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in East Africa and in the UK reminds us that the current "migrant crisis" is perhaps only named as such because it is in Europe. Her research on music as oral history and public testimonial has sought to highlight local responses to forced displacement and post-conflict social integration, and explores new epistemological approaches to re-center the needs, interests, and agencies of affected people. I would like to start my talk with two scenarios. The first involves a concert that I attended recently in a small church in London that was hosted by the Anglo-Azerbaijani society, whose membership comprises some of the 7000 ethnic Azeri refugees who settled in Britain in the 1980s and 90s following the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan-
Armenian border).The first thing I noticed upon entering the hall were the massive speakers located on either side of the stage. As expected, when the music finally began -two accordions, keyboard, tar, darbuka and singer -the volume was indescribable. Yet I seemed to be the only one in the audience who was physically cowering under the force of the sound. When, after a couple of numbers, every musician on stage indicated to the sound engineer to increase the volume, the distortion became so unbearable that I politely escaped through a side exit, leaving behind a spirited crowd happily singing along to their favorite tunes.
This paper challenges the “intervention-as-solution” approach to health and well-being as commonly practised in the international development sector, and draws on the disciplinary intersections between Community Music Therapy and ethnomusicology in seeking a more negotiated and situationally apposite framework for health engagement. Drawing inspiration from music-based health applications in conflict or post-conflict environments in particular, and focusing on case studies from Lebanon and South Sudan respectively, the paper argues for a re-imagined international development health and well-being framework based on the concept of deep listening. Defined by composer Pauline Oliveros as listening which “digs below the surface of what is heard … unlocking layer after layer of imagination, meaning, and memory down to the cellular level of human experience” (Oliveros, 2005), the paper explores the methodological applications of such a dialogic, discursive approach with reference to a range of related listening stances – cultural, social and therapeutic. In so doing, it explores opportunities for multi-levelled and culturally inclusive health and well-being practices relevant to different localities in the world and aimed at the re-integration of self, place and community.
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