Music in peacebuilding: a critical literature review

Abstract

The critical literature review summarizes and appraises studies that have been pursued by music scholars examining the contributions of music to peacebuilding as well as the role of music in violence. These two bodies of literature are rarely brought into dialogue, but I juxtapose them in order to confront the idea of music’s exceptionalism as inherently good or neutral. I further highlight the specific issues and questions that arise from considering the findings on music’s role in peace and violence together. The goal of this piece is to help situate the other JPE special issue articles within the existing efforts in music and peacebuilding, to indicate fruitful areas for future research, and to raise ideas and concerns for praxial interventions that might be developed to use music in peacebuilding.

Keywords:

• Music
• peacebuilding
• peace
• violence
• ethnomusicology
• music intervention

Notes

1. The word ‘intervention’ is used throughout this review in the sense it has as a technical term in peace studies. I use it in this article to refer to an activity aiming at adding a musical dimension for the purpose of influencing change in a social situation. While the term might connote such activity as a top-down or aggressive imposition, this meaning is not intended in the article and I intend usage of the term in as neutral a sense as possible.

2. I acknowledge both the financial support and encouragement for pursuing the project of this literature review on the part of the Min-On Concert Association, an organization that for several decades has sought to promote peacebuilding through making performance arts from around the world accessible to the Japanese public. However, Min-On did not set any parameters for the review, was not given a draft of prior to the completed peer-review process, and their feedback has had no impact on this publication; this article reflects only the readings and views of its author.

3. In the terms of Paulo Freire (1970), praxis refers to the dual simultaneous processes of action and critical reflection (i.e. theory and practice) that cycle into continuing action and critical reflection.

4. While the idea of applied ethnomusicology has a long and complex history, I refer here to the ideas of theory and practice outlined by Pettan and Titon in their 2015 Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology. They define applied ethnomusicology as work that draws on ethnomusicological scholarship to develop ‘a music-centered intervention in a particular community, whose purpose is to benefit that community …’ (2015, 4).

5. See Sandoval’s article in this issue for additional discussion and critique of this concept.

6. Further discussion of music’s variable roles in politics is helpfully provided in Turino 2008.

7. To employ Galtung’s terms; see Urbain’s article in this issue for further definition.

8. See also Sandoval’s article in this issue for a exploration of this issue in terms of music education.