationship between the musicker and the music. It looks in detail at various models of musicking drawn from music therapy, ethnomusicology, musicology and cultural studies. It examines the relationship between Christianity and music as well as examining some practical projects showing the effect of various Value systems in musicking, particularly in intercultural dialogue. It finally proposes an ecclesiology of musical events that includes both orate and literate traditions and so is supportive of inclusive community.
The purpose of this field project is to develop and implement a workshop called Four Chords to Freedom, which combines music performance with decolonizing, postcolonial feminist human rights education to serve as a space for transformative praxis in formal and non-formal educational settings. This field project includes observations from the activity, as well as recommendations for educators who are interested in combining human rights education with music performance to explore pedagogical approaches that develop skills and orientations centered on a critical understanding of human rights.
In this essay, I explore the social, emotional, and educational challenges that newly arrived Syrian refugee students may face as they begin classes in Canadian schools. With the Canadian government planning to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees by February 2016, healthcare, social service, and education workers must begin preparing for their roles in helping these newcomers adjust to life in a new country. There are many ways that music educators in particular might help refugee children and their families adapt to life in Canada. Canadian schoolchildren also stand to learn a great deal from their Syrian peers. Though not all Canadian educators will be impacted by this wave of migration, the educational supports that educators might put in place for refugee students can also support Canadian students who may also be experiencing social, emotional, economic, or educational challenges.
Canadian Music Educator
Watching contact between members of one’s ingroup and members of an outgroup in the media (mediated vicarious contact) improves intergroup attitudes. We compare mediated vicarious contact with observing only members of the outgroup (parasocial contact), and examine whether the activity of the portrayed contact matters. Building on theory, we predict that watching outgroup members playing music should reduce prejudice more than watching them engaged in nonmusical activities, particularly with vicarious (vs. parasocial) contact. Results show that vicarious musical contact enhances perceptions of synchronization, liking, and honesty between ingroup and outgroup actors in a video, which in turn results in more positive attitudes toward the outgroup. Counter to predictions, parasocial musical contact results in less positive outcomes than parasocial nonmusical contact.
Journal of Communication
Israeli, Palestinian, and Palestinian-Israeli1 youth who experience the recreation of protracted conflict in a multiplicity of ways through direct and non-direct violence, in addition to intergroup systemic injustice, must learn to witness, name, challenge, and disrupt these extremely powerful societal forces as a means to transform conflict. Transferable learning, in the form of learning for and about peacebuilding, coexistence, coresistence, solidarity, human rights, nonviolent communication, and resilience, when interwoven into the process of learning music with a critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), can create an opening of spaces (Allsup, 2013) and perspectives in which youth can build equal social relationships.
Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy
This article presents the Let's talk music model, in which people from different cultural backgrounds work in a group setting to address and resolve cultural and identity conflicts. The model is based on musical activities and the goal of this article is to understand why and how music helps to promote this cause. To do this, a careful analysis of the components of "musical identity" was conducted (My music, My culture's music, Other's music I do not like, and Other's music I do not know) and thereafter ways by which music was used to bridge the musical identities of people from different (sometimes opposing) backgrounds were found. The Let's talk music model is then described and examples are given to show how this model enables the interplay within the components of one's musical identity and between the musical identities of different people. It is shown that this interplay eventually enables Let's talk music participants to gain a more developed, more tolerant identity. The article concludes with remarks on the importance of such processes to enable a better society.
Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy
“Memorializing the Genocide of the Tutsi Through Literature, Song, and Performance” examines how the 1994 Rwandan genocide has been commemorated in literature, music, and theater performances. Over the past twenty years, in the goal of reconciliation, the Rwandan government has developed a single acceptable narrative of the atrocity; this discourse is enacted and perpetuated through cultural practices (such as yearly commemoration events and marches) and through selective silencing (discussions of ethnicity are illegal in Rwanda). Far from smoothing over the troubles of the past, this rewriting of Rwandan history creates a set of complex challenges for the scholar seeking to interpret representations of genocide, particularly insofar as the cultural texts in question produce counter narratives that question both the official story and their own capacity to represent the trauma of ethnic cleansing. Literature has been the main focus of Rwandan cultural studies post-1994 (particularly the work of the Ecrire par devoir de m?moire project). My first chapter participates in and simultaneously contests this narrow focus by analyzing how novels about the genocide – Le pass? devant soi by Gilbert Gatore and Murambi: Le livre des ossements by Boubacar Boris Diop – suggest the insufficiency of the written word and, by extension, the urgent need to turn to other media. In subsequent chapters, I focus on two alternative cultural vectors – music and theater – forms that can perform commemoration in ways that literature cannot. The second chapter focuses on musical works performed at the 20th-anniversary commemoration ceremonies (known as Kwibuka20). Although they hew closely to government rhetoric, the lyrics, when read attentively, reveal a far more ambiguous narrative, particularly in their treatment of perpetrators and the supposed inevitability of the genocide. Finally, I turn my attention to theater, which, like music, was highlighted in 2014 and is also capable of reaching a wider population. By comparing these recent plays to previous commemorative productions, I demonstrate how the narrative of genocide continues to change in compelling and often unexpected ways.
A survey of ethnomusicological studies of traditional cultures from around the world shows that, although the specific functions attributed to music are diverse, a common thread is that they involve connecting us to our environments: social, physical, and/or metaphysical. After proposing this as a definition of musicking, I consider this phenomenon in the context of the work of Maturana and Varela (the Santiago theory of cognition) and their successors. Human musicking can be understood as continuing the development of processes essential to all living things in their interactions with their environments, in other words, as an emergent property of life itself. Beginning with the ideas of autopoiesis, cognition and structural coupling, the Santiago theory explains that, with a sufficiently complex nervous system, organisms such as ourselves “bring forth” an interior world, and integrate or connect it with the external world that we bring forth through our senses. The nervous system, functions to integrate the brought forth worlds of all the living cells in our bodies. Musicking, because it engages sense (auditory perception), motor activity (sound production, entrainment) and our interior states (thought and emotion), appears to be an effective behavior in support of this integrative process; recent findings in neuroscience indicating the scope of connected brain activities in musically engaged subjects also support this idea. Furthermore, the often-noted effects of social cohesion and integration through musicking suggest the possibility, if we allow that social units might be understood as third-order autopoietic unities, that musicking has an important role at that level as well. Thus, we may be able to explain the awareness expressed in traditional cultures that music is essentially connective, as mentioned above, on the basis of contemporary understanding of the biology of cognition.
A Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition and the Arts
Drawing on ethnographic research with kanyeleng fertility society performers and health workers in The Gambia (2012e2013), this paper uses a social capital approach to analyze the relationship between musical performance and health communication. Health communication research has demonstrated the important role of social capital in mediating the impact of interventions. Music research has drawn attention to performance as a site in which social relationships and obligations are produced and negotiated. In this paper, I bring these two perspectives together in order to open up new ways of thinking about musical performance as a culturally appropriate strategy in health communication. Drawing on participant observation as well as individual and group interviews with performers and health workers (126 participants), I argue that kanyeleng performance facilitates health communication by building on existing social networks and forms of social capital. This research contributes to a paradigm shift in research on performance and health communication, moving away from individualfocused behaviour change communication, and toward a culture-centered approach that considers community participation in relation to broader social and structural issues. This research suggests that musical genres such as kanyeleng performance may help build trust between health professionals and target communities while also facilitating information dissemination and public debate on sensitive health topics.
Social Science & Medicine
While the potential of creativity and of the arts for societal transformation towards sustainability has gained attention over recent years, a specific focus on music is lacking in sustainability science. What are the specific potentials of music, and why should we care? Collective musical practice enhances group cohesion, and musical improvisation trains social creativity, both of which are important resources for organizational resilience. Turning to the experience of music on the individual level, cultures of sustainability can be fostered through a musical aesthetics of complexity that opens up to the ambiguities, ambivalences, contradictions and creatively chaotic dimensions of a transformation towards sustainability. However, music is a “double-edged sword” and its emotional power can be deployed instead to strengthen prejudice, simplify worldviews, and restrain creativity. This paper offers the first broad transdisciplinary review of research at the intersection of music and sustainability. It exposes the mechanisms operating at this intersection and highlights key areas where the social experience and practice of music can contribute to the cultural dimension of sustainability in communities, organizations and society.
