Output details

Music in war, music for peace: A review article

This output represents an overview of music in conflict and music for conflict resolution. For the first time, it provides a concise appraisal of relevant issues and publications in ethnomusicology and in cognate disciplines. With specific reference to the ‘peace process’ in Ireland it shows how music occupies an ambivalent position, being used both to promote inter-denominational dissent as well as to advance inter-communal assent. Here, it focuses on the importance of Irish traditional music for encoding a stereotypical interpretation of Irish identity. It examines the ways in which a shared tradition has now become exclusively associated with a single community, Irish nationalists. Significantly, it shows how Irish traditional music has become commodified and politicized to present a monochrome reading of Irishness at a local and a global level. Although not originally intended, it also demonstrates how music has been used to subvert the central principles of the Belfast Agreement (1998), undermining the aspirations towards inclusiveness and tolerance in a polarized context.

The output shows how a national example has international resonance. Focusing on two publications that represent music in war and music for peace, it critically reviews scholarly representations of music in specific conflicts. Based upon ten years of relevant research, it innovatively advances a hermeneutic approach to music and conflict where ethnomusicology provides a durable framework for experiencing, analyzing and interpreting pertinent concerns. Crucially, the article argues that ethnomusicology allows for moments of ‘distantiation’ in the hermeneutic circle, a detour into the study of music and conflict at an international level to understand music and conflict at a national level. As an example of ‘applied ethnomusicology’, it also assesses critically the impact of musical advocacy in war zones where ethnomusicologists have sometimes studied violence and suffering for scholarly advancement, and with ethical impunity.