14 Community Music Portraits of Struggle, Identity, and Togetherness

The Oxford Handbook of Community Music
Brydie-Leigh Bartleet (ed.), Lee Higgins (ed.)
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219505.001.0001
Published: 2018 Online ISBN: 9780190219529 Print ISBN: 9780190219505
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34637/chapter/295101505 by OUP site access user on 25 February 2024

CHAPTER
14 Community Music Portraits of Struggle, Identity, and

Togetherness 
André de Quadros
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219505.013.14 Pages 265–280

Published: 05 February 2018
Abstract
This chapter explores identity, struggle, and inclusion in three contrasting settings: in American
prisons and in community music projects in two vastly di erent locations and situations in Mexico and
Palestine. The chapter relates this exploration to the Empowering Song approach developed in the
United States in Boston, Massachusetts. This approach, born in the oppressive context of American
prisons, and possessed of general music education approaches, has developed into a model for
community music where social justice, enquiry, personal transformation, and community bonding are
sought. In all three settings described in this chapter, identity, struggle, and inclusion are key elements
through which the author interrogates and examines the artistic, pedagogical, and communal
processes through a narrative style.
Keywords: : Mexico, Palestine, incarceration, community, human rights, Empowering Song, struggle
Subject: Ethnomusicology, Music
Series: Oxford Handbooks
Collection: Oxford Handbooks Online
THIS chapter explores identity, struggle, and inclusion in three contrasting settings: American prisons and
community music projects in two vastly di erent locations and situations in Mexico and Palestine. The
chapter relates this exploration to the Empowering Song approach that my colleagues (Jamie Hillman and
Emily Howe) and I developed in Boston. In all three settings, identity, struggle, and inclusion are key
elements through which I interrogate and examine the artistic, pedagogical, and communal processes. I
adopt a narrative approach to this chapter similar to Maynes, Pierce, and Laslett’s (2008) paradigm in
Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History, where they emphasize that the
positionality of the narrator is intrinsically connected to the narrative and indeed shapes it. In these
narrative accounts, I function as a combination of collaborator, narrator, and analyst. These combined roles
a ord me a unique opportunity for inter-subjectivity and insight.
Since 2012, my colleagues and I have been teaching in two Massachusetts prisons—the Norfolk men’s
prison and the Framingham women’s prison. In searching for an approach to our community music
teaching and leading, we found that current music education and choral models and practice did not quite
serve our purpose, although several excellent and compassionate models exist in the work of Mary Cohen
1
(Cohen & Silverman, 2013) and Catherine Roma. Group music-making in a community setting would
naturally borrow from general music approaches, but there we found insu cient satisfaction; approaches
such as Or and Kodaly would be di cult to implement in incarcerated settings, not only for lack of
resources but also because the basic principles and goals were at variance with our vision for a more
personally driven and community based programme. This is not to suggest that these approaches are not

p. 266 valuable; indeed, I make a strong case for them to be central to school music. Take the Kodaly approach’s
emphasis on literacy by way of the tonic solfa, hand-signs, and rhythm syllables. Does music literacy for the
Western canon serve the goals of community music-making with incarcerated adult men and women? The
American model of the Or approach has a skill sequence, represented in the three levels of teacher
certi cation. Are these Or Schulwerk skills realistic for adult learners in a harsh, oppressive setting?
In these prisons, we had only the bodies to work with, and no instruments, thus developing a choral
programme seemed an obvious way forward. However, many choral programmes in prisons are repertoire-
focused, skill-centred, or performance-oriented. As a result of searching and not nding the ideal t for our
community music programme in prisons, the Empowering Song (ES) approach was developed.
Empowering Song: an introduction
The approach was given its name jointly by the team working on this project. Empowering Song has its
2
provenance in improvisational approaches such as the Or Schulwerk. Rooted in improvised song, poetry,
bodywork, and imagery, this approach is designed to empower individuals and enable community
transformation. The primacy of the following elements—vocal work, bodywork, poetry, song creation, and
connection to visual art, dance, and theatre—are best portrayed through illustrations contained in the three
portraits that follow. The performativity of Empowering Song in prisons does not allow for public
performance. Thus, the communal interaction and immediacy have remained essential to its process.
Empowering Song also acknowledges its alignment with the work of Augusto Boal in Theatre of the
Oppressed (1985) and described later in his Aesthetics of the Oppressed (Boal & Jackson, 2006), as well as
other community theatre approaches that work subversively and powerfully to mobilize and transform
communities and to interrogate and contest power. Why, I have asked myself frequently, is there no music
of the oppressed?
Mexico: A national community initiative
Since 2010, the Mexican federal government has embarked on a nationwide community music project.
Initially, Eduardo García Barrios, the national coordinator of El Sistema Nacional de Fomento Musical
3 4
(SNFM) del Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA) started a community orchestra
programme in Baja California, the westernmost and northernmost of the thirty-one Mexican states. SNFM
5
p. 267 is an inter-departmental section of CONACULTA. Community music ensembles of the Fomento Musical
6
are administered by the Unidad de Agrupaciones Musicales Comunitarias. SNFM exerts responsibility for
the promotion, through music-making, of the comprehensive development of children and young people,