Journal of Cleaner Production
This study explores the idea of music being used in interreligious engagements involving Muslims, both so non-Muslims can be aware of Muslim sensitivities and so Muslims can positively contribute to such types of engagement. After explaining Muslim reservations, I identify four genres of sound art (Qurʾān recitation, the call to prayer, liturgical chants, and eulogy chants) which are deeply engrained in the Islamic tradition such that Muslims are united in attesting to their sacredness. I explain a little about the important features of the sacred music of the Islamic tradition and note that the type of Muslims who risk being left out of dialogue are the same Muslims who are most sensitive regarding music. I argue that Muslims can be both engaged and engaging through the use of music, without their musical sensitivities being side lined.
Studies in Interreligious Dialogue
Today, the Lebanese singer Fairouz is regarded as a cultural and political icon, a symbol of peace and humanity, and embodiment of the soul of Lebanon. Her image formed by her powerful voice is so influential, to the extent that she is believed to have stopped the progress of the 15-year civil war in Lebanon that broke out in 1975. This article seeks to explore and discuss the ways Fairouz has revealed the power of music that overcomes the impasses of conflict, the value of peace, reconciliation, and coexistence both with her singing and silence on the on hand, and has become synonymous with the cause of freedom of Lebanon, reflecting both the cultural and religious diversity along with Lebanese nationalistic sentiments on the other.
Current Research in Social Sciences
The critical literature review summarizes and appraises studies that have been pursued by music scholars examining the contributions of music to peacebuilding as well as the role of music in violence. These two bodies of literature are rarely brought into dialogue, but I juxtapose them in order to confront the idea of music’s exceptionalism as inherently good or neutral. I further highlight the specific issues and questions that arise from considering the findings on music’s role in peace and violence together. The goal of this piece is to help situate the other JPE special issue articles within the existing efforts in music and peacebuilding, to indicate fruitful areas for future research, and to raise ideas and concerns for praxial interventions that might be developed to use music in peacebuilding.
Journal of Peace Education
An ever-increasing need to find creative approaches and mission models to engage with Muslim neighbors exists. Studies have shown that musical performance can evoke transformative moments that enhance communication and restore broken relationships. In this article, I explore the intersection of music, peacebuilding, and interfaith dialogue in light of Muslim-Christian relations. I ask how music contributes to peacebuilding among peoples of differing faiths by investigating the roles music plays in promoting peace and living with the other in sustainable ways. I suggest a theoretical framework of transformative music communication and practices of interfaith dialogue as bridges in Muslim-Christian relations.
International Bulletin of Mission Research
This study examines the role of civil society organizations in post-election peacebuilding in Ghana. The main objective of the study is to demonstrate how musicians in Ghana contribute to peacebuilding through their music. It highlights the specific activities that were organized by MUSIGA to help promote peace before, during and after the 2012 elections in Ghana. Moreover, it ascertains the motivations behind MUSIGA’s peace related activities and the perceived impact of these activities from the views of musicians on one hand and the youth on another hand. To achieve this, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with five (5) musicians and thirteen (13) youths. The concepts of multi-track peacebuilding, civil society, the sociology of music and youth agency have been used as the framework for analysis. The study findings indicate that Ghana’s success at relatively peaceful elections has been achieved through a collaboration between state and non-state agencies, of which MUSIGA is a part. It revealed that the efforts of musicians support the peace initiatives engaged in by other agencies which form a peace infrastructure for the country. The data reveals that musicians had a genuine willingness to contribute to peacebuilding. Some youth were however of the opinion that musicians engaged in peace work in order to gain popularity while others agreed that they did it for the greater cause of achieving post-election peace. The initiatives of musicians was commended by all the informants and recognized to be significant. Analytically, the study gives credence to the idea that peacebuilding is a collaborative venture which requires the contribution of all stakeholders at the various levels of society. It contributes to the importance of civil society in peacebuilding. It further demonstrates that the role of civil society in peacebuilding is a supportive one which cannot be ignored. In addition, it provides an understanding into why professional musicians in Ghana take part in peace promotion during election periods. The study also provides evidence that a creative art like music can be an effective tool for peace promotion.
A companion to crime, harm, and victimisation
The aim of this article is twofold: first, to confirm the multi-level linkage between the ecological and social realms in terms of violence, peace, and education, and second, to explore what light ecological thinking can shed on musicking as a potentially effective tool in peace education. The effects of violence in the ecological and social realms are clearly linked, but so are the causes (patterns of thought and behaviors) that lead to violence in each realm; these common causes (which Galtung refers to as ‘fault-lines’) are what need to be addressed, holistically, in peace education. The second aim requires two steps. First, based on meta-analysis of work by ethnomusicologists in diverse cultures, I propose a way of conceiving of human musicking as essentially an ecological behavior, one that has emerged to support the essential process of connecting us to our environment, connecting our inner and outer worlds. Beginning from this conception, I apply recent work in various ecology-related disciplines to show that this characteristic function of musicking makes it well-suited for addressing the root causes of violence in both social and ecological realms. Finally, looking at the challenges and goals of peace education through the lens of ecological thinking, I propose some practical applications, supporting ideas, and suggested models for implementing musicking activities in this endeavor.
Journal of Peace Education
Based on my PhD research with an inter-religious choir in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, this paper discusses my interdisciplinary methodologies and suggests how this approach might be applied to future peacebuilding efforts. The use of ethnographic methods in research is an attempt to comprehend a social scene in a way that is as close as possible to the understanding of those within the scene. Normally, the data collected is linguistic in nature, although the visual and gestural, embodied data are increasingly included. There is very little consideration of the aural in this form of research. Even when the audio is considered, it is often described in written language rather than considered it to be data in and of itself, thereby creating a translation issue. In my own research in Sarajevo, I have made the case for sound and music as ethnographic data, since it is a means of experiencing and expressing tacit cultural understanding within and without a particular social group. This paper examines the commonalities between this approach and the peacebuilding strategies of Lederach et al. (http://www.beyondintractability.org/) and proposes how musicological ethnography might be useful as a tool for increased intercultural understanding in peacebuilding activities.
Journal of Peace Education
Reinvention
This article examines the potential role of music education in peacebuilding, specifically concentrating on issues of structural, indirect violence often unwittingly perpetuated through Eurocentric music curricula. I point out that such violence occurs not only in curricula that represent only European classical traditions, but moreover in the pedagogical practices or the ways in which music is represented. I draw on Walter Mignolo’s work on the decolonizing project as well as David Hansen’s theories of cosmopolitan education to theorize what a decolonized music education might look like. Ultimately, I turn to Mignolo’s encouragement of pluriversal cosmopolitanism to develop my own ideas of what a cosmopolitan music education might look like, how it contributes to decolonizing, and thus how it might foster peacebuilding at the levels of both structure and the individual student.
Journal of Peace Education
The Oxford handbook of social justice in music education
Between 1980 and 2000, Peru was engulfed in an internal war confronting the state and two armed groups, the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. In the aftermath, violence was replaced by silence along with distrust, disunity and distance between the Andes and Lima, which reinforced social segregation by class, race and ethnicity. This article is informed by interviews conducted during fieldwork in Lima during 2010–11. The article explores the ravages of war as one of the main factors fuelling an apparent Limeño white upper-class desire to integrate with the broader Peruvian population through popular intercultural fusion music. It argues that a sector of white upper-class fusion musicians and audiences link their wishes and dreams to their daily music life, enabling them to change normalised hierarchical worldviews and act accordingly, to move beyond apathy, privilege and delusion. They do so by turning exclusive upper-class concert spaces into political spaces of attempted social reconciliation, liminal spaces to renegotiate identities and political attitudes by musicking and empathetically acknowledging and listening to those historically silenced by hegemony and racism. They make music a technology of self-transformation, a means for the white upper classes to counteract the underlying causes of the violence, which persist.
Ethnomusicology Forum
The Oxford handbook of social justice in music education
The use of the arts as a tool for conflict transformation, or what has been called arts based peacebuilding, is a new and emerging field. Yet, there is sparse empirical evidence on its outcomes. The Nile Project, a musical collaborative from East Africa that brings together musicians from all of the countries that border the Nile River, is aimed at finding a solution to the dire water conflict and crisis in the region. This study aims to explore how their collaborative process of creating and performing music despite their linguistic, cultural, musical, and political differences, can illuminate how music can be used to address conflict. Using a combination of collaborative qualitative and artsinformed research methodologies, original members of the collective as well as the cofounder were interviewed. Observations were also done of the musicians’ rehearsals, performances, and classroom visits at a New England University. Findings suggest that an outcome of the Nile Project’s work is the development of relationships, deeper learning, particularly about other Africans, and that the process of making music with those from diverse musical traditions can act as a way to practice peacebuilding skills: creating unity, while honoring diversity. This study seeks to add to a limited amount of research documenting the arts in peacebuilding suggesting that music might be an effective tool for transforming conflict.
