Dr. Carolyn Kenny wrote in one of her fortnightly columns on the concept of "Music, Music Therapy, Musical Encounters and World Peace. Her point of reference was her recent struggle to find an appropriate piano teacher for her granddaughter. She interviewed several potential teachers and she found it difficult to hear any joy in the teachers’ voices. Dr. Kenny as stepped in to be her granddaughter’s teacher because she believes in the importance of music in our lives. She wants her granddaughter, Isabel, to have a real connection with music.
I attended a conference session at the National AMTA conference conducted by Christine Stevens where she related to the participants her musical encounters in Iraq, and I was struck by the harmony of ideas in Christine’s experience and in Dr. Kenny’s column. If a musical encounter is defined by ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman as the way in which we conceptualize our relationship with world music, then Christine Stevens has experienced a relationship of the most direct kind. In November, 2007, Ms. Stevens traveled to Iraq as part of a five-day drum circle leadership training program in Northern Iraq hosted by Kurdistan Save the Children marking the first time international relief organizations have used music making for conflict-resolution, economic development, youth empowerment, therapy, and peace-making. The participants were of various ethnic backgrounds, including Muslim, Yazidi, Arabic speaking and Kurdish speaking people, yet their disparate backgrounds did not prevent them from all being actively involved in the musical encounter. The encounter began with translators and as the experience evolved the translators became unnecessary and the people experienced the music without the need for language, as music should be experienced. Ms. Stevens returned to Iraq in 2008 to establish weekly ongoing Ashti Drum (peace drum) circles for conflict-resolution, youth empowerment, and leadership development and she continues in her fund-raising efforts to support this peace and music initiative.
Dr. Kenny quotes Bernice Johnson Reagon’s description of music as the place of safety, mobilization, and comfort. While Ms. Reagon’s description referred to music within the American civil rights movement, I think that Christine Stevens would agree that it is no less true in the time and place of Iraq. Dr. Kenny writes of the importance of our "place" and our "encounters" through music in our efforts to find our global identity and peace on this planet. In this light the experience of Christine Stevens’ music making for peace can be a beacon to us all. If drumming can speak to peoples of diverse and oppositional factions, so can many ways of music making. If piano lessons for granddaughters help define our "place", so can all music therapists and their clients find their "places" and peace through music.