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TraditionFolklore is a product of a people’s culture. Stories and songs are passed through generations to preserve the previous impressions of a community. These can be melodies, ideas, rhythms, stories or movements. Dancing and singing are age-old human pastimes. They are timeless. By participating in the traditional arts here in Ireland, we can share a moment of community with our ancestors (the people who lived here before us). Though removed in time, we are connected by place. A song can act as a time machine; or, as composer Michael McGlynn has said, songs exist “out of time”. One of the reasons we enjoy the traditional arts relates to our constant search for identity. We crave a connection to people whom we perceive to be similar. Through the traditional arts, we can connect with people who are absent, who are gone, who have said what they wanted to say. By singing folk songs, we can feel a connection with such people in the past. Often, we pursue this connection backwards in time while ignoring or suppressing the social need to engage with others in the present, who might live and work and move around us every day.1 When we see artworks from another era, we can begin to imagine the culture of those peoples through their works of art. Therefore, we can have a more complex and personal understanding of the people. If these people come from our own place, we often feel we can better understand ourselves. Lore also has a narrative power when it takes the form of story and song (but can also be abstract) in that it allows us each to have an interpretation and thus add to the story as it is passed onto the next recipient. In this way, we are contributing to our own story, our own identity. Connecting PeopleIf we can participate in our own folklore, we are creating it in community with others. In practice, the artist constantly views the world around herself and, through imagination and a process of digesting the events of the day, produces work that represent the time she lives in. This way, the artist encodes the experiences of her own time. If we participate, we can also be a part of this process of encoding our own culture, actively making our own traditions. On this point, I’d like to lay out a few of the fascinating ideas I’ve come across in my recent studies of philosophers John Dewey (“Art as Experience”, New York: Minton, Balch & Company, 1934.) and Maxine Greene (“Releasing the imagination: essays on education, the arts, and social change”, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1995.). It’s not that easy to participate in works of art - especially contemporary art forms. In the 1930s, Dewey wrote about the energy a person needs to apprehend art. It is not enough to merely walk through a museum. To have an aesthetic experience requires a personal commitment, an emotional and personal conviction, an effort to identify with the artwork. Maxine Greene refers to this as a “mind-opening” effect. Only when we ask questions of ourselves can we be receptive to a piece of art, a song, a painting. Greene believes that art opens us up to new ways of seeing the world. She advocated for “aesethic education” as an approach to open the minds of those people living at the margins of society, in order to present new possibilities for them of imagining new ways to exist in the world. If so, we need certain things before we can engage. We need a reason to engage. We need a physical space in which we are comfortable enough to relate to the artwork, on our terms. It’s difficult to force people to connect to a performance if they are initially disinterested or disengaged; this may be as a personal response to the ideas presented, the space being used, or indeed the form being employed (ballet, sculpture, folksong). Identity & the Other Dewey writes that artworks can help us to appreciate and understand “otherness” and people who are outside of (or marginalised from) our own society. Dewey described art as “a continuity of experience” between people from different worlds; through a felt, imagined connection of individuals removed in time and place. Art can therefore be the source of a relationship with someone or something unfamiliar (a culture, person, idea). After an artistic experience, we can learn to see with someone else’s eyes, to hear with her ears. In “Philosophy of Right”, Hegel wrote that each of us gains validity and finds satisfaction in others. In this way, we are very much social creatures. Hegel describes how individuals (the “particular person”) actually need others to accomplish their goals - whether in the context of work, friendship, family or love. In his writings on civil society, John Keane reminds us of the inherit tensions of a pluralist, multiculturalist society. So we are presented with a picture of contemporary society as necessarily social yet inevitably conflicting. Dewey wrote that “[moralities] are, or tend to become, consecrations of the status quo, reflections of custom, reinforcements of the established order”. I think this means that rules and standards can become engrained in culture to the extent that they end up being outdated. However, Dewey believed the artist can generate meaning in the world beyond the evidence we can actually observe (eg. generalised ideas of right and wrong). An artist’s ideas about the future come from her “imaginative vision”; in Dewey’s words, “change in the climate of the imagination is the precursor” to real-life changes.2 Representation Through ArtSo we as citizens can unleash our own imaginations as to what might be possible in our own worlds. Museums play a important role in this process in providing a hushed atmosphere for personal reflection on artefacts and artworks. Of course, lots of people don’t feel comfortable in museums, so we must ask: for whom are such institutions a barrier