Long Time - The State of Things in Music and Conflict Transformation

It has been a very long time since I posted anything on this blog, for which I am mightily sorry. I have not been idle, though. I have finally submitted my PhD thesis entitled "Singing to be Normal: Tracing the Behavioural Influence of Music as Conflict Transformation" and I will complete my viva in August. I have an article under review in Poetics, I'm co-authoring/co-editing a book with Olivier Urbain from the Toda Institute entitled Music, Power and Liberty, and I am now an editor and journal manager of the Music and the Arts in Action Journal. I have a couple of conference presentations coming up, including "Protests as Events/Events as Protests" at Leeds Metropolitan University and the European Sociological Association Arts Branch conference in Turin. I have been spending the rest of my time applying for jobs or trying to create my own. Hopefully something will materialise before I starve.
So what has the world been up to since my last post? What follows are some things that have caught my attention:

In Jamaica and other hurricane prone Caribbean countries, poverty and a lack of opportunities has led many men to become involved in crime and violence. Recently, Catholic Relief Services have started the Youth Emergency Action Committee with the help of USAid in order to refocus youth attention on how to best respond to hurricanes and help their communities. They have discovered that the most successful manner in which to do this is through rap music in what they labelled 'edutainment.' This approach has also been used successfully for sex and AIDS education in Ghana. What seems to be happening here is not directly the result of the music, but music that appeals or resonates with a particular group promotes a more attentive mode of attention where messages located in the lyrics may infiltrate into memory, especially if the experience is enjoyed and repeated.

Cambodia Living Arts is an organisation founded by Arn-Chorn Pond, a musician, former child soldier and survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide. The principles behind the organisation suggest that the arts are needed in order to restore identity, pride and hope to the population. This is particularly remarkable in Cambodia where, according to the Huffington Post, up to 90% of artists were killed. As in other dictatorships, despots are often the first to understand the power of music and the arts. In order to control a population in order to commit atrocities, the victims need to be seen as less than human. This is impossible if the victims are engaged with cultural expression which is the ultimate humanising activity. Despite this fact, aid agencies rarely support cultural activities. This has been criticised by research conducted by the Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development Unit at the University of York as well as by the popular press like the Huffington Post. As a result, Cambodia Living Arts has produced a month-long arts festival in New York called Season of Camboda, with the support from various American philanthropists in order to raise awareness. The localised use of music in this case is the real music and conflict transformation work, yet that is not what is seen in the festival. The festival is an advertisement and fund-raiser, yet that is what audiences will remember. They will also remember a spectacle of sorts that represents a culture they are probably less familiar with. the danger here is that music and the arts is still seen as entertainment or representing a culture that is somehow rarefied, separate and unknowable. Hopefully the festival has been successful in raising awareness and funds for the important work that they do in their own communities. I hope that their work is not commodified too much in the process.

That's probably enough for this post.

Music - Conflict - Transformation Conference, Exeter (May 9-11)

Day 1

Sometimes a negative event can have long-lasting residual effects beyond the temporal parameters of the event itself as any memory studies researcher will tell you as will anyone on the planet with pretty much any memory at all. Happily, the opposite is also true. I have had the misfortune/fortune to have experienced both of these phenomena recently. First, my house was burgled in February and my car and my laptop (with all of my PhD work on it) were taken without consent. This rather alarming setback not only threw my schedule out of the window, I have found it very difficult to get back into the swing of things ever since. That is, until the SocArts Music-Conflict-Transformation Symposium earlier this week at my spiritual home, the University of Exeter. This was to prove to be the most exciting, rewarding, stimulating and, for me, cathartic gathering of minds that I have yet to experience. More importantly, again, for me at least, I am renewed and filled with motivation; a positive memory has finally superseded a negative one.

The symposium was organised by my fellow music and conflict transformation colleague, Arild Bergh, and it turned out to be one of the first, probably the largest and definitely the best sharing of ideas on the topic ever held. Every single presentation was relevant to my own work and I believe this marked the beginning of some as yet undefined grouping of like-minded researchers, practitioners and other interested parties.

I shall go through each presentation one by one and give an overview followed by a brief comment:

First up was Catherine Pestano, a Croydon (London, UK) community music practitioner who was reporting on a social inclusion project using music in Vojvodina in what is now part of Serbia. Pestano had been invited to develop and deliver a social inclusion music project in the Vojvodina village of Tarak, whose population was actually mostly of Romanian ethnicity despite being within the political borders of Serbia. This had been an autonomous Yugoslav province before Milosović set out on his expansionist agenda. The idea was to train local musicians to facilitate creative and expressive musicking. She encountered, however, what I have elsewhere described as ‘foreigner fatigue’; the locals were ambivalent about foreigners and had become hardened to the perceived broken promises they bring. They were not interested in the playful tricks of the trade found in western community music ice breakers and games. They, like many Bosnians I have met, were very proud of their classical music traditions, especially orchestral, and viewed fun musical activities as juvenile. It is a shame I had not encountered Pestano prior to her trip as I could have forewarned her about this kind of attitude in the Balkan region. She was, however, able to find some success in a neighbouring village of Uzdin, where the locals were all too happy to engage with her practices. I think the issues she encountered all come down to a problem recognising and accessing contextual tacit knowledge.