mainly those living in the most disadvantaged social locations, with the aim of contributing to the
reconstruction of Mexico’s social fabric. Shortly after assuming the Mexican presidency in 2012, Enrique
Peña Nieto visited the programme, after which he decided that such community music activities should be
expanded throughout the country. In April 2013, the music community programme was launched with a
national scope and mission, part of which was to emulate several other initiatives in Latin America where
community activities have been used to counteract violence, such as in the internationally renowned El
Sistema from Venezuela. The community music programme was a central component of the Programa
Nacional para la Prevención de la Violencia y la Delincuencia (PRONAPRED), a national programme to
prevent violence and delinquency and rooted in a social justice imperative from Fomento Musical. The logo
of Música en Armonía (Figure 14.1) symbolizes the ensembles, the communities, and the goal of social
cohesion.
Partly for reasons of capital outlay, but also for ease of access, SNFM decided early in the project to place an
emphasis on community choirs for children and youth. Choirs are considerably less expensive than
community instrumental activities: funding for instruments can be quite considerable; and teachers with
speci c instrumental capabilities must be engaged. As at March 2015, there were approximately fty-three
choirs, all of which were open for entry to children and youth between the ages of 7 and 12. Once a young
person is a member of such a choir, he or she can retain membership until the age of 17. The total number of
children being served by this programme was more than 2,470, in ensembles led by 63 conductors in 16
states during this period.
Eduardo García Barrios’s vision to use music to reach children extended beyond musical pro ciency to the
goal of contributing to their personal growth. This, he suggested, is consistent with the 'Four Pillars of
Learning' as articulated in the Delors report, entitled Learning: The Treasure Within, published by UNESCO
(International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, 1996): ‘Learning to know [ … ]
learning to do [ … ] learning to live together [ … ] learning to be.’ While examining the quality of music-
making with his colleague Natalia Morelos González, García Barrios claimed to discover that when the
human values of cooperation, teamwork, and mutual understanding were better, the quality of the music-
making was higher.
When Morelos González, an oboist whose previous encounters with community music stem from working
in community settings in the Netherlands, rst started teaching and coordinating, she recounts that she
found it di cult to lead community music teachers to work in a way that empowered communities.
Teachers were focused on the acquisition of skills and found working as collaborators and partners with
families and communities to be a challenge. This didactic approach, according to her, was consistent with
Mexico’s education values in music and in other disciplines, where community problems are frequently not
addressed (Gnade-Muñoz, 2013), even though in each state in Mexico there is a need for greater community
p. 268 dialogue. This need should take account not only of urban poverty and violence (Koonings & Kruijt,
2007), but also of the marginalization of indigenous communities that experience a great deal of
discrimination and racism (Weinberg, 2000). Mexico has more than sixty- ve indigenous communities
speaking at least as many languages (Hidalgo, 2006). Many indigenous communities have little in common
linguistically or culturally with each other. With the large percentage of almost 15 per cent of the nation’s
population, these indigenous communities have posed a challenge to community music programmes where
the dominant form of musical organization is an orchestra or a band. Not surprisingly, indigenous music is
neither su ciently known nor understood by the general population. The intersection between indigenous
cultures and the mainstream of Mexican culture clearly poses a threat to shared meaning as a construct of
national unity, and also to identity and self-determination of indigenous groups. In general, highly
ritualized indigenous ceremonies are publicly held and appreciated, but other aspects of many indigenous
cultures do not nd a space in the teaching of community music.

