The Nile Project: making music for peace in the Nile Basin region
Abstract
The use of music in peacebuilding is a new and emerging field. Yet there is sparse empirical evidence on its outcomes. The Nile Project is a musical collaborative from East Africa that brings together musicians from all of the countries that border the Nile River and is aimed at finding a solution to the dire water crisis in the region. This study explored how musicians from The Nile Project, despite their linguistic, cultural, musical, and political differences collaborated to create a unified sound. Using a combination of qualitative and arts-informed research methodologies, original members of the collective, as well as the co-founder, were interviewed. Observations were also done of the musicians’ rehearsals, performances, and classroom visits at two New England Universities and at their “gathering” in Aswan, Egypt. Findings suggest that an outcome of The Nile Project’s work is that the process of making music with those from diverse musical traditions can act as a way to practice peacebuilding skills. The act of music making encouraged musicians to “bend” in effort to play together often altering or adapting their musical scales. This may have been a chance for musicians to embody “unity in diversity.” This study seeks to add to the limited research on the use of music for peacebuilding
offering the musicians’ perspective, which has been identified as a need.
Keywords
Music; peacebuilding; water conflict; Africa; arts-informed research; Nile River
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Music and Arts in Action makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information contained in its publications, but all editors and reviewers make no warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or suitability for any purpose of the content. The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the content presented in their work. Any views expressed in this publication are the views of the authors and are not the views of MAiA editors or affiliates.
Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Requests to reprint material published in MAiA should be made to the individual authors.
By virtue of their appearance in this Open Access Journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. All citations should include the author's name; year of publication; MAiA title, volume and issue number; page numbers; and weblink to http://musicandartsinaction.net
Contents published from Volume 5 (2) (2016) onwards are licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/