Music and Conflict Transformation Symposium Part 2

I have been busy lately actually writing my thesis (honest, Tia!) and have neglected to post part two of my review of this notable conference/symposium. I have, therefore, decided to do the next best thing which is to post someone else's summary of events. In this case it was from Arild Bergh's personal site, Musica Lista. Anyway, here it is:

It was my great pleasure to organise the 2011 SocArts symposium on the topic of Music – Conflict – Transformation. This year was the largest so far, with more than 40 attendants from a wide variety of backgrounds: musicians, practitioners from the peace building field, academics and researchers, lawyers, activists and educators. The geographical spread was also very broad with attendants arriving from Colombia, Japan, USA, Canada, Spain, Turkey, Norway, Germany, Austria and the UK. There was considerable breadth and quality in the papers presented, and I was very pleased to meet old and new contacts working in this field. Below is a brief summary of the different sessions throughout the two days. There were seven sessions in all as well as a plenary discussion session at the end. The first session on Community, a key issue in conflict transformation work, was kicked off by Catherine Pestano(Community music and the promotion of social inclusion: An English-Vojvodinian (Serbia) partnership) who provided a summary of a project in Serbia that highlighted problems related to the "NGOisation" of the region as well as issues around working in languages other than your own. The value of improvising in the field and finding willing partners was also discussed. The Living Together Lounge for People Who are Both HIV-Positive and HIV-Negative was a presentation by Mia Nakamura who focused on the value of simply providing spaces for joint musicking between conflicting groups and again showing how the initial intent of music use may "transmogrify" in  the field. Finally Mindy Johnston (Music and Conflict Resolution: Exploring the Use of Music in Community Engagement) presented her research on the link between self and society in work by musicians and composers who worked in the conflict resolution field. In the Identity session different perspectives on this topic was explored using different European case studies. Irene Gallego’s presentation Music as a social control mechanism highlighted the bureaucratic issues facing street musicians in Barcelona, where only those who play “traditional” music which is perceived to be representative of their ethnicity is given permits to play. From Austria Martin Winterdiscussed the fluidity of first generation immigrants’ musical identity, either to “fit in” or for nostalgic reason in his talk on Musical practice and the construction of cultural identity. Finally Pinar Güran presented the use of hybrid music styles in Berlin such as “RnBesk” (American R’n’B and Turkish arabesk) to work with youth who resorted to violence in conflict encounters. The following session went straight to the centre of music and conflict transformation issues with a look at music in mediation and reconciliation. Barbara Dunn discussed her Ph.D. Research on the potential for music use mediation with adults and highlighted how previous music experience affect the ability to use it to address conflict, that music transforms may potentially transform conflict by creating common ground and that musical exercises require careful consideration if used in conflict transformation contexts. In “Musicking as a Means of Accessing Tacit Cultural Understanding in Conflict Transformation Settings” Craig Robertson discussed issues of “normality” in post conflict societies and how the same processes take place whether using music for negative or positive purposes, hence a understanding of the processes involved in musicking are important. María Elisa Pinto García finished the session with a presentation that discussed the use of music for reconciliation in Colombia where victims and ex-combatants in the long running civil war has participated in top down projects or tacitly used music locally to put across their views on violent events, and the limitations of such approaches for reconciliation. Tuesday started with three future projects presentations. Linda Ippolito presented her Ph.D. research which will work with mediators and encourage them to use paradigms from music making to think about how conflicts between to two parties can be mediated rather than the common western way of seeing mediation as a zero sum game with a winner and a loser. Thomas Valenti briefly outlined some ideas he has developed with the owner of Hopeless Records to encourage behaviour changes in young adults in conflict areas, possibly involving recording music and teaching different music skills by professional musicians. Finally Charlie Irvine discussed the potential of iPods and playlists as a means of inducing a mood conducive to mediation work among younger people. Overall this session generated a lot of discussion and ideas. The New Directions session examined the use of music (and art) to promote longer term societal changes. Gloria Patricia Zapata discussed whether playing music could help children from socio-culturally deprived backgrounds in Colombia. A project that took place in Lebanon, focusing on creating musical instruments and art among social workers from different groups in the conflict there was presented by Mercedes Pavlicevic in her talk on “Firemaking in the Lebanon: building social resilience through the arts in times of low-intensity conflict”. This was followed by a session on the transmission of conflict through music. Argun Cakir discussed how the the Kurdish dengbêj tradition was not only used to promote conflict, but also suffered from conflict within the tradition itself as new ways of working within this tradition has developed in recent years. The session was concluded by Cornelia Nuxoll who showed how the meaning of music is always locally determined and independent of the intent of the artists and/or composers. In her case she discussed how child soldiers in Sierra Leone had re-interpreted reggae music lyrics and used it to augment local discourses and in the fighting itself in the civil war there in the 1990s. The symposium was concluded by an excellent session on the issues and ethics to consider when intervening in conflicts, this workshop was run by Joan McGregor from “Responding to Conflict” in Birmingham, and it was clearly a session that gave us all a lot to think about in terms of how to work in conflict areas with music.