Figure 14.1
The logo of the Música en Armonía community music project.
The logo of the Música en Armonía community music project.
In September 2014, Fomento Musical held a two-week curso de capacitación (training course) for children’s
p. 269 community choral conductors. Approximately twenty-four community conductors from several di erent
states participated, with at least three of the conductors from indigenous communities. Some of the
conductors came from urban settings where the children were under considerable risk if they spent too
much time out of the house—the risk of becoming victims in the continuing drug war. The goal of the
course was to begin the professional development of community children’s choral teachers, initiate
participants into this project, launch the professional development aspects, and empower choral teachers to
form community children’s choirs or to re-imagine the quality of their existing work with children’s choirs.
Additionally, the course was intended to contribute to the musical, artistic, and pedagogical development of
each participant. During the course, all the community music teachers were expected to share songs from
their region. It became clear that many of the Hispanic teachers had trouble learning songs in indigenous
languages, these languages having no relationship to their own.
The Empowering Song, which began each day, was clearly an approach that was unfamiliar, with its
emphasis on improvisation and bodywork. As the course progressed, the unfamiliarity wore away and
participants became more adventurous, exploring their own vulnerability. One activity in particular elicited
a strong response. I asked one person to volunteer to be in the centre of the room with her eyes closed, and
then the entire group was asked to sing that person’s name. Only singing was expected, and no speaking.
This was a profound experience, and I have found it to be similarly life-changing whenever I have led it.
There is something deeply touching about an entire community producing a kind of vocal symphony of
one’s name. Many of the participants proceeded to experiment with similarly meaningful and connected
performativity upon their return to their own towns and their community choral situations.
American prisons and a fresh community approach
7
In the opening of this chapter, I referred brie y to the prisons in which I teach with Jamie Hillman and
8 9
Emily Howe, my two choral and music education colleagues. The men’s prison is a medium security prison
housing approximately 1500 men, about half of whom have been sentenced to life. The women’s prison is
the only prison in the state of Massachusetts. Both prisons have di erent histories and current realities, but
they are all part of a catastrophic situation a ecting America, which continues to imprison people at a rate
higher than any other country in the world. Current statistics show that with 5 per cent of the world’s
population, the United States has approximately 25 per cent of the world’s prisoners (Drucker, 2011; Loury,

