NEW YORK — When John Lennon released “Give Peace a Chance” on the fourth of July 1969, he gave to the world not only an anthem in protest of the conflict in Vietnam, but what is still perhaps the most famous peace song of all time. Much of the lyrics during the verses is hard to make out – it was recorded, after all, in a bustling hotel room in Montreal, Quebec, during Lennon and Ono’s “Bed-in” honeymoon. But that does nothing to take away from the sheer power and simplicity of the famous chorus: “All we are saying is give peae a chance.”
In a world rife with military aggression, music seems to have the potential to contribute to peace and conflict resolution. An extensive 2010 study exploring the attitudes and beliefs of musician-activists regarding the role of music in community engagement, found that ‘current approaches to conflict resolution will benefit from an increased awareness of how music can be used to foster healthy relations between individuals and within a community.’
Yet the question regarding the relation between music and peace is by no means a simple one: it is fraught with difficulty. Certainly, as we know from the songs of Lennon, Bob Dylan and many others, music is able to speak the language of peace. What allows music to do this is its uncanny ability to communicate directly, immediately as it were with our deepest longings, with the self at its most primordial and vulnerable. To appreciate the relationship, the internal, even essential connection between music and social harmony we need to understand something about music and the self more basically. If music has the capacity to foster peace, to help overcome, or heal the pain associated with conflict, it is because music is dialogical: a dialogue – an improvised dialogue within, among and between selves as this radical openness.
But here is also where matters can become complicated, because the primordial self is also characterized by aggressive strains, and music is well suited to express and even perhaps sharpen such instinctual drives. If music can unite, it can also divide. There is a diffuse and general tendency to suppose that music is especially adapted to peace and non-violence. But such an assumption is simply unsustainable. Can we forget the scene in Apocalypse Now, when the Americans led by Robert Duvall’s character descend on the Vietnamese village to the strains of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyrie”? And certainly, there is nothing fictional about this when you have a good song playing in the background during a raid. Kosovo Albanians employed music videos to get their message across, creating national identity while preparing for war. In the Balkans, music was explicitly used to the Cetniks would set up loudspeakers and play ‘turbofolk’ at a high volume, sometimes for extended periods of time, before, during, or after shelling.’
Music speaks to the whole of man; and if the past is any guide, then we must admit that man is a warring creature, as much as he is a creature that longs for peace and reconciliation. It has been said that war is a drug – and indeed the same may be said for music, and certain forms of musical experience. Music, it is well known, has an intoxicating power. The rush of battle and the rush provided by certain kinds of music can be and are used to enhance or augment one another. This capacity that music possesses to effectively alter a person’s state of consciousness, to induce a kind of trance-like state, is a phenomenon that needs to be more fully grasped.
It is often said, following Alfred North Whitehead, that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. When it comes to musical education this is certainly true. Plato famously stresses the importance of music for the auxiliary class, that part of society which is charged with protection and exemplifies the virtues of the warrior – namely courage, camaraderie, etc. At the same time there were certain musical scales that Plato would not allow in his ideal state because they were harmful, as far as their influence on the auxiliaries was concerned. Too much and the wrong kind of music could ‘tear out the sinews of the soul’ and leave the warrior weak and effeminate. Plato does not want to safeguard music because it will help generate peace but because it can instill the appropriate virtues in the military class, whose job is ultimately fighting, defending, and protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
We might also mention in passing the importance of music in the life of the so-called prophetic guilds or bands during the earliest period of Hebrew prophecy. These bands of prophets would roam the countryside and with timbrel, lyre, and flute, they would work themselves up into a state of ecstasy. At that stage, when prophecy was a collective endeavor, we might also add that there was also an interest in energizing a movement towards political independence (from the Philistines). Music here is related to divinely inspired, prophetic ecstasy. Its aim is not peace, either politically or spiritually, but renewal, political rebirth perhaps. It is undoubtedly an expression of hope, confidence in the power of and potential for transformation through religious revival.
What must we conclude from the above? Surely no other conclusion is possible than that music is not inherently, or essentially peaceful: “groups or individuals who want to create or maintain conflicts have often made good use of music to further their agenda.”
Music is a dialogical event, a kind of improvised conversation between selves that have agreed to participate in a shared language, a shared world of meaning. Harmony is not simply an aesthetic conjunction of tones, it is not only created – harmony is – but the “I” is only possible in and through the “We”.
Music does not necessarily contribute to peace or the suspension of our aggressive drives. But as the folk singer, Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton) says in the new movie about the early Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown (2024), ‘A good song can only do good.’ There is no less a need today for songs that can do good, that can lead to conflict transformation, and foster peace and justice – precisely because music can just as easily be used for very different or even opposite ends.
This brings me to the new song, “Children of Abraham,” by YoBe, which is part of a long tradition of peace songs (on Spotify and YouTube). The lyrics of the energetic chorus, sung in Arabic, are ‘Salam alaikum’ – which translates to ‘Peace be upon you.’ The title of the song is a reminder that that Judaism, Christianity and Islam do not simply agree in worshipping one God, but that that they worship the same one God: that is, the God that revealed Himself to Abraham as recorded in the Book of Genesis. Jews, Christians and Muslims are indeed all children of Abraham. Sometimes we need to be reminded of what all already know – that we are all brothers, and sisters – and, to quote Matthew 25:40: “That which you do to the least of these you do to me.”
If it is true that a good song can only do good, then YoBe’s “Children of Abraham” can only do good – and that is the most one can ask of any song.
*
Sam Ben-Meir, PhD, is an assistant adjunct professor of philosophy at City University of New York, College of Technology.