Music is a social technology of enormous potential for improving community health. This paper reports on a series of applied ethnomusicological interventions, enacted as a participatory action research project in northern Ghana, for health promotion. Initial interventions, performed by local professional urban artists, proved effective. But as they were not sustainable, we followed up by training village-based amateur youth groups, rooted in the local community, to perform a similar repertoire. These methods can be transposed to other societies maintaining participatory musical traditions, leading to improved community health whenever behavior is a primary determinant, as is so often the case (WHO 2002).
Legon Journal of the Humanities
Popular music plays a major role in mobilizing citizens, especially youth, to fight for political causes. Yet the presence of music in politics receives relatively little attention from scholars, politicians, and citizens. White power music is no exception, despite its role in recent high-profile hate crimes. Trendy Fascism is the first book to explore how contemporary white supremacists use popular music to teach hate and promote violence. Nancy S. Love focuses on how white power music supports "trendy fascism," a neo-fascist aesthetic politics. Unlike classical fascism, trendy fascism involves a hyper-modern cultural politics that exploits social media to create a global white supremacist community. Three case studies examine different facets of the white power music scene: racist skinhead, neo-Nazi folk, and goth/metal. Together these cases illustrate how music has replaced traditional forms of public discourse to become the primary medium for conveying white supremacist ideology today. Written from the interdisciplinary perspective on culture, economics, and politics best described as critical theory, this book is crucial reading for everyone concerned about the future of democracy. -- Provided by publisher
There is growing evidence that participatory music can be supportive and empowering for marginalised, culturally diverse populations. Amid largely hostile reception of asylum seekers in Australia, a group of music facilitators regularly attends an Immigration Transit Accommodation facility to share music and singing activities with detained asylum seekers, to counter significant mental and emotional distress resulting from indefinite detention. Methods: This paper outlines the key themes of a narrative analysis, from a health and wellbeing perspective, of music facilitators’ monthly written observations recorded in 2012. Results: By drawing on examples from observational narratives, we outline a framework that suggests links between music and singing, and the health and wellbeing of detained asylum seekers. The framework includes four intertwined concepts: (1) Humanisation, (2) Community, (3) Resilience, and (4) Agency. Conclusions: The framework suggests the potential for participatory music to counter the significant impact of traumatic experiences and detention on asylum seekers’ health and wellbeing.
Arts & Health
The need for change within the legal profession and legal education is critical. To remain relevant and responsive to twenty-first century challenges and complexities the next generation of professionals must be creative, imaginative, and innovative thinkers. Emotional and social intelligence, the ability to collaboratively problem-solve, negotiate, and mediate complex conflict are essential skills needed for success particularly in increasingly settlement-oriented environments. Studies and reports have noted, however, that practitioners are lacking these key skills. How can these new perspectives and essential skills be taught and developed? This mixed methods research study involved five professional musicians and thirty-eight first year law school students. Data from musicians regarding effective collaborative music-making and most valued capacities for achieving optimal outcomes informed the design of a comparative teaching study that explored the effects of introducing a music-based metaphor and pedagogical approach to teaching, learning, and resolving conflict. The study provided insights into whether and how the musical ensemble metaphor might assist in shifting adversarial combative and competitive frames toward more collaborative, settlement-oriented mindsets and whether and how music-infused pedagogy might assist in developing enhanced skills and practice behaviours that lead to more desirable outcomes. Results from this initial study suggest that non-musicians in non-musical environments are able to learn from musical metaphors and concepts related to ensemble music-making and that such learning – cognitive, affective, and behavioural –translates into changed and more effective behaviour in practice. In simulated scenarios students exposed to the musical metaphor and other music-based learning appeared to outperform their colleagues not exposed to similar music-based learning. Engagement with music appears to reconnect people to their creative potential and lead them to see the efficacy of employing creative thinking in professional environments where analytical and critical thinking have generally been over-emphasized. There are indications that experiences with collaborative approaches to conflict have the potential to shift traditional norms and behaviours. This study and its results are of interest to those in the field of law, conflict resolution, those exploring artsbased teaching and learning in other professions, such as leadership and organizational behaviour, to music educators, and educators at all levels generally.
This text responds to Deniz Peters’ argument with three things: a broad context for empathic listening based on its value as a transferable skill; a comment on the relationship between musical empathy and “social empathy via music”; and a comment on the “indeterminacy” at the beginning of empathic listening.
Empirical Musicology Review
This article interrogates the practicability and efficacy of arts-based methods for peacebuilding as opposed to the formal negotiating table within African grassroots communities. It problematises the application of western liberal peace models at grassroots level. The article reviews and locates itself within the broader discourse of alternative or informal peacebuilding. Using the case study of Rwandan post-genocide dramatic reconstructions, the article illustrates specific participatory theatre techniques extracted from the applied theatre field and how these can be employed for peacebuilding at grassroots level. The article argues for a safe, aesthetic space, created by theatre as critical to peacebuilding activities. To give a rounded overview, the article finally reflects on potential disadvantages and controversies of using participatory theatre for peacebuilding and concludes that creative arts-based methods offer practical, inclusive, inexpensive space conducive for organic peacebuilding at grassroots level.
African Journal on Conflict Resolution
African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review
This volume examines the role and contributions of art, music and film in peace-building and reconciliation, offering a distinctive approach in various forms of art in peace-building in a wide range of conflict situations, particularly in religiously plural contexts. As such, it provides readers with a comprehensive perspective on the subject. The contributors are composed of prominent scholars and artists who examine theoretical, professional and practical perspectives and debates, and address three central research questions, which form the theoretical basis of this project: namely, ‘In what way have particular forms of art enhanced peace-building in conflict situations?’, ‘How do artistic forms become a public demonstration and expression of a particular socio-political context?’, and ‘In what way have the arts played the role of catalyst for peace-building, and, if not, why not?’ This volume demonstrates that art contributes in conflict and post-conflict situations in three main ways: transformation at an individual level; peace-building between communities; and bridging justice and peace for sustainable reconciliation.
Focusing on university-based “action ethnomusicology” within the post-1989 situation in Europe, which is set between increasing national(ism) and growing migration, this chapter discusses three case studies that were undertaken in Germany and Switzerland. As is argued here, successful intercultural action is not only based on careful ethnomusicological research (e.g., cartography of the music cultures or analysis of the specific problem situation and the role of music in this context). Rather, a profound knowledge of the project’s key factors is likewise essential. The latter includes the infrastructural situation, the various target groups, as well as the needs and interests of the participatory groups and institutions involved. Yet, the chapter also argues that self-reflection is likewise essential in this situation, as the ethnomusicologist often takes on a variety of roles. The large number of factors clearly complicates the process of generalization and theoretization.
The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology
In Chapter 17, Music and Peace Jacqueline Bornstein suggests that there is an increase in the use of music and the arts in projects designed to address social-psychological aspects of conflict around the globe. There is however, little evaluation of music and arts-based peacebuilding projects examining whether or not intended social-psychological related goals have been reached. She describes a study of an Indonesian-based peacebuilding project utilizing music and the arts. The study provides an example of how peace practitioners can use music to stimulate psychological shifts conducive to peace and how one might research the impacts of such projects. The project she describes addressed the intolerance of local Islamic communities toward the artistic practices of local non-Islamic Javanese communities in Surakarta in Indonesia. The study found that participating Islamic communities developed a greater tolerance toward, and appreciation of, the musical practices originating from local non-Islamic cultures.
Methodologies in Peace Psychology: Peace Research by Peaceful Means
Music is commonly used in various contexts as a means to manipulate people. Two studies examined the effect of positive background music on compliance with a request to harm a third person. In Study 1 participants were asked by a male researcher, in the context of obligatory experiment participation, to call another participant and tell her she could not take part in the study. In Study 2, participants on a voluntary basis were asked by a female researcher to call another student and tell her she would not receive promised course material. In both cases, no justifiable reason for the request was given, other than the researcher “didn’t feel like it.” Compliance rates were higher in both studies when pleasant, familiar music was played than with no music. No effects of mood were found. Results and implications are discussed in terms of the power of music to influence behavior.