to seeing the world in a different way? In recent decades, artists have accepted that, by experiencing art in a more comfortable atmosphere, the audience is more open to the ideas within. Otherwise, when artists are obsessed with more traditional modes of cultural dissemination, people who are deemed to be uneducated/uninitiated can feel excluded from the process. Thus, an “authentic invitation” can disentangle an artwork from the prestige or prejudice of its context. This is very important for any artist, or any innovator attempting to introduce a new idea to any audience. So how can we extend this authentic invitation? How can we engage citizens in a genuine dialogue about human values? Dewey believed that art gives us the capacity to sympathise, to identify with others beyond a relation to the past, and can serve as a way to see and imagine possibilities in the present (as well as the future). By this reasoning, music could be seen as a powerful approach to fostering ‘community amongst any group of people, especially people who are already connected by place. 1) I think we choose to sing these songs because there’s a security in that distance, and this temporal abstraction keeps us safe. Although the function of traditional music in Ireland is highly social, we operate in a modernist society; one in which “hell is other people” (“L’enfer, c’est les autres”, Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre, 1944). Perhaps the cultural shift that occurred in Europe throughout the 20th century, alongside the boom in interpersonal technological relationships, has rendered incompatible our own understanding of social function of traditional music and song in Ireland today. Of course, to appeal to contemporary audiences, the traditional arts must evolve although this might seem to contradict a purist’s idea of tradition.
2) The infrastructure of statehood illustrates one model of conflict management on a large scale. An authority chooses its citizenry, which it protects with laws and international norms. If there are citizens, by definition there must be non-citizens. The state owes little to no obligation in law to these alien non-citizens. The state may act as it wishes towards stateless individuals, who exist without an authority to defend them. For citizens to retain the legal protection they enjoy, they/we must abide by the rules and laws of the state. If not, they/we risk ex-communication. In recent history, this has been documented in Guantánamo Bay and in refugee “camps” (so-called as per Giorgio Agamben’s theory on homo sacer) constructed at Europe’s borders.
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This blog was published on the Musicians Without Borders website this week about my first training course on the Music Bridge programme in Derry in January 2016. Click the quote to read the full article. From this, I learned that I’m not as open as I thought I was. I’m not as open-minded as I hope to be. I am more judgemental and I am less free than I thought. Front Line Defenders asked me to write a piece on the recent death of Rebecca Masika, a human rights defender from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I met her briefly in 2013 while I was working with Front Line Defenders in Dublin. She was such a strong character and had already suffered so much at that point in her struggle to advocate on behalf of the people she represented. She passed away on 2 February 2016 following a heart attack. This blog was originally published on the Front Line Defenders website.  I met Rebecca Masika in my very first week of work in Front Line Defenders (FLD). Two moments stand out in particular; one involved her voice, and the other her energy. During the Seventh Platform in October 2013, Mama Masika spoke to FLD about what had happened to her family back home in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I could not believe her courage and the conviction she showed in that moment. Her belief that we should hear the details of the violence that had been inflicted on her husband was so strong that she spoke through a flow of tears. We listened to the music of her native tongue as an interpreter translated her story into words we could understand. But I knew that I could never fully comprehend what she had been through. And yet, here she was: in Dublin advocating for woman who were suffering just as she had, defending their rights and doing her best to protect them from rape and murder. The other moment I remember was when she danced. To mark the end of the Platform, FLD hosted a party in central Dublin with gorgeous food, abundant drink and excellent music. As the traditional Irish rhythms took hold of the room, Mama Masika absorbed it all and moved to the beat. And she did not stop dancing all night. Her diminutive stature only made her groove all the more contagious. Her smile lit up that room as the jigs and reels continued into the wee hours. Of all the human rights defenders I've encountered at the Dublin Platform and during my time working at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, Rebecca Masika's story remains with me. She was an inspiration because she shared her sorrow and her joy with us. With her words, she was an honest advocate for the families who needed her help. Her energy was so human - so bright and so dark - and I feel lucky that she shared that with us. I wrote the following blog shortly after I met her in 2013: Last month, I met Rebecca Masika from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) while she was visiting Dublin Front Line Defenders' Seventh Platform. The ordeal to which she has been subjected by paramilitary groups and the resultant stigma affecting her extended family is nothing short of horrifying. As a result of her personal experiences, Mama Masika has dedicated her life to supporting survivors of rape in eastern Congo.
