Sometimes you come across something online and want to follow the lead. Sometimes google delivers what you least expect and are looking for. I found The Sound of Peace when searching for news about religion and music. Not religious music, but how performers and artists are building bridges across cultural and religious troughs. One of those artists is violin peacester Miri Ben Ari.
Growing up in Israel, Ben Ari heard deeply traumatic family accounts of the Holocaust. Determined to raise awareness amongst non-Jews about the tragedy of the Holcaust, she founded the organisation The Gedenk Movement meaning to remember. Concerned that more than 50% of American students these days have not heard of the Holocaust, she decided to teach them. She says:
'My family story of struggle was all about racism. In my opinion, racism is ignorance; people are people, and we have all been given fantastic potential to fulfill in our lifetime. Yet, this monster has been running loose, annihilating cultures, killing people and even creating a "final solution" for my people. I sometimes wonder where people get this illusion that they were born "superior"?' (Ben-Ari 2013).
She uses her music for healing the hurt she feels for victims of the Holocaust, for promoting peace across borders, and for encouraging young performers to use their creativity and 'break their silence' about racism. Her music floats across stages with hip hop artists like Kanye West, Jay Z and Alicia Keys (amongst others). These collaborations bring different music genres together in common endeavour.
But while she is exploring the hiphop and DJ soul of popular music, her music aims to spread healing across cultures, and within oneself. One of her evocative projects involved creating a soundtrack to Martin Luther King Jnr's memorable 'I have a dream' speech - 'Symphony of Brotherhood’. She is also a 'Good Will Ambassador of Music' for the UN and has spoken at the UN about the nexus between culture and sustainable development.
Of course, Ben-Ari's is not the only peacebuilding program that uses music to cross bridges. Music has continuously been harnessed in actions against repressive governments and unjust laws, to fight fascism and celebrate peace. Music can transcend barriers and national borders as O'Connell (2010:2) in the text Music and Conflict suggests: 'Music rather than language may provide a better medium for interrogating the character of conflict and for evaluating the character of conflict resolution'.
Musical peacebuilders agree but question the extent of thinking that music can be a visceral one-fits-all universal channel towards understanding as Cross (2003, cited in Cohen 2008:28) maintains:
'Musics only makes sense as musics if we can resonate with the histories, values, conventions, institutions, and technologies that enfold them; musics can only be approached through culturally situated acts of interpretation. Such interpreted acts... unveil a multiplicity of musical ontologies, some or most of which may be musically irreconcilable...'
Both critics and supporters of cross-cultural and peacebuilding artistic, musical and theatre projects warn that the art which transmits the message of interconnection needs an inclusion of empathy and nonviolence. Peace advocate and theorist Johan Galtung (2008:60) treads softly. Noting the importance of art for peace, he dances with the idea of people being uplifted, and united. But says 'the step towards peace does not come by itself. It has to be thought, felt and worked out. And that will always be tremendously helpful in our struggle for peace'.
References
Ben-Ari M. 2013. Music and The Third Metric: The Silence of the Violin. Huff Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miri-benari/music-and-the-third-metric_b_4173197.html
Cohen C. 2008. Music: A universal language? In O Urbain, Ed, Music and conflict transformation. Harmonies and dissonances in geopolitics. 26-39. London: I.B. Taurus.
Galtung J. 2008. Peace, music and the arts. In O Urbain, Ed, Music and conflict transformation. Harmonies and dissonances in geopolitics. 53-61. London: I.B. Taurus.
O/Connell J. 2010. An ethnomusicological approach to music and conflict. In JM O'Connell and S El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, Eds, Music and conflict. University of Illinois Press.
Image source
Pixabay, power light candle meditation tranquility peace, http://pixabay.com/en/power-light-candle-meditation-18536/
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