Psychology of Music
This article interrogates prevalent romanticized understandings of music’s role in human rights, and suggests new theoretical and practical approaches that foreground questions of efficacy and impact. Music is often described as a ‘universal language’, a notion that suggests that music is both inherently progressive and able to transcend cultural differences. I argue instead for a more complex, constrained view of music and its role in human rights, with a greater emphasis on methods and practice. Based in part on my research and observations in West Africa, I describe and critique common uses of music in human rights and development projects, and outline suggestions for more focused and effective projects. I also suggest conceptualizing music within the capabilities framework, as set out by Sen and Nussbaum. In so doing, the aim of this article is to stimulate new discussion on how music can protect and promote human rights and human capabilities.
Journal of Human Rights Practice
In a world that is dominated by news of conflict, violence and natural disasters affecting millions of people around the globe, there is a need for effective strategies for coping with trauma. The effects of such trauma on both individuals and communities, are deep and long-lasting (Sutton, 2002). Cultural techniques play an important role in helping communities to recover from trauma. Sports and games, for example, have been used in numerous settings with individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (Lawrence et al., 2010). Other arts-based therapies such as reading or creative writing are also proving to be effective means for dealing with the aftermath of traumatic events. Music can also play a role in helping individuals and communities to cope with trauma, whether it be through the intervention of music therapists, community music making programs or individual music listening. However, despite the abundance of positive examples of the value of the arts in trauma recovery, music, and the arts receives little recognition by leaders in global health issues (Clift et al., 2010). This paper will argue, therefore, that there is a need for a solid empirical evidence base that can illuminate the mechanisms by which music and arts therapies are effective, as well as consideration of how individual differences in personality and coping style can moderate participant responses to such therapies.
Frontiers in Psychology
This thesis dives into a question of relevance and connection between musical experience and geo-political conflict. Based on fieldwork with the Palestine Community Music Project in the West Bank, it concludes that the musical activities of Palestine Community Music are meaningful in contrast to the participants’ lived experience of the Israeli occupation as a source of relief and an aid in the construction of hope. By choosing a field that does not fit the war-peace framework usually maintained in music and conflict studies, and by exploring the mechanisms behind the constitution of meaning and significance of the musical activities, this thesis ventures towards a more complete understanding of the construction of socio-political significance in music. In addition to the main conclusion of this thesis therefore, light is shed on the dependency of social relevance in music on sensitive dimensions of daily life, as well as on the experiencestructuring embracing capacity of musical practices.
Music is a complex and multi-faceted art form. Yet too often it is regarded as discrete and self-contained. The chapters in this groundbreaking book explore different aspects of how music may shape society and culture, yet go much further in viewing musical activity as a mode of power that can transform the lives of communities and individuals. The contributors (who include sociologists, musicologists and performers) focus above all on the relationship between music and the political upheavals of the Arab Spring. They examine key topics like music and revolution in Tunisia; the Egyptian musical tradition of the Revolutionary Song; and the ambivalent social status of the Arab musician, revered by the public when performing but also facing suspicion in a society where music is rightly seen as dangerous and subversive. In showing how music has been used to challenge the status quo, as well as enforce it, the ambiguity of music is fully revealed: it can be used to bolster both regime power and popular liberty, often simultaneously. This is a vital contribution to more nuanced understandings of music and politics.
In the age of the Internet and with the dramatic proliferation of mobile listening technologies, music has unprecedented global distribution and embeddedness in people’s lives. It is a source of intense experiences of both the most intimate and solitary, and public and collective, kinds – from an individual with their smartphone and headphones, to large-scale live events and global simulcasts; and it increasingly brings together a huge range of cultures and histories, through developments in world music, sampling, the re-issue of historical recordings, and the explosion of informal and home music-making that circulates via YouTube. For many people, involvement with music can be among the most powerful and potentially transforming experiences in their lives. At the same time, there has been increasing interest in music’s communicative and affective capacities, and its potential to act as an agent of social bonding and affiliation. This review critically discusses a considerable body of research and scholarship, across disciplines ranging from the neuroscience and psychology of music to cultural musicology and the sociology and anthropology of music, that provides evidence for music’s capacity to promote empathy and social/cultural understanding through powerful affective, cognitive and social factors; and explores ways in which to connect and make sense of this disparate evidence (and counter-evidence). It reports the outcome of an empirical study that tests one aspect of those claims, demonstrating that ‘passive’ listening to the music of an unfamiliar culture can significantly change the cultural attitudes of listeners with high dispositional empathy; presents a model that brings together the primary components of the music and empathy research into a single framework; and considers both some of the applications, and some of the shortcomings and problems, of understanding music from the perspective of empathy.
Physics of Life Reviews
This article introduces a research project2 to be used in a larger study that aims to investigate how around-the-globe musical practices have become tied up with political movements and functioned as conflict-coping mechanisms in contexts of social and political upheaval. A series of historical as well as recent cases are explored in this preliminary study, drawing from research undertaken separately on Solentiname Islands, Nicaragua (by Mery A. Pérez3), Zanzibar, Tanzania (by Shani Omari4), Australia (by Lesley J. Pruitt5) and from the USA (the author). This piece in particular is concerned with the different musical movement’s engagement with tradition and change.
Glocal Times: The Communication for Development Journal
This dissertation examines musical affective economies surrounding the Wars of Religion in Lyon. Expanding on affect theory that considers how emotions stick to and slide from subjects and objects, this research asks how musical affect also sank into bodies and ontologies, serving to both bond and break the community of Lyon. I consider how the boundaries of community were delimited through musical theatre in the early sixteenth century, demonstrating how techniques of communitas were essential to performing this community. I explore how the principal of Lyon’s Collège de la Trinité made use of these techniques, both in his pedagogical theatre, and in an elite musical print aimed at religious reconciliation. From here, I examine how these techniques began to be used towards divisive ends, as Protestants confronted Catholics with psalms and “spiritual songs.” A group of martyr songs, disseminated amongst both elite and more popular audiences, activated the Protestant habitus through such genres, putting the visceral experiences of five young martyrs of Lyon into oral circulation. The subversiveness of such “spiritual songs” within orthodox martyrological practices underscores the musicality of how the theatre of martyrdom was memorialized. Polemic was especially propagated through the inflamed populace in the guise of “chansons nouvelles,” contrafacta songs that were “sung to the tune of” extant popular tunes. Exploring how this genre engaged with contemporary notions and concerns about anger, I demonstrate how the timbres (song bases) of these “chansons nouvelles” accumulated affect across the Wars of Religion as they were adhered to violent Catholic invective. Finally, I turn to Lyon’s proto-social welfare project, permanently established in 1534, the Aumône Générale. Interrogating how the institution subjected the city’s impoverished residents to a Catholic economy of faith, I focus on how the hyper-marking of the forced musical processions of the poor would serve to facilitate their eventual confinement in the seventeenth century. Positioned within the emergent subfield of music and conflict studies, this dissertation argues that, because of its very ephemeral and emotional qualities, music was a vital force in cultivating both solidarity and animosity during the tumult of the Wars of Religion.
Musical experience can confront us with emotions that are not currently ours. We might remain unaffected by them, or be affected: retreat from them in avoidance, or embrace them and experience them as ours. This suggests that they are another’s. Whose are they? Do we arrive at them through empathy, turning our interest to the music as we do to others in an interpersonal encounter? In addressing these questions, I differentiate between musical and social empathy, rejecting the idea that the emotions arise as a direct consequence of empathizing with composers or performers. I argue that musical perception is doubly active: bodily knowledge can extend auditory perception cross-modally, which, in turn, can orient a bodily hermeneutic. Musical passages thus acquire adverbial expressivity, an expressivity which, as I discuss, is co-constituted, and engenders a “musical other.” This leads me to a reinterpretation of the musical persona and to consider a dialectic between social and musical empathy that I think plays a central role in the individuation of shared emotion in musical experience. Musical empathy, then, occurs via a combination of self-involvement and self-effacement—leading us first into, and then perhaps beyond, ourselves.
Empirical Musicology Review
Music, Power and Liberty: Sound, Song and Melody as Instruments of Change.
This article examines the music used by the Orange Order, in its public parades, more commonly referred to as “Orange Walks.” The Orange Order is an exclusively Protestant fraternal organization, which traces its roots to 1690 and the victory of the Protestant Prince William of Orange over the Catholic King James. Yet, as in Northern Ireland, many consider the group to be sectarian and view its public celebrations as a display of ethno-religious triumphalism. This article explores the extra-musical factors associated with Orangeism’s most iconic song, “The Sash My Father Wore,” how other groups have misappropriated the song, and how this has distorted its meaning and subsequent interpretation. Recent statistics have shown that Glasgow hosts more Orange parades each year than in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry combined, yet while there have been many anthropological and ethnomusicological studies of Northern Ireland’s Orange parades, very little research has focused on similar traditions in Scotland. This article seeks to address that gap in the literature and is intended as a preparatory study, laying the groundwork for further analysis.
