Music & Peacebuilding

Theodore Levin has a lifetime of scholarship in studying music, culture, and spirituality of Central Asia and Siberia. His book on Tuvan Singing opens new understandings of melodies of timbre and musical relations with ecology and the natural world. This episode draws together a rich conversation on hospitality, mimesis, sonic painting, intertwined listening, and the violence of uprooted imaginations.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

Dr. Jeffery Long explores delicate balance, love, longing, devotion, intimacy, and compassion in Hindu texts. Beginning with the story of Ushas and the arrival of dawn from the Rigveda, we journey to the dance of Shiva and Shakti and understandings of love and longing within Radha and Krishna. As we explore love, we encounter Bhakti and Bhajan, and the wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh and Mahatma Gandhi.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

This conversation with Sandeep Das explores the influence of Yo-Yo Ma, the generosity of musical service and Dehli to Damascus. This centers on the notion of incompleteness, shared heritages of poetry, maqams, and the unique stories that inform a wisdom of compassion. We enter deep notions of “surrender” in a bhajan beloved by Mahatma Gandhi and the HUM ensemble’s musical realization of surrender, longing, balance, and cyclical hope.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

Coming in January 2022, season 3 on "Silk Roads of Peace." Season 3 of the Music & Peacebuilding podcast explores Silk Roads of peace, interviewing musicians, ethnomusicologists, and authors about music and peacebuilding along historical silk roads. In this season, our curiosity travels through cultures in India, Uzbekistan, Russia, China, Japan, Lebanon, Turkey, Indonesia, and much more. In studying diverse heritage and cultures, we might illumine a deeper understanding of who we are and imagine acts of restoration and repair that are informed by the beauty of our diversity.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

Dr. Elizabeth Dalton is an expert on stress, health behaviors, and how our beliefs impact our use of coping mechanisms. Together with Dr. Tomás Estrada, we explore research on stress and how a research-informed understanding may lead to healthy approaches to peace and social-emotional learning. We close by examining recent research on mindfulness and how mindfulness mediates stress and opens space for the vulnerability, uncertainty, and intellectual stretching needed for creativity and problem-solving.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

Tyné Angela Freeman’s work spans songwriting, ethnomusicology, recording, and authorship. This podcast explores her album and text by the title of “The Sky is Deeper Than the Sea” to discuss questions of trauma, transcendent hope, history, love and resilience. We also explore her earlier work of cross-cultural bridge-building and her research on Mamie Smith. Resting on a profound belief in hope, Freeman explores the reconciliation of traumatic histories through evocative approaches to story and time.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

This podcast explores notions of dignity, home, identity and collaborative music making with Renae Timbie. As the third and final podcast in a series on Compassionate Music Teaching, Karin Hendricks writes that Renae Timbie has an “instinctual ability to connect deeply with people no matter who they are, and no matter their worldview.” This podcast enters that conversation with Timbie, exploring her work with multicultural and refugee choirs and the search for home and identity across diverse cultures.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

This 2nd of the Compassionate Music Teaching Series explores Afro-Centric musical traditions, Samba Reggae, and the importance of empathy in music teaching and learning with Marcus Santos. Santos is a native of Bahia, Brazil who commits his life to the study, teaching, and performance of Afro-Brazilian music and heritage. His network titled, Grooversity has built from traditions of Samba Reggae performance as a time-space for social change. As an episode of laughter, joy, and curiosity this episode explores the embodied joy and empathetic practice of Marcus Santos as is profiled by Karin Hendricks’ book Compassionate Music Teaching.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

This episode is the first of a three-part series exploring Dr. Karin Hendricks’ book on Compassionate Music Teaching. In this series, we will follow the profiles within the book to encounter lived practices of relationship, identity, community, voice, empathy, and dignity in music education. In this first episode, we explore Hendricks’ research on Suzuki, Steve Massey’s legacy of community, music, and leadership, Brian Michaud’s joy and curiosity, and the patient question-driven instruction of Dorothy Delay. This episode also contains a special treat with a tribute by Wynton Marsalis in honor of Steve Massey.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.

Imaginations in peacebuilding and the arts are seen as almost a universal good. This podcast episode adds complexity, exploring how imaginations of a “modern” Mexico led to indigenous persecution and how imaginations of fame and prestige may be destructive to relationship. In contrast, Martha Gonzalez of Grammy-nominated Quetzal, explores liberatory imaginations of community, belonging, and women’s testimonio within the fully embodied, communal practice of Fandango and Son Jarocho. Exploring indigenous relationality, Fandango Fronterizo, and Chicana feminist scholarship, this conversation opens new perspectives of activism.

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care.