2008). The full scale of the war against the poor and the minority populations of African-Americans and
10
Latinos is evident in the following gures stated by the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP):
p. 270 One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three
black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime [ … ] [ … ] 1 in 100
African American women are in prison [ … ] Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of
juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to
criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal
Justice) [ … ] About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
[ … ] 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent
to prison for drug o enses at 10 times the rate of Whites.
Since 2012, we have been leading groups with a mixture of whites, African-Americans, Latinos and non-
Americans, and a signi cant minority of participants of whom are African American Muslim.
In both prisons, the building of community has vastly di erent challenges. For example, in the women’s
prison, there is a distinct tribal and family structure (Rathbone, 2005). Almost all the women are in
relationships with other women in the prison, and this is openly recognized although not publicly tolerated
by the administration. In our rst session, we saw this notice on the board written by an administrator,
‘Leave your girlfriend troubles outside the door’, exhorting them to give of themselves to the class. The
men’s prison, by comparison, looks down on such relationships, as one of our participants remarked, ‘This
prison consisted [ … ] most recently [of] the most numerous and rejected percentage of informants,
homosexuals, sexual-predators, and many other so called “Weirdos” individuals. As a result [ … ] there is a
11
constant turmoil of judgment, mistrust, separations, and rejections within [ … ] this community.’ When
asked to clarify this comment, the writer said that it was not that he regarded homosexuals in the same
category as weirdoes, but that was how they are regarded in the prison by and large. However, another
prisoner mentioned that the three worst names to be called were ‘homo’, ‘bitch’, and ‘rat’.
The community of the classroom stands in sharp contrast, a dichotomous polarity, to that of the prison
culture. The creative communal process calls for risk-taking as an expression of vulnerability. This
vulnerability was expressed by one man, ‘If we can bleed, then we can be killed. And if we show emotion,
then they know we can be broken.’ Vulnerability is also a serious problem in the women’s prison, where an
alarmingly high number of the women are victims of sexual violence, approximately 60 per cent su er from
12
mental health issues, with a large proportion on psychotropic medication, and a high suicide rate—
probably ve times greater than in the general population and higher than the suicide rate in men’s
13
prisons. The mental health situation in the women’s prison is so pervasive that we are able to observe the
full extent of this problem in the classes, where the toxicity of the interaction is almost palpable.
We have found that leading the work in the prisons using a thematic approach for a single semester allows
for a deep exploration of self within the group. Initially, we used themes taken from songs: ‘I Once Was Lost
but Now Am Found’, from ‘Amazing Grace’; ‘And Neither Have I Wings to Fly’, from ‘O Waly, Waly’; and
‘Remember Me but Ah! Forget My Fate’, from Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’. More recently, we have taken
p. 271 non-song related themes: ‘This Too Shall Pass’, a traditional Persian Su saying; and ‘One Sky, Many
Destinies’, an alteration from a line of the video game Kingdom Hearts. Almost all the songs, songwriting,
bodywork, miniature music theatre work, artwork, and journaling are in dialogue or in contestation with
this theme. For example, one of the men created this piece of art in response to the theme, ‘Remember Me
14
but Ah! Forget My Fate’ (Figure 14.2). This African American prisoner in his thirties created it without
access to paint, solely using a pen.

We have found that the interwoven nature of the arts has been able to provide for multidimensional
expressivity. While song is central, it serves as both a channel and springboard to other art forms. For this
reason, it has now become usual to take visual and theatre artists in to the prisons to work with us. In the
p. 272 spring of 2015, in exploration of the theme ‘One Sky, Many Destinies’, we asked the men to write a song
text in response to the theme, to which one of the men wrote the words cited in Figure 14.3.
Figure 14.2
An illustration in response to the theme ‘Remember Me but Ah! Forget My Fate,’ by an African American
prisoner.
An illustration in response to the theme ʻRemember Me but Ah! Forget My Fate,ʼ by an African American prisoner.
Figure 14.3
A song text written in February 2015 in response to the theme, ‘One Sky, Many Destinies’
A song text written in February 2015 in response to the theme, ʻOne Sky, Many Destiniesʼ
Interpreting his work, he appended, ‘It really made me think about [ … ] how my life can go [ … ] I’ve never
written any music or poetry in my life, so it was a new and uncomfortable experience [ … ] I feel weak,
vulnerable, and helpless [ … ] Every day is a struggle. It’s embarrassing, but I’m more comfortable in the
streets than in a classroom [ … ] I did my best to express that [ … ] but I feel like it correlates [ … ] to the
theme.’
Some of the work transcends themes. In February 2015, one of the men remarked that some of our activities,
such as joining hands in a circle to symbolize and exemplify community, could be regarded as unmanly. The
same young man who noted that there were problems in some of the class activities had this to say:
When someone spends their entire life creating walls that they believe will protect them, the idea
that perhaps they no longer need to stand behind these walls is not only a foreign concept, but it’s
also revolutionary. In fact, the same qualities that make this class di cult, make it impactful [ … ]
In our case, by re/evaluating our own Fears [ … ], we were forced to re/de ned our own individual
p. 273 character. For example, my willingness to perform here [… ], to speak out about the issues that
concern, and to appreciate the sincerity in our most vulnerable moments, Are all aspects that
developed throughout my participation in your class room [ … ] I don’t know a single person who is
not a better individual after experiencing your class [ … ] People become more open minded,
friendly, less self observe [ … ] Most of us spend our entire life [ … ] fading into the shadows of joy [
… ] We’ve lost the ability to project healthy memories, self images, and even relationships. We’ve
lost the ability to trust, feel, and make Ethical or rather Rational decisions [ … ] The creative
15
process that takes place is not the Signing [ … ] it’s the reviewing of our minds, our spirits [ … ] to
give us back the innocence that was once taken from us.
The struggles are so great, the challenges to community so fraught, and identity so di cult to understand,
that the Empowering Song approach attempts to o er leaders and participants to take on the struggle and
move forward.
Palestine, the Arab world—its fractures
The Arab world poses challenges of integration, inclusion, and identity that are perhaps greater than any
other single region. The divisions in the Arab world stem largely from the secret Asia Minor Agreement (also