Music and Politics
This chapter describes ways Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem use Christmas music to highlight the contrast between the former peaceful “little town” in the carol and the current situation of its population under Israeli occupation. An annual Christmas event is staged as a protest, but promotes nonviolent resistance to occupying forces. Organizers provide an opportunity for the expression of shared feelings of belonging and loss among local Palestinians, but are keenly aware that such emotivity can generate conflict and aggression. For this reason, the music at the festival is performed rather than participatory, and features lyrics celebrating nonviolence and peace, promoted as both Christian and universal moral values, alongside allusions to lost territories and the restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities. By drawing on repertoires of wide dissemination across the Christian world on a main Christian holiday, the event also draws international attention to the Palestinian cause.
The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities
This chapter examines the Protestant parading tradition in Northern Ireland with particular focus on the dominance of the flute band scene within it. It provides an in-depth discussion into the central characteristics of each flute band type, namely, blood and thunder, melody and part-music, through an ethnographic analysis of five flute bands. The social, political and religious orientations of each band are examined, as well as their choices in instruments, uniforms and symbolism. An understanding of these orientations indicates how the musical choices and symbolic choices of these bands are linked to the ways in which they construct and articulate their notions of Ulster Protestantism in postconflict Northern Ireland.
The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities
War and violent conflict can alter the physical and social living space available to young people in post-conflict societies in multiple ways. Ethnic partition of the geographical space – an increasingly common characteristic of postwar landscapes – further restricts the environment, creating the phenomenon of the divided city and enforcing rigid social and political norms that enshrine ethnicity as the primary form of identity across all spheres of public and private life. This chapter focuses on the divided city of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and examines the way that one group of young people reclaimed the exploration of identity and the expansion of their constrained physical and social worlds through participation in music-making activities. It examines the self-reports of their experiences through the idea of “life space”, a concept most commonly found in gerontology but expanded in this study to encompass three dimensions – physical, inner, and social life space. The testimonies of former participants in the music activities form the primary data source. Data were gathered during a period of intensive ethnographic fieldwork in October–November 2013 and analyzed inductively and thematically. The relatively long retrospective view yielded findings that include the contributions that provision of diverse music activities made to the broad conflict stabilization and recovery effort, including goals concerned with peacebuilding and youth engagement. The provision of music and arts activities in a nonpolitical space were found to make a contribution to the maintenance of cultural alternatives in the city and the nurturing of a “capacity to aspire” among individuals, findings which have significance for locally driven development and the cultivation of more stable, tolerant societies.
Risk, Protection, Provision and Policy
The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate perceptions of choir members (N = 86) who participated in a one-day choral festival designed to bring together salient racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, this study sought to document: (a) singers’ perceptions of intergroup contact conditions—equal status, common goals, cooperation, institutional support, and friendship potential; (b) singers’ perceptions of group social cohesion in relation to musical selections performed; (c) singers’ stated reasons for participating in the event; and (d) themes emerging from responses to open-ended questions. Data were collected from choir members through a survey instrument adapted from the literature. Category mean score rankings indicated the perceived presence of intergroup contact conditions, from greatest to least, as common goals, cooperation, equal status, institutional support, and friendship potential. In terms of group social cohesion in relation to repertoire, music categorized as African American was perceived as most socially cohesive, followed by music shared by multiple traditions and music categorized as European American. Black/African American, female, and older participants perceived all music, regardless of category, more socially cohesive than White/Caucasian, male, and younger participants. Singers indicated being motivated to participate in the event because of musical and social factors, with responses classified as enjoyment of singing and community building most common. Free-response qualitative data was analyzed and coded into six subthemes: formation of a community comprised of diverse peoples, exposure to something new, personal enjoyment, expressed desire for event to continue, criticism of event philosophy and schedule, and disappointment over attendance. Suggestions for future research were provided.
Protests as Events: Politics, Activism and Leisure
Dance education around the world: perspectives on dance, young people and change
Twenty-four ethnomusicologists from eleven countries (Australia` Austria, Canada, China, Finland, Malaysia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States), balanced in age and gender, have contributed to our Handbook. The chapters, all newly written for this volume, theorize applied ethnomusicology, offer histories, and detail practical examples, with the goal of stimulating further development in the field. Some authors present contrasting case studies that encompass two or more mutually distant places. Some discuss circumstances within their own geopolitical (state) unit, while others base their arguments on their research in faraway countries. Themes and locations of their research projects in applied ethnomusicology encompass literally all world continents. The variety of views, approaches, and methodologies contributes to the strength of the volume. Most of the chapters consider marginalized peoples and communities, their low status being based on ethnicity, economy, or caste affiliation. The addressed themes encompass a considerable range, from indigenous peoples and immigrants to conflict, education, archives, health, and the music industry, as well as advocacy, decolonization, activism, peace and conflict studies, ecology, sustainability, public folklore, and participatory action research. This volume 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 as well as other ethnomusicologists, all in a shared attempt to put the accumulated knowledge, understanding, and skills into good use for the betterment of our world.
This article examines the role and future of indigenous theatrical performances (ITPs) in peacebuilding in Kenya. It focuses on the Kikuyu, Luhya, and Luo communities’ traditions of ritual, storytelling, proverb, and song and dance as specific cases of ITPs in Kenya. While the main focus is on the current use of these art forms in peacebuilding initiatives, the article argues that ITPs can be a powerful tool in addressing structural and other forms of injustices that manifest themselves in conflicts. As such, ITPs can greatly contribute to peacebuilding efforts if a clear framework to support their application is developed.
African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review
Music is an art that is generally practiced and most available of all the arts. In most Nigerian cultures especially in Igbo culture, musical activities are organized to meet the demands of the people in all situations of life be it good or bad. It cuts across all stages of the developmental processes of man, from childhood to old age. At each stage, music plays some significant roles in the lives of the people. Music is part and parcel of Igbo culture. Igbo society provides avenues like ceremonies, festivals, and burials to mention but a few through which music are expressed. This paper among other things tries to examine the impact of folk music In Igbo culture, the place of music in the promotion of sustainable rural development. Selected Igbo folk songs with subject matters geared towards maintenance of peace in Igbo societies were also analyzed.
AFRREV IJAH: An International Journal of Arts and Humanities
Top-down coercive type of liberal peacebuilding has characterized the interventions by international community in many post-conflict societies after the Second World War. Recent studies suggest that in order to build a more lasting peace a bottom-up, non-coercive approach is needed to balance the former and deal with the immediate needs of local communities. In approaching the question of how peace and reconstruction efforts can be made more sustainable, this thesis evaluates whether strategic arts-based programs with local content have the potential to build stronger communities by establishing peaceful resorts to settle daily disputes by participants. It further examines three such programs implemented by Search for Common Ground in Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen and Nepal. By evaluating the available quantitative and qualitative data, this thesis shows that some arts-based programs are more effective in establishing peaceful ways of conflict resolution than others. Specifically, there is evidence that communities in Democratic Republic of Congo have learned and incorporated the new methods of conflict resolution in their daily lives presented to them during the participatory theater performances. However, the program in Yemen which used episodic drama, showed no effect on changing behaviours on a national level and had a limited impact on a local level. Similarly, the program in Nepal proved to be quite effective in transforming the attitudes of the people directly involved in the creation of the peace songs but showed no effects on the general public exposed to the songs via radio or TV. I conclude that there is reason to be hopeful that strategic arts programs can be useful in peacebuilding, although more research needs to be done to find out how best to tailor such programs to each specific situation and to develop a more comprehensive framework to guide policymakers and peacebuilders around the world.
NGOs and other benefactors have long used musical activity as part of a peacebuilding or development strategy, believing that music brings people together, heals traumas and promotes peace, yet there is scant empirical evidence to support this notion. At the very least, musical activity is usually considered to be a nonviolent endeavour yet there is evidence that contradicts even this. Drawing on a synthesis of sociological, musicological and conflict theory, this paper attempts to explain how the same physical phenomenon can produce such wildly different results, beliefs and behaviours through the musical interaction with personal and social belief systems, identities, memories and emotions.
Thammasat Review
Social change began to rapidly emerge in many North African states in 2011 and 2012, and this process continues today. Music has been embedded within this process from the beginning and has been a key feature in street protests and expressing group identity that opposed the status quo at the time. The situation has since become extremely complex as group identities have split and merged, but in the early days of social change in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, music was used by professional and amateur musicians as well as non- musicians for several purposes, namely, to express a more generalized group identity, to capture the moment of the protests, and to propagate information about the situation to a wider Arab diaspora and gain support from them. Conversely, the state also used music at this time as a form of social control by promoting music that was uncritical to marginalize the challenging music.
