Music & Peacebuilding

This interview with Dr. Mica Estrada explores her work in researching belonging, social identity, and kindness. Beginning with an exploration of impostor phenomena, we first explore stories about Donna Hicks’s direct experience at being affirmed and welcomed. Returning to Estrada’s research, we examine the impact of Dr. Kellman and the development of a social integration model of self-efficacy, identity, and values. This model has ...

This is the first in a two-part series on dignity, belonging, awe, humility, kindness, and identity. In this first episode, we spend time with Dr. Donna Hicks to discuss the magic of dignity language, a South African heritage of Mandela Consciousness and Ubuntu, and expansions of the self through pathways of humility, vulnerability, and awe. 

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown C...

Part two of the conversation with Dr. Nina Kraus examines how we find our sense of belonging within our sonic worlds. Speaking of how sound connects us, we enter dialogues about modulations of harmony, synchrony, the power of singing, and how musical training may make us more emotionally sensitive to harmonic cues within human voice. Turning to bilingualism, we examine gains of bilingual abilities, including the grouping of auditor...

In this two-part series with Dr. Nina Kraus we examine the neuroscience of our hearing brains, exploring how we make meaning from our sonic worlds. In episode 1, we look at the afferent and efferent journeys as our brains construct meaning from sonic experience. Examining reading, we understand how reading is powered by the strength of our recognition of frequency, harmonics, FM sweeps, and other ingredients. In Episode 2, we explo...

Exploring the research of Batja Mesquita and other cultural psychologists and social psychologists, this episode examines how emotions are enacted between humans. Challenging the US-centric worldview that emotions are only within an individual, Mesquita notes that emotions are continuously enacted within culture and relationships. Our podcast contrasts differences in Japanese orientations with amae, omoiyuri, and haji or shame. Dra...

This episode explores the work of Taína Asili, her album Resiliencia, and the many voices that inspired her work in this album. As we understand notions of belonging, we explore Puerto Rican heritage, alternative voices of punk culture, language of re-membering, and the work of dismantling frameworks of scarcity to find deeper forms of belonging to the land and each other. Exploring the work of Sophia Smart, Leah Penniman, Sonia Re...

What does it mean to belong? This question and other fascinating questions on belonging will be explored in season four of the music and peacebuilding podcast. Our topics will include musical reclamations, musical identities, the neuroscience of sound and belonging, the psychology of our emotional lives, belonging and refugee choirs, peacebuilding, and the reparative work of world music drumming. In studying belonging we might sing...

This is the second in a two-episode series exploring the legacy of Daisaku Ikeda and the practice of dialogue. In this episode, we ask how wisdom, courage, and compassion is lived and practiced through music and dialogue. In particular, we look at how genuine dialogue might bring out the best in ourselves as we look to bring out the best in the other. Together with Olivier Urbain, Kevin Maher, and Anri Tanabe, we explore how this i...

This is a two-episode series exploring the legacy of Daisaku Ikeda and the practice of dialogue through interconnectedness and a human revolution of courage, wisdom, and compassion. In this episode, we explore the legacy and history of Johan Galtung, Ikeda, Toda, Makiguchi, and Oliver Urbain’s groundbreaking work to explore music and peacebuilding. Exploring histories and models of violence, we come to a clearer, interdependent und...

This second episode of a two-part series with Kiku Day explores shakuhachi soundings of cultural translation and peacebuilding. With the famous honkyoku piece, Tamuke, we encounter the problems of cultural translation and how a piece about passages has been problematically recast as a requiem. The episode ends with a discussion of ryu or localized schools and the sounding of the robuki wave during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Music &...

This first episode of a two-part series with Kiku Day explores shakuhachi history and how the shakuhachi is taught and learned. Central to shakuhachi are traditions of flow and the use of silence or absence through the language of ma. Recordings from Wild Ways are generously provided by the composer, performer, and record label. 15ZWATlBgcYPn7lBZWgq

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabet...

Bringing together Dan Shevock, Jon Rudy, and Tyné Angela Freeman, this is a reflective episode about the first three years of this podcast. Exploring notions of story, spirituality, theoretical framework, and the notion of a lived walk, this is a slow, expansive, and reflective move through the first three years of podcasting. Join our celebration!

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabeth...

Samul nori represents a modern percussion genre of four things - the changgo, buk, k’kwaenggwari , and ching. Originally known as p’ungmul and nongak this genre was transformed as dynamic as it entered concert spaces. Comprised of karak that dynamically shift weight and feel, this genre represents the balance of Yin and Yang and alignments with hohŭp, or the breath. Katherine In-Young Lee investigates the rhythmic form of Yŏngnam n...

In this podcast, we take a tour with Dr. Brent Talbot on Talbot and Mantie’s research into American collegiate a cappella singing through the lens of agency, performativity, and leisure. Our performances of gender, sexuality, and identity are often rooted within larger frameworks and can be liberated from these frameworks in exploring new ways of being through musical practices. We close this two part series with the replay of a po...

In this podcast, we take a tour with Dr. Brent Talbot Balinese gamelan  through the lens of agency and performativity. Exploring diverse cultures of Bali and the US, we ask questions of how we construct agency and stories of our performances in collectivist and individualistic contexts. We take the time to explore Talbot’s resource, Gending Rare and the work of Made Taro.  While US notions of agency assume individualistic contexts,...

Wendy Kroeker explores her research on peacebuilding and conflict resolution in the Philippines and the island of Mindanao. Exploring the root causes of violence, we examine histories of colonialism impacting Moro, Lumad, and the Filipino residents. The podcast examines notions of transgenerational trauma, group identity, and retutoring the body through the practice of dialogue.  Kroeker holds the possibility of the Tinikling dance...

Masayo Ishigure is a world-renowned performer of the Japanese koto. This conversation explores the legacies of Tadao Sawai, Kazue Sawai, Michio Miyagi, and Japanese traditions of composing for the koto. Exploring notions of wabi-sabi, the Meiji period, and hogaku, this podcast looks at the ethical demands of cross-cultural composition. We open up fundamental questions about how a culture changes and evolves while remaining rooted t...

Drawing upon the input of 20 activist musicians, Dr. Juliet Hess wrote a book about building curricula that support noticing, naming, and coming to voice. Building from Paulo Freire’s understandings from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Hess offers a curriculum that asks students to construct songs, discuss soundscapes, and notice and name the structures that surround our expressions of music. Exploring the lessons of James Hwang, Li...

The music of the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan offers opportunities to explore the importance of poetry, rhythmic flexibility, and sacred space within wellness and healing. Dr. Benjamin Koen is a leader in medical ethnomusicology who has written texts and articles exploring Maddâh or Maddoh and the practice of this sung poetry as an expression that promotes psychological flexibility for new perspectives of healing. This episode exp...