Next up was Mia Nakamura from Tokyo University of the Arts who talked about the Living Together Lounge for people who are both HIV-positive and HIV-negative. The Living Together Lounge is a monthly live music and poetry event in Tokyo that had been set up with the intention of preventing the further spread of HIV. She reported that the project had not been successful in this aim, but it had provided a positive social environment where both groups of people could be both open and comfortable with each other and even enjoy themselves together. The layout of the club starts with fairly light “DJ music” as people arrive but the music is turned off completely during introductions. A quiet “dry drum pattern” at a “heart-rate tempo” is introduced while personal poetry about HIV experiences are read. The idea is to keep the readers, who often have no public speaking experience, focused and moving along; a form of musical-physical entrainment in other words. After the readings, a live musical group performs a set which includes at least one song based on one of the readings. According to Nakamura, music in this context reframes the narrative content originally found within the readings. How I interpreted this was the DJ music first relaxes people, the beats keep the pace of the readings from dragging, the content of the poems sets the scene in terms of emotional content, intention and making emotional and memory connections between the two art forms. Over time this is experienced by repeat attendees as ritualistic since they have expectations of layout and schedule and generally have these expectations fulfilled and experienced. Very interesting stuff and she even quotes me on my work with Pontanima and the concepts of temporary identity building and normality. I wonder what my Bosnian informants would make of this project.

Mindy Johnston is a gamelan musician and recent graduate in conflict transformation and alternative dispute resolution in Portland Oregon. She had studied many musicians involved with social activism in the northwest coastal USA. She discovered that many musicians did not like to be referred to as activists and preferred to hold on to their musician identity even if their music or musical activities were involved with social activism to some degree. Her findings echoed with some of my own in music and conflict transformation: music can provide a common goal which in turn can act as a pre-condition for conflict transformation and that any social change through musical intervention needs to be long term.

The three above presentations combined echo some of my theories about how a successful music conflict transformation project might unfold. Such a project would need to be long term, led by trusted local people, repeated and engage with memory work. Another emergent theme here is the difficulty in accessing tacit knowledge of a social group in conflict which is necessary in order to understand their contextual relationships to music and musicking.

Irene Gallego from the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona gave a very interesting talk about a study of how Barcelona policy makers have embarked on a social control programme through regulating public music throughout the city. Since Barcelona hosted the Olympics in 1992, city officials wished to present a cohesive cosmopolitan front and one part of how they accomplished this was through the promotion of and appropriation of certain forms of musical busking. This was formalised into a system whereby certain buskers qualified through an accreditation programme to busk in certain pre-defined spots throughout the city. Spontaneous public musiciking was banned. This has had the effect of preserving ethnic minority stereotypes as this culture is no longer visible publicly as they wish to present themselves. Only the groups that adhere to the city’s idea of that culture became accredited. Furthermore, this encouraged individual competition within the minority communities instead of working together to improve their collective visibility. In the end this has resulted in the standardisation, simplification and domestication of the immigrant musician in Barcelona. It was very good to see some empirical data on this subject and it illustrates how musical social policies directly affect large social groups and why it is so important to not only to understand this process, but to educate and advise policy makers.

Martin Winter presented the results of a study he had conducted with Richard Parncutt at the Centre for Systematic Musicology at the University of Graz in Austria that examined how music was used by migrants in Graz for identity work. The frame for the study was a local population that viewed migrant integration as the goal for conflict resolution in communities and cultural differences were seen as somehow threatening. This attitude in turn threatened the very cultural identity of the migrants. The findings showed that migrants used music to help them through initial culture shock upon arrival in Graz but it also strengthened in-out group boundaries and therefore strengthened stereotypes. Authentic music from the migrants’ place of origin was deemed important in the early stages of their arrival but this same authentic music also locked them into stereotypes later on which hindered their integration into wider society. This was a nice presentation with lots of solid data but I had to worry about a society that could only feel integrated if it had a homogenous culture. I think it would be interesting and useful to study any joint musicking that might occur in Graz between the indigenous population and the migrant one.