African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review
This article explores the ways through which youth mobilize music to advance peace in their communities, specifically emphasizing that music is not only used to bring people together for social harmony and reconciliation but also for protest and resistance in order to create a ‘culture of peace.’ It further seeks to establish the impetus that propels youth into persistent participation in peace building especially through an analysis of the interrelatedness of concepts of peace building and culture of peace as they interact with youth identity. Using examples of the role played by new media in shaping such identity, the article illuminates the power of music in building some kind of virtual coalition that promotes peace. As an expressive medium that often defies physical and cultural barriers, music provides both a platform for advancing peace and an analytical tool through which to understand sociocultural dynamics within which peace building can occur.
In troubled times of heightened global tensions and conflict, (un)Common Sounds: Songs of Peace and Reconciliation among Muslims and Christians explores the contribution of music and the performing arts to peacebuilding and interfaith dialogue in interreligious settings. It asks the simple but endlessly complex question: How is music and song used in our faiths and daily lives to foster peace and reconciliation? Focusing on the two largest world religions that together comprise more than 55% of the world's population, the essays address the complexities of embodied, lived religious traditions by moving across and linking a range of disciplines: ethnomusicology (the intersection of music and culture), peacemaking, Islamic studies, and Christian theology. Based on research in the Middle East, North Africa, and Indonesia, context-specific case studies serve to identify and reflect on the significant roles of music and the performing arts in fostering sustainable peace. (un)Common Sounds investigates the dynamics of peacebuilding and interfaith dialogue as they relate to music's transformative roles in conflict and post-conflict settings. Classroom tested, (un)Common Sounds also provides discussion questions and projects for each chapter, a companion Web site (www.songsforpeaceproject.org), and an available documentary film to enhance learning in the academy, nongovernmental organizations, and religious groups.
A Different Voice, A Different Song traces the history of a grassroots scene that has until now operated largely beneath the radar, but that has been gently gathering force since the 1970s. At the core of this scene today are the natural voice movement, founded on the premise that "everyone can sing", and a growing transnational community of amateur singers participating in multicultural music activity. Author Caroline Bithell reveals the intriguing web of circumstances and motivations that link these two trends, highlighting their potential with respect to current social, political and educational agendas. She investigates how and why songs from the world's oral traditions have provided the linchpin for the natural voice movement, revealing how the musical traditions of other cultures not only provide a colourful repertory but also inform the ideological, methodological and ethical principles on which the movement itself is founded. A Different Voice, A Different Song draws on long-term ethnographic research, including participant-observation at choir rehearsals, performances, workshops and camps, as well as interviews with voice teachers, choir and workshop leaders, camp and festival organisers, and general participants. Bithell shows how amateur singers who are not musically literate can become competent participants in a vibrant musical community and, in the process, find their voice metaphorically as well as literally. She then follows some of these singers as they journey to distant locations to learn new songs in their natural habitat. She theorises these trends in terms of the politics of participation, the transformative potential of performance, building social capital, the global village, and reclaiming the arts of celebration and conviviality. The stories that emerge reveal a nuanced web of intersections between the local and global, one which demands a revision of the dominant discourses of authenticity, cultural appropriation and agency in the post-colonial world, and ultimately points towards a more progressive politics of difference.
The cultural diversity of the world needs to education for the peace, working the values related to the Culture of Peace, like the respect, the justice, the equality, the tolerance and the interculturality. The fundamental aim of our research is to know and to value how the educational centers turn into the most suitable scenes to develop the education. For it we have realized a study in a center of Infantile and Primary Education of the Autonomous City of Melilla, the College Velázquez, with which we try to know the reality that is lived in the school centers of the city in the relative to the promotion of the Interculturality and the Culture of Peace between the pupils of different groups. We have used a qualitative methodology, which has allowed us to form a group of discussion with several teachers of different professional profiles. As more relevant result stands out than the music, in spite of the hourly restrictions that the legislation has established for this matter, it is one of the best resources to educate in values and to promote the interculturality and the Culture of Peace. La diversidad cultural existente en el mundo lleva consigo la necesidad de educar para la paz, trabajando los valores relacionados con la Cultura de Paz, como el respeto, la justicia, la igualdad, la tolerancia y la interculturalidad. El objetivo fundamental de nuestro trabajo es conocer y valorar cómo los centros educativos se convierten en los escenarios más idóneos para desarrollar esta educación. Para ello hemos realizado un estudio en un centro de Educación Infantil y Primaria de la Ciudad Autónoma de Melilla, el Colegio Velázquez, con el que pretendemos conocer la realidad que se vive en los centros escolares de la ciudad en lo relativo al fomento de la Interculturalidad y la Cultura de Paz entre los alumnos de diferentes colectivos. Hemos utilizado una metodología fundamentalmente cualitativa, que nos ha permitido formar un grupo de discusión con varias maestras de diferentes perfiles profesionales. Como resultado más relevante destaca que la música, a pesar de las restricciones horarias que la legislación educativa vigente tiene establecidas para esta materia, es uno de los recursos más adecuados para educar en valores y promover la Interculturalidad y la Cultura de Paz.
Revista de Paz y Conflictos
Whereas previous research has mainly focused on negative effects of listening to music on intergroup attitudes and behavior, the present three experiments examined whether music exposure could reduce prejudice and discrimination. In fact, those participants who had listened to songs with pro‐integration (relative to neutral) lyrics expressed less prejudice (Studies 1 and 3) and were less aggressive against (Study 2) and more helpful toward an outgroup member (Study 3). These effects were unaffected by song liking as well as mood and arousal properties of the songs employed, suggesting that it is indeed the pro‐integration content of the lyrics that drives the effects. It is discussed to what extent music exposure could be employed to effectively reduce prejudice and discrimination in the real world.
Aggressive Behavior
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds often face impoverished auditory environments, such as greater exposure to ambient noise and fewer opportunities to participate in complex language interactions during development. These circumstances increase their risk for academic failure and dropout. Given the academic and neural benefits associated with musicianship, music training may be one method for providing auditory enrichment to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. We followed a group of primary-school students from gang reduction zones in Los Angeles, CA, USA for 2 years as they participated in Harmony Project. By providing free community music instruction for disadvantaged children, Harmony Project promotes the healthy development of children as learners, the development of children as ambassadors of peace and understanding, and the development of stronger communities. Children who were more engaged in the music program—as defined by better attendance and classroom participation—developed stronger brain encoding of speech after 2 years than their less-engaged peers in the program. Additionally, children who were more engaged in the program showed increases in reading scores, while those less engaged did not show improvements. The neural gains accompanying music engagement were seen in the very measures of neural speech processing that are weaker in children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our results suggest that community music programs such as Harmony Project provide a form of auditory enrichment that counteracts some of the biological adversities of growing up in poverty, and can further support community-based interventions aimed at improving child health and wellness.
Frontiers in Psychology
Why is music so important to most of us? How does music help us both in our everyday lives, and in the more specialist context of music therapy? This book suggests a new way of approaching these topical questions, drawing from Ansdell's long experience as a music therapist, and from the latest thinking on music in everyday life. Vibrant and moving examples from music therapy situations are twinned with the stories of 'ordinary' people who describe how music helps them within their everyday lives. Together this complementary material leads Ansdell to present a new interdisciplinary framework showing how musical experiences can help all of us build and negotiate identities, make intimate non-verbal relationships, belong together in community, and find moments of transcendence and meaning. How Music Helps is not just a book about music therapy. It has the more ambitious aim to promote (from a music therapist's perspective) a better understanding of 'music and change' in our personal and social life. Ansdell's theoretical synthesis links the tradition of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy and its recent developments in Community Music Therapy to contemporary music sociology and music studies. This book will be relevant to practitioners, academics, and researchers looking for a broad-based theoretical perspective to guide further study and policy in music, well-being, and health.
In the following text we intend to make a reflection on the possibilities of music and musical practice for the joint construction of spaces for positive peace and coexistence. In the belief that the musical language can become a powerful communicative element, and that the musical communication can help to unite the people, but also to divide them, recognizes education as the main engine to guide our actions toward the use of musical practices that have an impact on the improvement in the well-being of individuals and peoples.
