Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer/Autumn 2018 | Page 38

RECONCILIATION: DOES MUSIC MATTER?
all a source of pride and personal accomplishment. For others, it may even turn into a
professional opportunity. Musical activities are incidentally often perceived as a form of
education through culture. In this regard, music is associated with a "culture of peace"
promoting values such as tolerance, solidarity, or cooperation.
Other voices perceive music as a constructive hobby offering opportunities: meeting
and collaborating with new people, networking, or traveling are mainly cited.
“There are a lot of opportunities here ( ... ) Well, we get to see new places, new people;
not only do we play, we get to do it together. ( ... ) We are here to make music, and to
make people happy, and to socialize and struggle together to be a family, an orchestra
family,” summarized a member of the Brass band orchestra of Stolac (interview, April
5, 2017). This single illustration shows that musical activities meet the interests and
needs of the population much more directly than most “reconciliation programs.” Interviewees
consider that it allows them in a consensual way to meet basic human needs
such as love and belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. Their experiences suggest
that the construction of an enduring peace is hardly conceivable without relying on accomplished
individuals. According to Tina Ellen Lee, Artistic Director of Opera Circus
UK and the founder of the international youth arts program The Complete Freedom of
Truth (TCFT), music and the creative arts can often help to give meaning and reveal the
inherent potential in young people. Sometimes working through culture and the arts can
inspire activism and a desire to work toward social change within communities (interview,
July 28, 2017). To give only one example, his passion for music gave hope to Marko
Stankovic who wished to share with others what he experienced himself. He therefore
organized the Arts&Friendships 5-day residency in Srebrenica. This was inspired by his
participation to TCFT program (interview, July 13, 2017). To some extent, musical activities
thus appear to instill a positive spiral.
On a collective level, playing music together is also perceived as a way to depoliticize
intercommunity relationships through a shared ordinary activity, an occasion to alleviate
the weight of “politics” and “nationalisms” that interfere in all areas of life. Thus, it
normalizes rather than underlines the ethnic mix. According to Orhan Maslo, director
of the Mostar Rock School: “Of course, they know this is the only place where massively
Croats and Bosniaks meet. ( ... ) But we are not talking about it at all. We wanna make
that to be normal” (interview, April 6, 2017). After the extra-ordinary experience of the
war, many interviewees have expressed the wish to live a normal life. Hence, the importance
of ordinary activities such as music developed organically as part of civil society
rather than constructed from the outside.
These remarks lead to a paradoxical conclusion. On the one hand, Western countries invest
in an expensive “interethnic reconciliation” policy that, in most cases, neither meets
local expectations nor leads to tangible outcomes in terms of sustainable peace. On the
other hand, music programs struggle to survive even though they meet the population’s
interests and needs, and reach attested impacts in terms of conflict transformation. Faced
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