| Posted December 4, 2018 | By Roberta R. King | Categorized under Missiology and Media |

My research focuses on the contribution of music and the performing arts to sustainable peacebuilding, especially among Muslims and Christians.¹ Research consultations and participant observations took place in Morocco, Lebanon and Indonesia (2008-2012) where we pursued answers to the role of music and the arts in bridging divides, especially among religious peoples. Festivals and music events were the focus of our study. The eight-day Festival of World Sacred Musics in Fes, Morocco, impacted me profoundly. I had no idea how much peoples in the Middle East and North Africa valued their cultural musics. The possibilities for bringing peoples from around the world to watch, listen, and experience such groups as the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus on the same stage as a group of Byzantine Monks overwhelmed me. Even more impressive were the opportunities to sit together in the audience with peoples of diverse faith backgrounds as we entered into spaces of musical splendor. We were rubbing shoulders on the global stage.

Such scenarios led to me to the work of John Paul Lederach who argues that: 

The artistic five minutes, I have found rather consistently, when it is given space and acknowledged as something far beyond entertainment, accomplishes what most of politics has been unable to attain: It helps us return to our humanity, a transcendent journey that, like the moral imagination, can build a sense that we are, after all, a human community.²

Ah, yes! The arts can and do indeed contribute to peacebuilding among religious peoples. However, I struggled with the possibilities of staging such large, one-time global events. Significant as they are, ultimately there is a need for sustainable peacebuilding, where the arts foster continuing dialogue among and between people of diverse nationalities, ethnicities, and worlds faiths. Drawing again from Lederach, I concurred with his admonition that "Peacebuilding requires a vision of relationship. Stated bluntly, if there is no capacity to imagine the canvas of mutual relationships and situate oneself as part of that historic and ever-evolving web, peacebuilding collapses." This triggered my concern for communicating the Gospel. The need and cry for relationship is necessary not only in peacebuilding but also in witnessing to the love of God and his compassion for all peoples.³

So, my questions turned to the role of music and the performing arts in building relationships among and between peoples of diverse faiths. Surprisingly, I discovered music events bringing together Muslims and Christians taking place in Southern California, right where I live. From a benefit concert for Syrian refugees at a local Presbyterian church to performing with a Middle Eastern ensemble in Pasadena, and researching the Middle Eastern Ensemble at the University of California at Santa Barbara, I discovered peoples coming together around music as a means of building relationships.

Enter the concept of musicking: to make music together is a verb, an action that involves everyone, not just the musicians.⁴ Music events and performances are not limited to the sounds produced. Rather, they also initiate and foster the building of relationships that can be reenacted over a sustainable period of time.

In the midst of musicking, not only do we find commonness, but we also find ourselves relating with our neighbors-testifying to God's glory. Dialoguing and entering into moments of sharing life together through music making witnesses to the hope that is within us.

¹ See Roberta R. King and Sooi Ling Tan, Eds. (un)Common Sounds: Songs of Peace and Reconciliation among Muslims and Christians (Eugene, OR: Cascade Publishers, 2014.

² John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 153.

³ Lederach, The Moral Imagination, 35.

⁴ Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Music Culture). (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), 9.