I see her scarred face on a billboard in Blackrock D.A.R.T. station during my daily commute, and hearing her testimonial in person was remarkably touching. It has prompted questions on the role of human rights law in the daily lives of those who suffer the most. The first sobering point she made was that the DRC is not a country anymore. She believes that what the international community perceives to be the Democratic Republic of Congo is merely an idea. This idea is projected outside of the DRC, but she suggests that no governable entity exists within the ravaged, anarchic territory where she lives. Second, she described a terrifying moment when paramilitaries asked her whether the white people with whom she was associating (referring to organisations like Front Line Defenders) would come to DRC to help her. Would the white people come when they rape her? When they rape the women in her care? When they kill her? This hostility appears to be rooted in the view of the human rights movement as a direct challenge to the authority of both governments and paramilitary forces alike. These attitudes provoke consideration of the tangible impact of human rights law on Mama Masika's life. By definition, human rights law examines the relationship between the citizen and government, and necessarily challenges the authority of the state to address any imbalance. In a democracy, any challenge to the government's authority can be construed as a “threat to national security”. As the source of human rights law's authority is principally international, its effectiveness relies on diplomatic, inter-state pressure. The human rights movement exists at grassroot level, but its legitimacy is far from global. Its credibility is challenged across the world because of the perceived threats to authority. However, the pro-establishment narrative of “threats” cannot be a definitive one; security is relative to the political priorities of any state. Thus, depending on economic and cultural interests, some states prioritise human rights and others do not. (Another debate is whether the human rights model – so connected to European liberal democratic values – is actually suitable for global difussion when it blatantly conflicts with widely-held socio-cultural beliefs outside of Europe.) Peaceful promotion of certain behaviours is enough to give rise to forceful governmental resistance. Frankly, in a system of majoritarian democracy, the state is obliged to oppose such challenges to its authority where they might compromise the will of “the people”. Therefore, it is often difficult for individuals to challenge official decisions in cases where the majority – as represented in mainstream politics – appears to oppose it. To relate this back to Mama Masika's scenario, it seems practically impossible for rights-based ideals to filter into a lawless, human chaos like the DRC in 2013. Without a functioning government, human rights are impracticable because the protection of human rights depends on a model of citizenship. In the vacuum of statelessness, existing without meaningful citizenship, the law ceases to be significant and human rights are non-existent. The human rights movement does have legal significance in a European liberal democracy, though – due to conceptions of national sovereignty – the interpretation of those rights will inevitably vary. Human rights have been embedded into these legal systems, but there are many states across the world where this is not the case. Unfortunately, the current rights-based mechanisms existing in Europe (replete with their many, many flaws) cannot manifest without a foundational infrastructure. As Rebecca Masika suggests, an idea of democratic citizenship is not strong enough; what is needed to protect people from oppressive authority is representative structural stability. Even then, democratic structures will represent only those valued by the mainstream cultural norms, necessitating the discrimination of some in favour of the protection of “valuable”, obedient citizens. I desperately hope Mama Masika can continue with her humbling, life-saving work. I hope the human rights movement continues to trickle into every possible crevasse long enough to congeal into a sustainable and substantive system of protection. Hopefully then, humans will have the capacity to invoke the protection they have been granted under international law in the 21st century. I hope so. |