Cultura de Paz
This research examines music encounters as a hitherto unexplored type of intergroup contact intervention. We tested the short- and mid-term effects of German–Polish music encounters that either took place in Germany or in Poland, respectively, on German’s attitudes toward Poles. Ninety-nine German participants completed a questionnaire one week before the encounter (t0), directly thereafter (t1), and four weeks later (t2). The control group (N = 67) did not take part in any music encounter and completed the measures twice (t0 and t2). Results revealed that attitudes toward the Polish out-group improved sustainably, but only when the encounter took place in Poland. In contrast, for encounters realized in Germany, no attitude change occurred. Implications of these findings are discussed.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture
Taking a cue from Erving Goffman’s classic work, Asylums, Tia DeNora develops a novel interdisciplinary framework for music, health and wellbeing. Considering health and illness both in medical contexts and in the often-overlooked realm of everyday life, DeNora argues that these identities are by no means mutually exclusive. Moreover, she suggests that the promotion of health and more specifically, mental health, involves a great deal more than a concern with medication, genetic predispositions, clinical and neuro-scientific procedures. Adopting a holistic, interactionist focus, Music Asylums reconnects states of wellness and wellbeing to encounters with others and - critically - to opportunities for aesthetic experience. Building on DeNora's earlier work on music as a technology of self in everyday life, the book presents music as an active ingredient of action, identity, capacity and consciousness. From there, it suggests that access to, and evaluation of, music is an important ethical matter. Intended for scholars and practitioners in psychiatry and psychology, palliative care, socio-music studies, music psychology and the allied health professions, Music Asylums showcases music's role in the existential project of being and staying well, mentally and physically, from moment-to-moment and across all realms of social life.
Music and performance have been at the heart of the ongoing Egyptian revolution since its outbreak on January 25, 2011. In this paper, we argue that popular protest music in particular has helped to shape and articulate emerging desires and aspirations as well as participating in criticisms and grievances at the site of political change. We aim to demonstrate, through the analysis of popular protest songs, how the 2011 Egyptian revolution has been imagined, articulated, and defined in popular culture. We trace the links between older revolutionary songs and how they have impacted new ones, while engaging with a number of theoretical issues on the role of popular music during periods of revolutionary struggles, in order to contextualize the domain of protest songs representing the Egyptian revolution. The last section of the article maps out a number of key popular music bands, musicians, and singers who have emerged and gained momentum as the “voice” of the 2011 revolution.
Popular Music and Society
There is a growing body of neurological, cognitive, and social psychological research to suggest the possibility of positive transfer effects from structured musical engagement. In particular, there is evidence to suggest that engagement in musical activities may impact on social inclusion (sense of self and of being socially integrated). Tackling social exclusion and promoting social inclusion are common concerns internationally, such as in the UK and the EC, and there are many diverse Government ministries and agencies globally that see the arts in general and music in particular as a key means by which social needs can be addressed. As part of a wider evaluation of a national, Government-sponsored music education initiative for Primary-aged children in England (“Sing Up”), opportunity was taken by the authors, at the request of the funders, to assess any possible relationship between (a) children’s developing singing behavior and development and (b) their social inclusion (sense of self and of being socially integrated). Subsequently, it was possible to match data from n = 6087 participants, drawn from the final 3 years of data collection (2008–2011), in terms of each child’s individually assessed singing ability (based on their singing behavior of two well-known songs to create a “normalized singing score”) and their written responses to a specially-designed questionnaire that included a set of statements related to children’s sense of being socially included to which the children indicated their level of agreement on a seven-point Likert scale. Data analyses suggested that the higher the normalized singing development rating, the more positive the child’s self-concept and sense of being socially included, irrespective of singer age, sex and ethnicity.
Frontiers in Psychology
The album Moyo Munyoro (2013) is a product of a collaborative effort in which four Zimbabwean musicians, Jah Prayzah, Sulumani Chimbetu, Edith Weutonga and the late Chioniso Maraire combined skill and commitment to sing about peace, forgiveness and development in Zimbabwe. The July 31st elections of 2013 have come and gone. Yet before the elections, there was a general anxiety and fear among Zimbabweans that the July 31st elections would simply replay the template of political violence that marred the 2008 harmonised presidential elections. The aim of this article is to explore Moyo Munyoro (2013) in order to find how, through its varied songs, the album has helped to spread the “gospel” on peace, forgiveness and development among Zimbabweans. This was mainly a response to the commitment and maturity demonstrated by both ZANU PF and MDC politicians who preached about peace during most of their political campaigns as the country moved towards 2013 general elections. This article is going to argue that it is important for musicians to echo and question politicians’ discourses on matters regarding peace building in Zimbabwe, and yet one can get the impression that Zimbabwean musicians rarely sing about the need for peace to prevail unless that discourse is started and popularized by politicians. The idea of “automatically” and “uncritically” responding to meta narratives on peace and forgiveness cascading from government officials creates aporia between the discourses that tap from “top-down” or “elitist” approaches to peace building against those discourses that support “grass-roots and participatory” methodologies that stress the idea that peace building and forgiveness should start with members of the community bearing the scars and memories of political violence. This demonstrates that Zimbabwean musicians are part of the “grass-roots” communities who should not wait for violence to occur so that they sing about peace or play second fiddle to politicians in condemning acts of political violence.
Muziki
An analysis of the role which music played in shaping communities which remained peaceful and intact during the siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the war of the 1990s. Based on field research, this thesis concludes that music greatly strengthened communities through the building of musical capital, a synthesis of the many positive effects of music further analyzed in the work. Implications of the research suggest that music should be used in post-conflict community building, civic society development, and peace-building efforts.
What should be the role of a musician working with traumatized people in waraffected areas? How can the musician support the healing process of the participants in music workshops? The author, who ran such workshops in the Middle East and the Great Lakes Area in Africa, concludes that a passive role can sometimes lead to an active attitude from participants, which empowers their self-healing capacities.
Journal of Applied Arts & Health
In a context of growing attention to the benefits of the arts in peacebuilding, this article reports on the findings of a small scoping study that aimed to identify how the arts are perceived and supported by international development agencies. Based on a 2012 analysis of five international aid agencies working in the South East Asia and Pacific region, the study found that arts and creative practices are not, as yet, afforded a significant role in current policy or strategy, although arts activity is recognised as a social development tool by agencies working in partnership with local organisations. Resulting from an analysis of participating agencies’ publicly available documentation, and interviews with staff, arts practitioners and volunteers working in field-based arts projects, this article argues that the value of arts-based interventions in peacebuilding and development is yet to be fully realised. Bringing field experience as well as policy and research backgrounds to the analysis, the authors consider why this might be the case and pose broader questions about the communication, role and influence of evaluation as one factor in this. They argue for a better acknowledgment of the diverse applications and implications of the “use” of the arts within complex social, political, and cultural systems by linking this call with evaluation methodologies that may better reveal the ways in which such projects “raise possibilities” rather than “confirm probabilities.” This article suggests a four-question schema for augmenting the documentation and evaluation of arts-based work to more authentically capture “the good” that may arise from the emergent nature of artmaking itself.
Peace and Conflict Studies
Background: In this article we consider how the question of what music can or cannot do is linked to the kind of light cast upon musical engagement and its outcomes. Methods: We describe how a concern with flourishing, as opposed to a concern with more conventional understandings of ‘health’ versus ‘illness’, can help to illuminate some of otherwise invisible processes by which music ‘helps’. Results: We show how the processes by which music ‘helps’ can slip past modes of enquiry associated with more ‘scientific’ and ‘rigorous’ investigate modes. Conclusions: A focus on flourishing challenges more conventional imageries of what comes to count as ‘evidence’ of music’s role in relation to health and well-being.
Psychology of Well-Being
Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture
Simon Bikindi was once the most famous and popular musician in Rwanda. In 1993 and 1994, the pro-genocide radio station, RTLM (Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines), incorporated his songs into a propaganda campaign used to incite the genocide of the Tutsi minority. It is unclear, though, that this was the composer's intent as his songs easily lend themselves to more benign interpretations. Bikindi claims that his songs were intended as a call for peace, ethnic equality, fair elections, and good governance. Nevertheless, on December 2, 2008, he was convicted of incitement and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment by the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), making him the first professional musician in history to be successfully prosecuted under the Articles of the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. His songs are now de facto censored in Rwanda. This dissertation presents an inquiry into the composer's intentions, his trial, the effects of his music on Rwandan audiences both in the early 1990s and today, and the ethical conundrums involved in the censorship of his music. I employ a polyvocal analysis of these issues that weaves together the reactions, reflections, and opinions of around fifty Rwandan research participants, including Bikindi, with whom I conversed and shared the songs. This analysis also incorporates the testimonies of fifty-eight witnesses who testified at Bikindi's trial. This approach shows that a singular, correct interpretation of Bikindi's songs is hardly a settled matter among Rwandans. Instead, views of Bikindi and interpretations of his music tend to correlate with ethnic identity, political allegiances, and perceptions and experiences of the genocide and its aftermath. These findings undermine assumptions of malicious intent on Bikindi's part even while they evince that the songs played a critical role in inciting genocide. Beyond considering issues of Bikindi's intentions and the effects of his songs as genocide propaganda, this dissertation also explores how engagement with his songs may facilitate healing processes among survivors. The songs serve as a catalyst to remembrance and self-narrativity of survivors' experiences of the genocide in a way that suggests potential therapeutic efficacy.
