Music and Peacebuilding : African and Latin American Experiences

This book examines music as a means of making peace. It is a multidisciplinary study, grounded in peace studies and musicology that reflects on whether the creative arts can promote healing and reconciliation, within communities, in pedagogy and in national - and international - popular culture.

There is growing interest among scholars and practitioners in how the arts can help rebuild post-conflict societies. This edited collection explores a range of musical practices for social and political peace. By presenting case studies in each chapter, the aim is to engage with musicality in relation to time, space, peace-building, healing, and reconciliation. Emerging scholars'' work on Latin America, especially Colombia, and on the African Great Lakes region, including Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Kenya, is brought together with the purpose of reflecting critically on ''music for peace-building'' initiatives. Each author considers how legacies of violence are addressed and sometimes overcome; lyrics are examined as a source of insights. These practical “music for peace-building” initiatives include NGO work with youth hip-hop, music for peace, work in education on memory, as well as popular culture and shared rituals. Special attention is paid to historical and contextual settings, to the temporal and spatial dimension of musicality and to youth and gender in peace-building through music.