known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement) of 1916 (Russell & Cohnl, 2012), in which the British and French
colluded to divide the Arab world into British and French areas of in uence. This, in turn, gave rise to the
1917 Declaration by the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour (Schneer, 2010), endorsing the
formation of Israel in a letter to Baron Rothschild and the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. As
a consequence of the 1916 Agreement, parts of the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant were divided into
several separate countries. While the Sykes-Picot Agreement is long gone, understanding this piece of
history is essential to appreciating the present-day fractures in the Arab world. One only needs to consider
that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has declared that one of its key objectives is the reversal of the
16
Sykes-Picot Agreement.
In 1948, the creation of the state of Israel on what had been the British Mandate for Palestine has led to a
deeply divided Palestinian population. A large number of Palestinians live in Jordan, and both Syria and
Lebanon became destinations for eeing Palestinians (Gröndahl, 2003). Many Arab villages in the British
Mandate were absorbed automatically into the Israeli state (Gavish, 2005), with their inhabitants
automatically receiving Israeli citizenship, holding Israeli passports (Haiduc-Dale, 2013). These Arab Israeli
citizens stand in sharp contrast to the Jerusalem Palestinians, many of whom hold Jordanian passports
without rights of residence in Jordan (Al Madfai, 1993), and the residents of the West Bank, who are
e ectively denied freedom of movement outside of the walled enclave, as are the residents of Gaza (Van
p. 274 Esveld, 2012). This deeply divided and segregated world has continued to pose a major challenge to those
who seek to use music to give voice to struggle, to create identity, and to build community.
Community music occurs within numerous institutional, organizational, and informal Palestinian settings.
A full survey of such activities lies outside the scope of this chapter. Rather, I choose to focus on the
Community Heartsong Project that had its genesis in the collaboration between Efroni, a Jewish youth choir,
and Sawa, an Arab one. As at early 2015, the Community Heartsong Project has extended its reach beyond
building bridges with Jewish Israelis to the West Bank with community leaders and children who live in the
Occupied Territories and in refugee camps.
A key gure in the leadership of the Community Heartsong Project is Rahib Haddad, a choral conductor and
community leader in the small Arab town of Shefa-‘Amr in Galilee, not far from Jewish villages and in close
proximity to historic locations such as Nazareth and Jericho. Haddad has sought for years to nd a way to
build community within Shefa-‘Amr between the community music groups he works with, and community
music groups in other parts of Israel and the West Bank. Like the other residents in Shefa-‘Amr, he holds an
Israeli passport, allowing him ease of travel abroad and throughout Israel, but holding this passport also
comes with certain limitations; he is barred from visiting many other Arab countries, even to visit relatives
or for cultural activities. Visiting the West Bank is illegal for Israeli citizens (Shehadeh, 2012). Although this
has been somewhat tolerated by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), visiting Gaza by Israelis is almost
impossible.
Over more than twenty- ve years, Haddad has created three permanent community choirs, Al Baath Arab
Voices of Galilee (an adult choir), the Sawa Choir (a youth choir for teenagers and upper elementary school
age), and the Sawa Children’s Choir (a lower elementary school choir). Although these choirs receive
support from the Convent of the Sisters of Nazareth in Shefa-‘Amr, where they are accommodated; the
17 18
choirs are not religious groups, and the three principal religions of the town—Christian, Druze, and
Sunni Muslim—are represented in the membership.
The impetus for starting the Al Baath Choir arose from Haddad’s feeling that Arab identity could be
conceived and enhanced through singing traditional and contemporary Arab songs. Over these more than
twenty- ve years, the choir has built a signi cant body of Arab choral repertoire. Although the choral
ensemble is atypical in the Arab world, community singing groups are quite common. Haddad’s desire to
establish a community based Arab ensemble is succeeding in creating a choral repertoire that bridges Arab