Studies on group songwriting have tended to document successful group songwriting processes. Conversely, there is a dearth of literature that describes contexts where songwriting was not successful, but constrained by group factors. This study sought to identify group factors that both support and constrain the therapeutic songwriting process. Forty-five music therapy clinicians and researchers with established expertise in therapeutic songwriting were interviewed. Modified grounded theory methods were employed; data was first coded then similar codes grouped together to form larger categories, and then these categories aligned under themes representing different group factors. Supported by participant quotes, four main factors emerged—group size, group cohesion, group conflicts, and group composition. Some factors supported the songwriting process, and others constrained it. Given these findings, clinicians should consider carefully whether their client populations would benefit from heterogeneous or homogenous group composition, as different group compositions may support or constrain therapeutic aims.
Music Therapy Perspectives
The Story and Song Centered Pedagogy (SSCP) is a workshop that uses songs, stories and reflective questioning to increase empathy. This preliminary study tested the prediction that being exposed to the SSCP would increase empathy using, the Emotional Concern (EC) and Perspective Taking (PT) subscales of the renowned Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) (Davis, 1990). Subjects self-reported their answers to the IRI before and after undergoing the SSCP intervention. Comparing their pre and post intervention results, no statistically significant changes were noticed for the EC and PT scales (p-value = 0.7093 for EC; p-value = 0.6328 for PT). These results stand in direct tension with the anecdotal evidence gathered from 10 years of action research that shows that the SSCP impacts audiences’ ability to empathize. This opens the door for additional research with more rigorous methodology and a larger sample size which will allow for more interpretative analysis. These results also probe the concern about whether the IRI is the most suitable tool to quantitatively measure the empathetic responses caused by the SSCP and evidenced by action research.
Using illustrations from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and their aftermath, Baker argues that understanding popular music and public discourses about it can help to understand the dynamics of ethnopolitical conflict. Studies of war and conflict have approached music as political communication, as an object of securitization, as a means of violence and as a symbol of ethnic difference, while international law in the context of another case of collective violence, Rwanda, has even begun to question whether performing or broadcasting certain music could constitute incitement to genocide. Drawing on poststructuralist perspectives on the media and ethnicization in conflicts, Baker explores and interrogates the discourse of popular music as a weapon of war that was in use during and after the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. Music during the Yugoslav wars was used as a tool of humiliation and violence in prison camps, and to provoke fear of the ethnic Other in line with a strategy of ethnic cleansing; it was also conceptualized as a morale-booster for the troops of one’s own side. A discourse of music as a weapon of war was also in use and persisted after the war, when its referent was shifted to associate music-as-aweapon not to the brave and defiant ingroup so much as the aggressive Other. This was then turned against a wider range of signifiers than those who had directly supported the Other’s troops and had the effect of perpetuating ethnic separation and obstructing the reformation of a (post-)Yugoslav cultural space. Despite evidence that music did serve as an instrument of violence in the Yugoslav wars (and the precedent of the Bikindi indictment in Rwanda), Baker concludes that music should be integrated into understandings of ethnopolitical conflict not through a framework of incitement and complicity but with respect for the significance of music in the everyday.
Patterns of Prejudice
The relationship between arts participation and health is currently very topical. Motivated by a desire to investigate innovative, non-invasive, and economically viable interventions that embrace contemporary definitions of health, practitioners and researchers across the world have been developing and researching arts inventions. One of the key drivers in this vigorous research milieu is the growth of qualitative research within health care contexts and researchers interested in exploring the potential benefits of musical participation have fully embraced the advances that have taken place in health-related qualitative research. The following article presents a number of different types of qualitative research projects focused on exploring the process and outcomes of music interventions. It also presents a new conceptual model for music, health and well-being. This new model develops on a previous version of MacDonald, Kreutz, and Mitchell (2012b) by incorporating new elements and contextualization and providing detailed experimental examples to support the various components.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being
Orientalism and Musical Mission presents a new way of understanding music's connections with imperialism, drawing on new archive sources and interviews and using the lens of 'mission'. Rachel Beckles Willson demonstrates how institutions such as churches, schools, radio stations and governments, influenced by missions from Europe and North America since the mid-nineteenth century, have consistently claimed that music provides a way of understanding and reforming Arab civilians in Palestine. Beckles Willson discusses the phenomenon not only in religious and developmental aid circles where it has had strong currency, but also in broader political contexts. Plotting a historical trajectory from the late Ottoman and British Mandate eras to the present time, the book sheds new light on relations between Europe, the USA and the Palestinians, and creates space for a neglected Palestinian music history.
Drawing from a long history of indigenous traditions and incorporating diverse influences of surrounding cultures, music in Palestine and among the millions of Palestinians in diaspora offers a unique window on cultural and political events of the past century. From the perspective of scholars, performers, composers, and activists, Palestinian Music and Song examines the many ways in which music has been a force of representation, nation building, and social action. From the turn of the 20th century, when Palestine became an exotic object of fascination for missionaries and scholars, to 21st-century transnational collaborations in hip hop and new media, this volume traces the conflicting dynamics of history and tradition, innovation and change, power and resistance.
A long-standing and pervading theme in fields of inquiry such as economics, sociology, health studies, human rights, or social policy, poverty has apparently not similarly impacted scholarship on music beyond the implicit recognition—more typically found in folklore, ethnomusicology, and popular music studies—that it may have conditioned to some degree music-making among given groups within a larger society or even among larger societal entities such as countries and continents. One problem likely hindering more theoretical approaches to music and poverty is the difficulty, so often expressed in the above-mentioned fields, of finding a universally acceptable definition of poverty (not forgetting that defining “music” is also far from unproblematic). A growing literature, mostly beyond music disciplines, accounts for the many possible determining factors behind such a definition—such as family or individual income, gross national product, formal employment rate, average cost of a minimal caloric diet, access to basic sewage, and adequate housing—which may be adopted either in combination or in isolation. At the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, economists such as Amartya Sen, Mahbub Ul Haq, Deepa Narayan, Celso Furtado, and others went further in the pursuit of a multidimensional approach, considering factors such as education, availability of natural resources, and political participation in defining the boundaries indexing situations of poverty. Sen's (2010) definition of poverty as one's privation of developing individual capacities has since become an influential source of public debate (Crespo and Gurovitz 2002). , Abstract in Portuguese Amplamente analisado e debatido em áreas de estudo como economia, saúde, ou sociologia, o tema da pobreza aparentemente não teve um impacto significativo nas pesquisas acadêmicas sobre musica, para além do reconhecimento implícito que ela pode ter condicionado de alguma maneira o fazer musical entre determinados grupos sociais, países ou regiões mais amplas do mundo. Este artigo discute perspectivas multidisciplinares, mas principalmente aquelas propostas por economistas no final do século XX, em relação à experiência de pesquisa de um grupo formado por pesquisadores acadêmicos e moradores de um conjunto de favelas no Brasil, no intuito de explorar empírica e teoricamente as maneiras em que pobreza, desigualdades e práxis sonora são reciprocamente implicadas para além de especulações de sentido comum.
Yearbook for Traditional Music
In Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity, Gaye Theresa Johnson examines interracial anti-racist alliances, divisions among aggrieved minority communities, and the cultural expressions and spatial politics that emerge from the mutual struggles of Blacks and Chicanos in Los Angeles from the 1940s to the present. Johnson argues that struggles waged in response to institutional and social repression have created both moments and movements in which Blacks and Chicanos have unmasked power imbalances, sought recognition, and forged solidarities by embracing the strategies, cultures, and politics of each others' experiences. At the center of this study is the theory of spatial entitlement: the spatial strategies and vernaculars utilized by working class youth to resist the demarcations of race and class that emerged in the postwar era. In this important new book, Johnson reveals how racial alliances and antagonisms between Blacks and Chicanos in L.A. had spatial as well as racial dimensions.