Tuneful peacemaking
Last month, a group of Palestinian musicians who fled into Egypt from the war in Gaza met for an evening in Cairo to perform their songs. The event was a celebration of their resilience and Palestinian heritage, as well as a way to affirm “that Palestine is not just about war,” as one organizer put it.
Just weeks before, thousands of Israeli Jews gathered at a park in Tel Aviv for a “healing concert.” Many were survivors or the families of victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on a Jewish music festival near the Gaza border. The Tel Aviv concert, said one organizer, was to show that “music is the best therapy for our community.” The motto of the event: “We will dance again.”
In June, a similar festival in New Jersey brought together some 1,300 American Jews. The purpose, said one organizer, was to “pick up the pieces through the spiritually replenishing magic of a live music festival.” One attendee told The Jerusalem Post, “As a proud Jew, I will counter evil, blind hatred, and darkness with friendship ... and great music.”
By its very nature, music creates a receptivity in a listener, offering universal tones that can forge bonds with others and inspire an alternative way of living. Or, as a 2015 report by the United States Institute of Peace stated, the performing arts can “embody a kind of power that rests not on injury or domination, but rather on reciprocity, connectivity, and generativity.”
A good example in the U.S. is an instrumental group in Milwaukee called the Black String Triage Ensemble. Founded in 2019, the all-volunteer Black and Latino musicians rush to scenes of shootings and other tragedies to perform a concert on the streets as an act of healing, offering comfort through music.
“Wherever we show up and we play together is a place of prayer… and asking for peace,” Dayvin Hallmon, founder of the group, said in a PBS documentary. “We love out loud through our music.”
The goal of the ensemble is to prevent violence from happening to anyone in the community, a thought similar with what many Israeli and Palestinian musicians – now divided by war – may be trying to do. They seek to rescue their humanity through song.