communal songs with the Western choral canon.
CHS has worked across the Jewish Arab borders for years through creating a relationship between the Jewish
community youth choir, Efroni, and the Sawa Youth Choir. In the early stages, the Sawa Choir collaborated
with the Efroni Choir in a number of concerts and workshops. The question that was frequently asked was
whether such collaborations were peace-building. Both Maya Shavit, the conductor of the Efroni Choir, and
Rahib Haddad and his colleague, Eva De Mayo, assert that the objective of peace between Israelis and
p. 275 Palestinians would not be achieved solely by community music collaborations. Their goal was to build
understanding between the two communities. In some of the workshops, I asked young people what they
thought of such collaborations. An overriding point of view was that they felt a shared meaning, a kind of
adolescent commonality that went past their Palestinian or Israeli identities. A dissenting voice appeared in
a eldwork interview late one night in Jerusalem, during an interview of a young Palestinian singer from the
Sawa Choir. She was highly critical of collaborative activities between the Jewish and Arab choirs, feeling
that Palestinian identity was marginalized and Palestinian nationhood was undermined. We spoke at length
about her two principal objections: that young Palestinians should learn more about their own culture and
history and that should be the main cultural focus; and that collaborations with young Jews does not take
enough account of their opposing destinies. To the latter, she said, ‘When these Jewish people leave school,
they are compelled to join the army, and then they become our enemies. There is nothing we can do about
that, and no amount of collaboration can stop that’. I asked her what she thought was a way forward in
community work between Arabs and Israelis. She thought for a long while, and then said, ‘Yes, continue
what you are doing; it’s better than doing nothing at all. We can’t sit on our hands.’
In 2004, there was a period of civil strife in the town of Shefa-‘Amr resulting in divisions between the
Christian, Druze, and Muslim populations. A domestic dispute led to a murder by a Druze man followed by
considerable violence between the Druze and Arab Christian communities. This civil unrest impelled Rahib
Haddad to start a children’s choir drawn from all three communities. As part of this initiative, funded by a
German foundation, a bus collected children from their homes and brought them to the centre for
rehearsals twice a week. In the initial phase, Rahib Haddad was joined by his colleague, Eva De Mayo, a
Jewish conductor.
Recently, the Community Heartsong Project collaborated with the Edward Said National Conservatory of
Music (ENSCM), which has campuses in Jerusalem, three in the West Bank (Bethlehem, Nablus, and
Ramallah), and in Gaza City. From 2013 through 2015, I conducted workshops with children’s choirs and
with community choral leaders in Jerusalem and the West Bank in collaboration with ENSCM (see Figure
14.4). The feeling of being con ned by the Wall, and of land rights, is felt strongly even by the children and
their leaders with whom I worked, as illustrated in the following example.
The children asked me spontaneously to teach them a song from another country. I chose to teach an
African-American spiritual, ‘Walk Together Children.’ I led them through a simple version of the song, with
the following text:
Walk together children, don’t you get weary (three times)

There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land.
19
A transcript of some of the discussion as transcribed by Carol Frierson-Campbell follows:
p. 276 Someone said, ‘hope.’ Someone else said, ‘if we work together we can accomplish the impossible.’
adq: Let me tell you a story. White people from America came to Africa, and captured black people.
They put them in ships and made them cross the ocean and didn’t give them very much food. And
they made them work as slaves. They took young people, children, etc. they left their land behind.

