The roles of music in Let’s talk music, a model for enhancing communication between Arabs and Jews in Israel

ABSTRACT

Let’s talk music (LTM) is a community-oriented music therapy group that was developed to enhance dialogue between Arab and Jewish students. Participants, most of whom do not have prior music skills, are involved in various music activities alongside political discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this “perspective-on-practice” article, we reflect on the roles that music has in LTM. Based on students’ written and oral feedback reports at the end of two of these groups, we found that music had six roles: to enhance musical capabilities, to express feelings, to develop togetherness, to get acquainted with “the other,” to raise political issues, and to create distraction from inconvenient (political) content. In the discussion, we compared these roles to those of music in other music therapy groups and in music for peace initiatives, and found that LTM was unique in that it uses music to raise political (conflictual) issues. Other roles that were found in LTM were found in other music therapy groups, but in LTM they had an additional cultural/political layer of meaning. For instance, music helped not only to develop togetherness or to express feelings in a social sense, but also in a political/national sense.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict resolution
• community music therapy
• dialogue
• group work

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Monika Tannay, Raneen Hanna, Dr. Miriam Druks, and Dr. Nechama Yehuda who took part in different stages of “Let’s talk music” as supervisors and moderators.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Neve Shalom (in Hebrew), Wahat al-Salam (in Arabic) means “oasis of peace.” It is a village established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel based on the principles of peace and co-existence. The village initiated and sponsors several organizations that enable and encourage dialogue between Arabs and Jews. Different types of groups are hosted for seminars and conferences lasting anywhere from one day to several days.

² The Muezzin is a call for Muslims to pray. It is customarily recited by a person in the mosque and transmitted to people within hearing distance. In Israel, such calls are typically transmitted in mosques where there are concentrations of Muslim citizens, but the fact that also non-Muslims are exposed to the calls, some of which are in the early morning, can cause tension and disagreements.

³ It is important to stress that the specific song that Alex referred to does not explicitly refer to either prisoners or shaheeds. However, given that this was the subjective impression that he had regarding the song we left the quotation untouched.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Avi Gilboa

Avi Gilboa is a music therapist with clinical experience working with children with various disabilities. He initiated, developed, and implemented the Let’s talk music model, which is intended to enhance intercultural communication. He is currently the Head of the Music Department and the Music Therapy Program at Bar-Ilan University. His fields of research include music therapy, social aspects of music, and musical development.

E-mail address: [email protected]

Bissan Salman

Bissan Salman is a coexistence activist and a dialogue facilitator. She has organized and facilitated several Jewish-Arab dialogue groups at the Open House in Ramle and in Neve Shalom in Israel. Bissan’s bachelor’s degree is in Political Science and she holds a diploma in Communication from Bar-Ilan University. In 2014–2015 she co-facilitated the Let’s Talk Music group at Bar-Ilan University. Bissan holds an MSc degree in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and Political Science.