The Sound of Reconciliation? Musical and sociocultural harmony in the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation

Abstract

This article presents findings from the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation (SLNMC, 2009-2018) launched immediately after a twenty-four year long civil war in Sri Lanka. The project responded to a stated need of rebuilding a fractured society and re-establishing relations between Sinhala and Tamil populations of the island. The SLNMC comprised school concerts and public concerts, music education, heritage documentation and digitalization, in addition to skill training for musicians and technicians, festival organizers and other actors in cultural life. The article offers a critical phenomenological approach to the concept of harmony, where both phenomena of musical and socio-cultural harmony are displayed and discussed in relation to each other. I set out to investigate whether harmony in the SLNMC was a taken for granted, ´dead metaphor´ or an actual creative and impactful tool for implementing musical activities in a post-war context. Theoretically, my point of departure is Howell’s conceptual investigation of harmony in multicultural musical projects (Howell, 2018) and specifically in the South-Asia context (Howell, 2019). I have combined elements from her framework with Sykes (2011 and 2018a) as well as insights from my own research data to present a schema of three musical and three socio-cultural definitions of harmony paired and discussed in relation to each other. In conclusion, I argue that attention to various types of musical and socio-cultural harmony can cast new light on existing art for reconciliation-practices as well as generate fresh and fertile views on how to conceive, implement and assess such initiatives in the future.

Art for Reconstruction: A creative and art‐based intervention for peacebuilding and reconciliation to reduce intergroup hostility and stigma after a protracted armed conflict

“…The third dimension should be addressed when institutional and programme design incorporates art‐based initiatives into standard rules, plans and policies. This draws inspiration from experiences with the use of performing arts in Sri Lanka (Korum, 2020), music in conflict transformation in Sudan (Bergh, 2007) and Congo (Pairon, 2020) and participatory arts in Timor‐Leste (Dunphy, 2013) as mechanisms to consolidate peacebuilding and reconciliation.…”

Harmonious Relations: A Framework for Studying Varieties of Peace in Music-Based Peacebuilding

“…Furthermore, it is in dissonance that relationships between sounds are articulated most clearly (p. 42). Extending this potential to the social realm, Korum (2020) proposes that dissonance can be understood as a critical encounter with the Other and notes that, whilst sometimes provoking conflict, such encounters can stimulate curiosity, motivating actors to engage in the critical negotiations of difference and the “moral imagining” of desired but not-yet-existent social change (Lederach, 2005). To move conflict-avoiding harmony beyond the production of negative peace (absence of violence), there is a necessary engagement with alternative ideas and dissenting (dissonant) voices.…”