My friend and colleague Pinar Gϋran, from the University of Exeter, was up next with her latest research on the Turkish migrant communities in Berlin and their relationships to Turkish music. In particular she examined conflicting identities in what she coined RnBesk, a hybrid of the arabesque music of Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s with modern western hip hop and RnB. Gϋran’s study has shown that Turkish youth in Berlin connect to hip hop and RnB as a protest against racism they experience and to a sense of global disenchantment while the use of arabesque music connects them to a sense of belonging to Turkey. In addition, it has been observed that those youth who become involved with active musicking in this fashion are less likely to be involved with crime and other destructive behaviour. This work has illustrated again how social groups can engage with memory work through music, even if it a memory mediated through their parents and other older community members. It also shows how tacit knowledge of a culture can be learned via music at great distances through the use of hip hop and RnB.

Barbara Dunn is a busy multi-disciplinarian based in Seattle who is a qualified psychotherapist, music therapist, clinical social worker, mediator and musician. The core of her presentation was firstly an observation that music therapy practices, at least where she works, tends to be ethnocentric and she sensibly makes a call to learn from the communities in which such people work. Secondly, she explained some of her work that attempted to engage community mediators with music therapy practice. While I agree with and applaud her attempts to share approaches between different disciplines that address the same types of conflicts, I was less convinced by the particularity of her style, which was demonstrated by a sing-song both at the start and end of her presentation. I also agree that it is odd and quite simply wrong that at conferences about music very little music is engaged with, but I did not think that the gospel-inflected sing-song that we did on this occasion was wisely chosen. If anything, it very much highlighted the need to understand a social group’s musical relationships prior to any musical intervention. There were a few participants who happily engaged with this experiment but it seemed that most did so begrudgingly and there was a prevailing sense of unease in the room. It was another case of good intentions combined without tacit knowledge resulting in more harm than help, albeit in a relatively safe environment. Finally, it has highlighted a conflict within the growing music and conflict transformation community between some practical approaches and some research-based approaches. It is important to continue dialogue, discussion and debate between all areas of this field, however, no matter divergent our philosophies might be.

The last presentation of the first day was by Maria Elisa Pinto Garcia from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies which reported on her study of reconciliation attempts using song-writing by victims and ex-combatants in the Columbian civil war. This was an excellent and fascinating study that ultimately showed how music can seem to help a situation when in fact it has not done what it has been reported to do. Pinto Garcia’s study showed that music in this case reinforced latent conflict and continued mistrust and stereotypes. Victims generally did not feel reconciliation was possible without a perceived sense of justice of some sort; musicking together was simply not enough. The Columbian government set up a Sing With Me initiative which claimed to put these two groups together in song-writing projects and that reconciliation had occurred between them, yet an investigation revealed that there had actually been no encounters between victims and ex-combatants and the songs used as examples of collaboration had in fact pre-existed prior to the project. In the end, Pinto Garcia concluded that there was evidence that song-writing provided both groups with a common ground and a sense of catharsis which are both pre-conditions for future conflict transformation, but this had not been followed through as such and instead had been manipulated for governmental propaganda. Furthermore, it is important to understand the particular context of any encounter.

Oh, I seem to have forgotten my own presentation! I presented before Maria and my topic was Musicking as a Means of Accessing Tacit Cultural Understanding in Conflict Transformation Settings. Rather than go on about it much here, I will post it up separately along with the other presentations that followed on subsequent days.

Final Sarajevo Trip

I have just returned from a chilly Sarajevo trip which is to be my final one of this project. It was a pleasure as always to revisit this intriguing locale, despite the rain and the cold. I had my fill of Ćevapčići and coffee but did not manage to explore the surroundings hills like I hoped. I guess that gives me another incentive to return in the future.

My research site in Sarajevo has been Pontanima, an inter-religious choir, and there had been a few dramatic occurrences since my last visit. It had been problematic discovering just what had happened and what the choir was like now via internet communications hence the necessity of this visit. As always with these trips, my days were fairly free to roam around and to write (occasionally), since my informants were only available in the evenings. I did manage to fill all of my evenings with a combination of formal and informal ethnographic interviews and observations of yet another choir rehearsal. Most importantly, I think I now have a decent grasp of where Pontanima is now as a unit and how they got there.

An added bonus during this visit was that the MESS theatre festival was on and I was able to attend a performance by one of my friends. It was a piece entitled Land Without Words, and it was an intense bit of figurative theatre featuring Lucy Elllinson as the sole performer and directed by Lydia Ziemke. The plot, as such as it was, involves an artist who  has returned from a visit to Afghanistan where she had sought inspiration but instead found a hopelessness or impossibility of portraying such horrors in art. What followed on stage was essentially an uncomfortable break-down as the artist's sense of worth and identity are shattered and never reconciled. A case of Durkheimian anomie, perhaps? I'm not normally a fan of this type of theatre, but it was powerful and moving in ways I'm still trying to discern. The team behind the production were a little nervous about performing this in Sarajevo, the first place of recent war that they have performed, but the audience was  very receptive.  