They missed their land. They were longing for their land, for freedom, for home.
girl: When you say ‘hope’ it’s very important because that’s the only thing that keeps these people
alive. They are depending on hope in their lives because they have nothing else.
adq: Someone said it is like your land [ …] how is it like your land?
girl: How they arrest our kids and our young men for [ … ] because they defend their country. They
arrest them for nothing. These kids are in jail and they are depending on hope because they have
nothing.
adq: Behind every song there is a great story. Songs can give you hope, songs can give you a way of
feeling good, can o er you ideas. That’s what’s happening in this song.
I had not expected a discussion on the provenance of the song, but it made sense to engage in some
re ection. It was profoundly moving to witness the children’s articulation of their dispossession, spring-
boarded by the communal African American spiritual, bringing to mind the parallels of democratic
exclusion su ered by African Americans and Palestinians (Kook, 2002)
Figure 14.4
The discussion about Walk Together Children on the Birzeit campus (West Bank) of the Edward Said
National Conservatory of Music.
The discussion about Walk Together Children on the Birzeit campus (West Bank) of the Edward Said National Conservatory of
Music.
p. 277
Closing commentary
The Empowering Song approach, born in the oppressive context of American prisons, and possessed of
general music education approaches, has developed into a model for community music where social justice,
enquiry, personal transformation, and community bonding are sought. Through this approach, I have
20
witnessed numerous acts of personal change, deep, irreversible, and compelling. The three illustrative
portraits have varying challenges, but they all exist within political and social oppression that community
music can, and must, seek to change.
Reflective questions
1. To what extent can access to participation in music be seen as a human right?
2. How can conventional music education approaches be re-imagined to work in alternative community
settings?
Key Sources
Boal, A., & Jackson, A. (2006). The Aesthetics of the Oppressed. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC
Cohen, M. L., & Silverman, M. (2013). Personal growth through music: Oakdale Prisonʼs community choir and community music
for homeless populations in New York City. In K. K. Veblen, D. J. Elliott, S. J. Messenger, & M. Silverman (Eds.), Community Music
Today. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

de Quadros, A. (2015). Case illustration: I once was lost but now am found: Music and embodied arts in two American prisons. In
S. Cli & P. Camic (Eds.), Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health and Wellbeing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Notes
1. Catherine Roma has been teaching for several years in the Warren prison in Ohio. Her work, and that of others, is
summarized in this 2014 article by Don Lee in Chorus America: https://www.chorusamerica.org/conducting-
performing/finding-freedom-through-song
2. I was a student at the Or -Institut of the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, in 1979–1980, and I was struck by the open-
ended and multidimensional qualities of the Or approach. I explored this approach not only in general classroom music
in Australian elementary and secondary schools, but also in a number of community music initiatives in the Australian
state of Victoria.
3. See http://snfm.conaculta.gob.mx/ for a description of the mission, structure, and activities of SNFM.
4. Translated as ʻThe National System of Musical Developmentʼ.
p. 278 5. Translated as ʻNational Council for Culture and the Artsʼ.
6. Translated as ʻUnit of Community Music Groupsʼ.
7. Jamie Hillman is an assistant professor at Gordon College in Massachusetts. He began teaching in the menʼs prison while
completing his doctoral programme at Boston University and has continued a er completing his degree and taking up an
assistant professorship at Gordon College.
8. Emily Howe began working in the programme a er completing her Master of Sacred Music degree at Boston University
and has continued while completing her PhD programme in ethnomusicology.
9. For a more extended portrait of the prison work, see de Quadros (2015).
10. NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet: http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
11. All the quotations from the prison writings have preserved the original punctuation, capitalization, and variations of
spellings by what is commonly held as correct.
12. Blue Mass Group: http://bluemassgroup.com/2009/07/60-of-the-inmates-at-mci-framingham-su er-from-mental-illness-

one-commited-suicide-last-weekend/
13. Although this report, Female Incarceration and Suicide, is particular to New York, there is no reason to assume that the
figures for the rest of the nation would be substantially di erent. Retrieved from:
https://nyunewsdoc.wordpress.com/alternatives-to-prison/female-incarceration-and-suicide/.
14. The narratives, reflective work, artwork and song texts from imprisoned men and women are provided with suppression
of their names.
15. He means ʻsingingʼ.
16. See Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in this YouTube clip calling for the end of the Sykes-Picot borders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1uLIcCwsn0#t=1m7s
17. Most of the Christians in the town are Greek Catholic.
18. The Druze are a monotheistic religious community based in Ismailism and a part of Shia Islam.
19. Dr Frierson-Campbell is an associate professor of music and coordinator of music education at William Paterson
University in New Jersey.

20. Schechner (2002) describes this kind of re-living through art as ʻtwice-behavedʼ behaviour.
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