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Book Reviews » Review by Theresa Wolfwood
“Music has an inexplicable way of elevating humankind
to its noblest action.” Youssou N´Dour, Senegalese
singer
“…creative
ability is a quintessential part
of being human: to assert one´s
Creativity is also to assert one´s
Humanity.” Dennis Brutus, South African poet
“…music can enable people, somehow, to ´get
inside´ each other´s minds, feel each other´s
suffering and recognize each other´s shared humanity –that
is, in common understanding, to have empathy for each other”.
Felicity Laurence. P. 14
This collection of essays by thirteen authors from five continents
explores a new terrain – the relationship of music with peace
as an active search. Music is easy to define, an art form in sound
which all cultures create and use. For many peace is the absence
of war, for some it is the absence of fear and need, for others
peace is presence of justice. For this book the agreed definition
of peace, conceived by peace researcher and contributor to this
volume, Johan Galtung is: peace is the capacity to transform conflicts
with empathy, creativity and non-violence.
To work for peace in any medium is a true act of creativity. The
geography of pace is vast and barely charted. We can never be sure
what event or action will bring peace to fruition; probably many
factors are involved. So if music can be developed to be part of
the process; to add to the sowing of many seeds, to empower us for
peace–building and to disempower the forces of violence, so
much the better for all.
Olivier Urbain is the co–founder of a global network, Transcend:
Art and Peace, (see: www.tapnetwork.org/about_us/index.html) which
is dedicated to using all the arts in the cause of peace. An amateur
musician and a peace researcher with the Toda Institute for Global
Peace and Policy Research, he is ploughing new ground when he brings
together academics with abstract ideas on the topic, practitioners
of music as a way to achieve peace on a personal and group level
with musicians who try through their work to influence society to
be peaceful.
As George Kent and others explain, music itself is not peaceful;
in some contexts it is violent and hostile. Governments and the
military have used the power of music for centuries to stir soldiers
and populaces into warfare and xenophobia; music is used to harass
prisoners and street people. But music has the power to move us
deeply, to release feelings of love and unity as well as to reveal
deep wells of creativity in all of us; even artists who are not
musicians can be inspired by music to create in the search for our
common humanity. Music is an important part of oral history, those
without written history have kept their stories of resistance to
oppression and their journey to peace and justice alive down through
centuries to continue to move us and feel empathy with their lives.
Music therapy, the use of music to create personal health and recovery
from mental and physical illness and social trauma, has a well–documented
history and is practised in hospitals and schools, prisons and situations
of local conflict. In her chapter, Maria Elena Lopez Vinader gives
an excellent background to the practice of this therapy and how
she applies it in her work while she challenges us to see if this
discipline can move towards ´a social music therapy´
in a greater social and even planetary transformation.
Vegar Jordanger describes a process called Guided Imagery with Music
(GIM) helping to reconcile Chechen, North Ossetian and Russian participants
to create a ´collective vulnerability´ where all might
transform feelings of shame and anxiety into positive emotions within
the group; a part of the process of healing cultural violence.
In the context of peace activism, music has a long history of strengthening
peaceful feelings and supporting peaceful action. Several writers
explore this path in the book. The role of music in the USA civil
rights movement, as well as in peace and popular movements in Europe
and USA, is better known than the importance of music in the struggle
for freedom in South Africa – which surely could be called
the struggle for peace. It was documented in an excellent film a
few years ago. ´AMANDLA: A revolution in 4 part harmony´
(see www.bbcf.ca film reviews) showed how music kept alive the revolution
against the cruelty of apartheid for decades in South Africa. In
her contribution, Anne–Marie Gray carries that further as
she documents the history of music and social change in South Africa
to its application to the important reconciliation process after
apartheid was abolished. This continuing process as Cynthia Cohen
writes can assist in social integration. She says that, “music
is well suited to the work of building peace, because it can facilitate
communication, understanding and empathy across differences of all
kinds.”
Building across differences is described in Urbain´s chapter
on the musician, Yair Dalal, self–identified as an “Arab
Israeli Jew”. Through the revelation of his own mixed sense
of identity and his results in uniting Arabs and Israelis in their
common musical heritage, he seeks to create peace through the bonds
of music. He not only uses the music and instruments of both groups
but brings together Arab and Israeli adults and children to create
and perform music together. Urbain writes, “Yair Dalal´s
music allows us to build a better appreciation of the common roots
of the people in the region [Middle East] , and it gives hope that
they one day may find a way to once again share their ancestral
lands.”
We should also heed one writer´s timely warning that we must
carefully guard against the globalized music industry, selling music
as a commodity for enormous power and profit. Connecting peace and
music — indeed all forms of creativity — is an important
and powerful way to ensure that all artists and arts are honoured
for their creations and to encourage everyone to recognize her or
his potential to create art. If to create art is to recognize our
humanity, surely that creative impulse will be linked to a sense
of interconnectedness between all humans in a possible peaceful
world.
In a brief review it is impossible to do justice to all the contributors
on the many interpretations and reflections about connecting music
and conflict resolution. My bias is to seek practical examples;
I am an activist, not an academic. Another reader might choose to
highlight different parts of the book. Regardless of emphasis, anyone
interested in this little explored field will find in this volume
many nuggets of insight and fertile ideas to nurture study, action
and performance in the essays as well as the valuable appendices
and references.
Olivier Urbain has done an admirable collaboration with a diverse
group of writers to present a thoughtful and thought–provoking
exploration of new connections in human endeavour where we all belong.
A complementary website with sources & music is being created:
http://www.book.music4ct.org/media
In the quoted words of Antjie Krog, South African poet,
“…among the keynotes of song and suffering there are
soft silences where we who belong, all of us, can come to rest.'
Theresa Wolfwood.
February, 2008
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