11. Music development and post‑conflict reconciliation in SriLanka (original) (raw)
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Music development and post-conflict reconciliation in Sri Lanka
Kunst og Konflikt [Art and Conflict], 2019
Can music development programs such as large-scale public festivals help to repair the sociocultural divisions wrought by war and violent conflict? If so, under what facilitating conditions? This chapter engages with these questions, presenting re- search into the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation, a partnership between Sri Lankan development NGO Sevalanka Foundation and Concerts Norway, the Norwegian state concerts agency that was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2018.
Music, Development, and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka
This research report into Music, Development, and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka offers a detailed examination of the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation, focusing on the ways in which the activities of the Music Cooperation (festivals, capacity-building, and other music events) are impacting reconciliation between the nation’s people in the post-civil war period. It presents both qualitative and quantitative data gathered during three months of fieldwork in Sri Lanka, and contextualizes this with reference to literature from the fields of peacebuilding and social psychology. Prior to this research, an empirical or theoretically-informed understanding of how (if at all) the music development activities of the Music Cooperation might be supporting reconciliation had not been developed. This research engages with that task and offers some answers, and recommendations for future action.
Ethnic Conflict and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka
Geographical Review, 1989
Can music development programs such as large-scale public festivals help to repair the sociocultural divisions wrought by war and violent conflict? If so, under what facilitating conditions? This chapter engages with these questions, presenting research into the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation, a partnership between Sri Lankan development NGO Sevalanka Foundation and Concerts Norway, the Norwegian state concerts agency that was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2018. KEYWORDS music development | reconciliation | music festivals | intergroup contact theory | Sri Lanka SAMMENDRAG Kan utviklingsprosjekter med musikk, kunst og kultur i form av offentlige festivaler bidra til å bearbeide de sosiokulturelle konsekvensene av krig og voldelige konflikter? I så fall, på hvilke måter kan man tilrettelegge festivalene? I dette kapitlet presenteres forskning fra et større prosjekt som ble utført av kulturdepartementets etat for kunst og kultur Kulturtanken (tidligere Rikskonsertene). Prosjektet som ble finansiert av Utenriksdepartementet i perioden 2009 til 2018, var et samarbeid mellom utviklingsorganisasjonen Sevalanka Foundation på Sri Lanka og Kulturtanken.
Community Music Interventions in Post-Conflict Contexts
The Oxford Handbook of Community Music, 2018
In the aftermath of war or violent conflict, a multinational enterprise of government and non-government agencies heaves into action, implementing programmes and strategies to address the staggering array of humanitarian, security, and physical needs, and to help rebuild the physical and social environment. While one would expect to see medical and food aid among these structured interventions, the last two decades have also seen ‘cultural aid’ in the form of music and other arts activities included in international responses to post-conflict recovery. This chapter proposes a framework for examining the intended goals that underpin organizers’ decisions to initiate a music project. The chapter outlines a typology of intentions for music interventions, and discusses the characteristics and issues common to many conflict-affected areas to which a music intervention may intend to respond, drawing on the example of the Pavarotti Music Centre, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The musical gift: sonic generosity in post-war Sri Lanka
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2020
Over the past forty years, Sri Lanka has been marked by intense conflict between majority Sinhalese Buddhist and minority Tamil populations, epitomized by a vicious civil war from 1983 to 2009. In this context, Jim Sykes's The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in PostWar Sri Lanka offers an important intervention by highlighting histories of musical interconnection between ethnic and religious communities now seen as separate. An ambitious comparative study of Sri Lankan musical traditions and aesthetics, the book seeks to destabilize narratives of historically established difference and "dislodge the island's traditional musics from their internal difference-making tendencies" (ix) while drawing attention to the range of musical practices found in Sri Lanka, most of which remain understudied. This intervention is developed through two intertwined lines of argumentation. The first is a critique of what Sykes refers to as the "music and identity episteme, " wherein musical sound is understood as the "public presentation of already-formed selves or communities" (17). In its stead, Sykes proffers the idea of music as a gift, drawing on the seminal work of Marcel Mauss ([1950] 1990). Across the six chapters of the book, he argues that an insistence on understanding music as an expression of identity obscures music's capacity to function as a gift. Conversely, by attending to histories of musical giving, Sykes seeks to undermine the link between music and identity, which has reified cultural identities and contributed to communal conflict. Telling these histories of cultural relations, Sykes suggests, might play an important role in postwar reconciliation. The early chapters of the book explore ideas of sonic efficacy, musical hoarding, regional distribution of musical practices, and histories of musical interaction through a twin focus on diverse Tamil musical practices and on the drumming and ritual practices of the Beravā, low-land, low-caste Buddhist drummers with whom Sykes initiated his research. This leads to a more sustained
AEMR, 2020
The Sri Lankan Ministry of National Coexistence, Dialogue, and Official Languages published the work "People of Sri Lanka" in 2017. In this comprehensive publication, 21 invited Sri Lankan scholars introduced 19 different people's groups to public readers in English, mainly targeted at a growing number of foreign visitors in need of understanding the cultural diversity Sri Lanka has to offer. This paper will observe the presentation of these different groups of people, the role music and allied arts play in this context. Considering the non-scholarly design of the publication, a discussion of the role of music and allied arts has to be supplemented through additional analyses based on sources mentioned by the 21 participating scholars and their fragmented application of available knowledge. In result, this paper might help improve the way facts about groups of people, the way of grouping people, and the way of presenting these groupings are displayed to the world beyond South Asia. This fieldwork and literature guided investigation should also lead to suggestions for ethical principles in teaching and presenting of culturally different music practices within Sri Lanka, thus adding an example for other case studies.
Development in Practice, 2020
Solveig Korum (b. 1984) is a doctoral researcher at the University of Agder, Faculty of Fine Arts, in Norway. She is also connected to the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo. She holds a MA degree in Asian and African studies from the University of Oslo and Dakar, majoring in History. She has been employed at the international department of Kulturtanken (Arts for Young Audiences Norway, formerly Rikskonsertene-Concerts Norway) since 2008. 2 Bindu Subramaniam (b.1983) is an Indian-American music educator, author, singer/songwriter and entrepreneur. She has a master's degree in law from London University, a master's certificate in songwriting and music business from Berklee Music, a Montessori diploma, an MPhil, and is currently working on a PhD in Music Education at Jain University.
Review of ‘Jim Sykes (2018). The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka
ASIAN-EUROPEAN MUSIC RESEARCH JOURNAL
The author's efforts to draw a cartography of music practices in Sri Lanka and proposing terms such as musical gift, musical giving, and sonic generosity using the views and practices of Sri Lankan drumming, ritual singing, and dancing is impressive and should be widely appreciated. In her review, Gamburd (2019) provides an impressive summary about the entire book together with some remarks on the author's political bias and missing content in his fieldwork experience, particularly with informants and his teacher. However, I do not fully agree on Gamburd as Sykes has shared some remarkable fieldwork experiences. He really tried to highlight these experiences as a necessity in order to gain insights into his topic. A large amount of scientific literature, newspaper articles, and other sound and audiovisual sources are referred to describe various elements of the music practices, their ethnic, religious, political, economic and social conditions and relations starting from the Era of Ravana up to the year 2018.