This document discusses how music may help foster empathy and intercultural understanding. It describes an experience where the author composed a musical piece intended to promote unity between different ethnic groups in South Africa. The piece was successfully performed once but failed to unite the groups in a later performance. This paradox led the author to question assumptions about music's power and investigate how music may cultivate empathy. The document also examines theories of how musical activities could potentially strengthen empathic responses through imagination and social engagement, but notes many contextual factors are also involved.

1. Music, Empathy and Intercultural Understanding
Felicity Laurence, October 2009
Introduction
Dan Baron has suggested that empathy is ‘one of the qualities cultivated by effective
arts education’ and has commented upon the need to ‘redefine arts as our essential
human languages of understanding, communication and social transformation’,
while the 2006 WAAE statement underlines the importance of ‘research into
pedagogies for personal and social transformation’. In what follows, I will tell a
story ‘from the field’ and then try to share some of my attempts to understand the
nature of using the arts, in this case music, in helping and educating children to
learn how to ‘see’ and comprehend, and respect, the ‘other’, in an imaginative way.
Indeed, without the imaginative act itself, and a corresponding effort to reach out
and take in the other’s perspective, feelings, and even way of being, empathic
understanding may be impossible properly to achieve. Since the events and field
work described below were carried out, I have been able to apply and develop these
findings and ideas to a number of projects within schools, and have found similar
‘musicking‐empathising’ patterns, sometimes even down to the specific words
spoken by participating children. They speak often of the importance of their voice
and their work as artists (in this case, co‐composers of songs) being taken seriously,
and of learning better to empathise in an often non‐ or anti‐ empathic world, and
strikingly, there have been direct and explicit suggestions from a number of children
in different parts of this country, over a period of years, that the Prime Minister
himself (they were referring to Tony Blair)should take heed of the ideas explored in
this work, and learn about peace from these!
This article has been developed from doctoral work, a subsequent paper given at the
International Symposium of CIMA (the Centre for Intercultural Music and Arts
Conference) in Granada 2006, and my chapter Music and Empathy in the volume
Music and Conflict Transformation (ed Olivier Urbain, 2008). It describes my
exploration over recent years into the mechanisms by which music and human
activities involved in its practice may engender empathic responses and behaviour,
leading to empathic relationships between people. Looking closely at theories both
of music and of empathy, I have found aspects within both areas which may offer an
understanding of the potential connections between them. A specific focus upon
Christopher Small’s concept of musicking has informed the evolving of a theoretical
framework, which has been further developed by insights arising from experimental
field work with primary school children. While refuting any a priori assumption of
the power of music – any music – to produce harmonious relationships between
people, I do suggest that the human activity of musicking does carry a potential
unique both to the particular sonic and rhythmic quality of music itself, and to the
particular and essentially social character of this activity, for catalyzing and
strengthening empathic processes and responses. The realization of this potential

2. depends upon a web of factors, including the intention with which it is done, the
power relationships of the musickers involved, their voice and agency, and the level
of consensus.
Although the ideas discussed here pertain directly and specifically to music and
musicking, the resulting theoretical framework does also suggest ways of
approaching the potential of the other arts in such empathy‐oriented work, and I
hope to develop this theme in dialogue with practitioners in these parallel fields.
A Story
My story begins though in Africa , and returns there for its conclusion after an
account of the thoughts and musings which it led to, over a long period of time, and
which, I think, are now helping me at least to understand something of what might
have been going on in that first concert…
Not very long before the apartheid regime finally came to its long‐awaited end, a
concert took place under the South African sun. Three hundred children from every
ethnic background sang together, with two women soloists, one black, one white,
while a group of musicians accompanied them all with piano, saxophone, flute and
drums. They performed a musical piece which exhorted mutual respect and
understanding. ‘African Madonna, your children are our children, their joys are our
joys, their suffering is ours…’ they sang, and ‘Africa, beautiful Africa, you can give us
a new picture of ourselves…you are our sisters, our brothers, our children, our
teachers…’ The music, in turn serene or lamenting, buoyant or exhilarating, served
the texts with as much expressiveness as its composer could achieve. After the
performance, the children spoke publicly of their feelings of being, at last, ‘united’,
singing ‘as one’, and the music itself is proclaimed as embodying a Zeitgeist of hope
in what was then universally recognised as impending change.
Some years later, in the same town, the same music was performed with the same
soloists, the same conductor, and another large group of children with the same
ethnic mix. But this time, there was no unity; the children did not link arms, and
after the performance they went their very separate ways, never again to meet,
perhaps more alienated than before. The singing may have been as sweet, but it was
no longer persuasive, and the music had woven no spell.
I was that composer, and these events posed for me a stark uncertainty about the
power of music which had seemed so apparent in the first concert. The whole point
of this musical work was to express and engender feelings of peaceful solidarity
between peoples, and I had intended and striven to embody meanings and emotions
in my music, or perhaps stimuli to emotional response, which would prevail in any
performance of it. Wasn’t this what composers were supposed to do? make music
which might move people, inspire them, cause them to reflect? Indeed, there had