Interesting book about music and cultural change in eastern Europe

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Retuning-Culture-Musical-Changes-Central/dp/0822318555

ESA: Culture Branch Conference @ Bocconi University, Milan

Last week I presented at this conference. There was a little bit of overlap between the Arts and Culture branches, but it was predominately a new audience. I seem to have developed a certain style of presenting which eschews reading a script for a more improvised approach. Actually, I would prefer to present the material in a much more radical manner, but I thought, since I'm new to this game, I'd ease my way into the water gently. Anyway, below is the abstract until I find a publishing outlet:

The Potential Role of the Ethnographic Musician in Conflict Transformation

There have been many music and arts-related projects around the world that have in some manner attempted to promote peace or otherwise positively transform conflicts, and often these projects have been heralded by those involved as successes. Grounded evidence to support these claims is rather less abundant. Does this illustrate how music is an inappropriate and unreliable method for such purposes, or perhaps it is simply that how music interacts reflexively with perceptions of identity, memory, emotion, belief and behavior has not been satisfactorily explored in the context of conflict transformation? Based on grounded research on choirs in Sarajevo and inner-city London, this paper investigates the actualities of how music has been mobilised for conflict transformation purposes, how they have had shortcomings, and how future projects might improve on these approaches. This paper suggests that the music act itself has an innate potential to improve the subconscious pre-lingual level of understanding between the participants yet this has to date been little understood and under-utilised. The act of musical participation is akin to ethnography in as much as it can afford a deep understanding of the ‘other’, albeit at this pre-lingual level. Many conflict transformation practitioners, such as Lederach and Bercovitch, have claimed that increased understanding of the ‘other’ in conflict situations is necessary in order for positive negotiations to occur. This paper explores the logical extension of this thinking and suggest possible ways in which ethnographic musicians might be able to participate positively and effectively in conflict transformation scenarios.

Here I am with David Inglis, Chris Thorpe and Nancy Hanrahan

And here with the SocArts Team Milan: Pinar Guran, Tia DeNora, Sigrun Einarsdottir and David Inglis and Chris Thorpe discussing something very deep and meaningful in the back there.

ESA: Arts Branch - Conference @ University of Surrey, Guildford

In early September I presented at my first conference, the European Sociological Association - Arts Branch Midterm Conference at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. I think it went rather well. I'm now looking at places to publish the paper, but in the meantime here is the abstract:

Music as a Reflexive Process in Conflict Transformation Settings

Can music play a role in positive conflict transformation? Based on an examination of secondary sources that have addressed the contrasting musical conflict transformation projects of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Hip Hop and primary data collected from Pontanima, an inter-religious choir in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina with an explicit conflict transformation remit, it appears that the response to this question is either negative or at least not wholly positive. Some commentators have suggested that music is no better equipped to positively deal with conflict than any other social activity and that it is only the belief that it can that drives such projects. Likewise, recent publications on the topic have done nothing to suggest that music is particularly effective in this manner, despite claims to the contrary from some of these authors. This paper will argue that it is this very belief in the power of music that is essential for understanding why such projects continue to proliferate despite evidence to suggest they are not effective and how a future successful project might be conceived. This paper will attempt to illustrate the reflexive process that links music to our concepts of personal and cultural identity, memory, emotion, beliefs and behaviour. Primary and secondary sources will be drawn upon to illustrate this process and how it could be applied to conflict transformation scenarios.

My first published article

Here's a link to my first article published in the online Music and the Arts in Action journal:

Music and Conflict Transformation in Bosnia: Constructing and Reconstructing the Normal

And here is the abstract for it:

Can music play a role in positive conflict transformation? Having developed a theoretical basis from a previous examination of the contrasting musical conflict transformation projects of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Hip Hop, I have collected data on an inter-religious choir in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina with an explicit conflict transformation remit. Data was collected using ethnographic interviews and participant/observations with fifteen of the choristers in an attempt to answer this question. There was no direct access to audience data and any references to audience reception are from the choir members’ points of view. This detail highlights the issue of application of cultural findings within the choir to the wider social context. For the purposes of this paper therefore any discussions of wider social context are assumed to be mediated through the choristers themselves as members of the choir and the larger Sarajevo and Bosnian society. This data is compared with the previously developed theories and emerging themes are discussed. The fieldwork is ongoing and this article is a summary of findings thus far.

The data conflicts with many of the original theories and this highlights the importance of a grounded theoretical approach. The emerging themes include questions of Bosnian and musical identities; what is ‘normal’; ‘knowing one’s place’ in a formal musical environment; and the difference between the choir’s ‘mission’ of conflict transformation and the motivations of the choir members.

The findings so far indicate that this particular music conflict transformation project has had some success but it is limited to the types of people who become involved as choristers or audiences (all current data on audiences is from recall from the choristers, as no data collection directly from the audiences was possible). Data also indicates that music projects themselves should be reflexive as conflict situations are not static.