Blog #1: Introduction
Hello! I am very excited to be starting this project, and I’m grateful that you are here to be a part of it. In this post I’ll be providing some background and context for what’s to come. This project represents a culmination of many of my interests, so I’m excited to share what will hopefully be meaningful insights from this inquiry and experience. Knowing that you may be here out of mutual interest in these subjects, I envision this project also as the beginning of a conversation which I invite you to be a part of. Feel free to use the comment feature on this blog or to reach out directly via email (benjaminray2@outlook.com) to share any comments, suggestions, or questions that come up as the project develops.
Goal & Core Questions
The goal behind this project is to discern and articulate some valuable insights about how music can function to facilitate personal, social, political, and/or environmental reconciliation in ways that support the building and sustaining of meaningful community and increase capacity for collective action.
That’s a big subject, so I’ve broken it down to a few core questions I’m focused on here:
- How can music facilitate reconciliation in the context of diversity and division?
- How can music contribute to actions of personal, social, and environmental healing?
- How can music open hearts and minds to more life-giving ways of being?
So, what will I be doing?
There are three primary components to this project. First, I will research existing scholarship at the intersection of music and reconciliation. My hope with this research is to identify and share few key theories that may provide helpful frameworks through which to begin exploring the questions I’ve posed here.
Second, I will be travelling to the Taizé Community, an ecumenical monastery in Southeastern France, to live and practice with the community for two weeks this July. Taizé has long been an international beacon of peace and reconciliation whose primary practice is musical prayer and meditations, and I was fortunate to experience a pilgrimage to Taizé through the Chaplain’s Office at Davidson College a few years ago. I am deeply excited and grateful for the opportunity to return this Summer to participate in the life of the community and to experience and observe their practice of music and reconciliation. I will be exploring more about Taizé’s practice of musical meditation more later on in this blog, but if you’re interested to know more about the community you can head over to https://www.taize.fr/en_article6526.html where you’ll find several interesting articles about their history and vocation.
Upon returning from Taizé, I will begin the final component of this project which will be to synthesize my research findings with reflections from my experience at Taizé to share the most meaningful insights to take away from this project. I also hope to share suggested practical applications of these insights in the form of action items that musicians like myself and/or larger arts and cultural organizations could implement to better support the work of reconciliation.
Why does this matter?
I think it is worth sharing that the reason I feel called to explore these particular questions at this time is because I am writing in a context of social, ecological, and political crisis. This inquiry is not only a matter of intellectual interest but a crucial opportunity to seek ways I as a musician, scholar, and human being can most fruitfully respond to the crises we face. While there are many issues worthy of our attention and myriad ways of framing them, I would identify the three crises I am most concerned about with this project as (1) climate change and environmental degradation, (2) an epidemic of loneliness and crisis of belonging, and (3) social and political polarization. You can click on each issue to view a report on each issue for more information in case you’re curious.
With this project I am not seeking to share or argue for particular views on these issues, but I believe strongly that if we are to successfully respond to such crises we must do so together. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it, our choices truly are “chaos or community.” As we seek to reknit social fabric that was lost during the pandemic and polarization of recent years, I think that music may have a special role to play in helping folks come together and build meaningful community across our differences, and I fervently hope that this project might provide some helpful insights toward that end.
Now let’s get this going!! I’ll be posting results from my first dive into the research next week, and meanwhile feel free to reach out with any questions and share this page with anyone who might also be interested!
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank some of the folks who have made this project possible. Thank you to all of my mentors, especially Dr. Rachel Pang, Rob Spach, and René Houtrides for their particular support of this project. Thank you also to the Jakab Family and The Marks Center for Career Services and Entrepreneurship at Juilliard whose grant support is enabling my travel to Taizé. And of course, thank you to all my family and friends for your continued trust, guidance, and love every step of the way.