3. been so many precedents, in a number of countries, of the ‘appropriate’ responses
being evoked in earlier performances, that I had no reason to question my basic
premise –that which I have termed the ‘music‐makes‐friends’ discourse. This has it,
quite simply, that the ‘right’ music carrying recognized and appropriate emotional
cues will evoke the intended responses, and consequently pave the way to peaceful
understanding. It carries also an implicit trust in the notion of music as a ‘universal
language’.
How was it, then, that my music, so apparently compelling in the first performance,
and on so many other occasions, failed so miserably to move people in that second
one?
There seems a paradox here; there is on the one hand the assumption of music’s
universally felt emotional effects but on the other, clear evidence that the same
piece of music can and does produce different emotions. Both positions seem to
inform everyday decisions about using music; music in film surely relies for its
effect upon the same emotion being aroused, while the aversive use of classical
music on railway stations to clear them of foul‐intentioned loiterers conspicuously
exploits the reality of profoundly different emotional response to the same music.
There is another paradox. Music’s assumed direct ability to unite people across
personal, social and cultural divides underpinned my own compositional efforts and
informs a plethora of statements of intent from the fields of education,
reconciliation and peace studies. In these contexts, this assumption relies upon an
underpinning belief in music’s positive and humanizing power. However, we can
surely see, if we look more closely, that music by no means simply makes us more
humane. We have only to look at the innumerable instances of music’s use in
creating alienation, for example in war music arousing men to slaughter others in
battle, or in Hitler’s musically‐boosted manipulation of his crowds. Indeed, music
has been used by every society at every point in human history for many kinds of
purposes. Most of these probably serve the ongoing ends of power relationships in
one way or another, with the exception of the benign use of music in healing,
documented across the globe and throughout human time. The direct pursuit of
peace, in terms of effecting reconciliation between groups in conflict and of
inculcating peaceful values and non‐violent behaviour, is perhaps the rarest of these
uses.
Notwithstanding, the ‘music/singing makes friends’ discourse is powerful, holding
sway in educational contexts, and well beyond. It is arguably so taken for granted
that, perhaps, the quest for its possible mechanisms has been largely neglected.
Educational ‘music‐for‐understanding’ programmes proliferate nonetheless, and
may indeed succeed in reducing barriers between people, as documented in the case
of the Norwegian music and peace education researcher Professor Kjell Skyllstad’s
ground–breaking longitudinal ‘Resonant Community’ study (Skyllstad 1993) with
children from differing cultural backgrounds. Skyllstad found, among other things,
that certain ways of doing music within primary school contexts appeared to be

4. correlated with some reduction in racist attitudes and in bullying behaviour overall,
with corresponding feelings of improved self‐confidence among ethnic minority
children.
In my own work, I have for some years been focusing upon question of how the art
of music might help ‘make friends’ and build bridges, and in what circumstances it
does so. I have been thinking about a theory which explains a set of processes by
which music and musical activity might indeed promote interhuman bonds and
positive understanding, but, importantly, which also allows for those situations in
which this does not occur. I have come to a particular consideration of empathy, its
role in human relationships, and the idea that the way music might be effecting
positive changes in these relationships might lie in its capacity to strengthen
empathic responses, behaviour, processes and development ‐ its potential
affordance of people’s ‘empathic agency’, where the capacity and willingness to
empathise is widely identified one of the key elements in fostering peaceful
understanding and communication.
I offer now, firstly, a brief view of music and musical activity which may reveal
points of connection with the concept of empathy. There follows a similarly succinct
examination of the nature of empathy and empathising. I then sketch my
exploratory research study in which I pursued these themes via a case study of a
musical intervention designed to develop children’s empathic responses and
behaviour. I will describe aspects of the resulting theoretical model in which I
suggest ways in which music may promote empathic understanding, leading to
peaceful and co‐operative responses and behaviour. Finally, I return to the African
concerts described above, and suggest some ways in which the model might explain
the apparent ‘success’ of the first, and also the dismal failure of the second.
2. Music and Musicking
The presumption that music can ‘bring people together’ is often accompanied by the
notion that music’s apparent potential in this regard lies within the music ‘object’ –
whether the notated music work, or the musical patterns as aurally perceived, thus
invoking the traditional discipline of musical analysis. But in other fields, for
example those of ethnomusicology, of music sociology, and of the connections
between music and emotion, there is an awareness of the significance of co‐
operative music making in realising this unifying potential, where the practice of
doing music together, as well as the inherent elements within and constitutive of the
music, is of crucial importance. We can see this awareness in the general
assumption that singing together creates a sense of unity. An early suggestion of a
specific connection between music and empathy appears in John Blacking’s
suggestion:

5. Through musical interaction, two people create forms that are greater than
the sums of their parts, and make for themselves experiences of empathy
that would be unlikely to occur in ordinary social intercourse. (Blacking,
1987:26)
Charles Keil (1984) indicates a similar idea in his description of the ‘urge to merge’
and ‘moments of oneness’ brought about in musical events. Both were looking to the
human activity of ‘doing’ music, in their examinations of its functions in establishing
and maintaining community feeling, feelings of being ‘at one’, and feelings of mutual
understanding – those feelings we seek to engender in peace building between
communities in conflict.
It seemed to me that this way of looking beyond the music ‘object’ itself, and to the
human relationships and activities associated with actually ‘doing’ the music, might
provide a fruitful way of approaching any potential connection with empathy and
the human activity of empathising. In other words, rather than look for some
inherent empathy somehow encoded ‘within’ the music’s sonic musical patterns and
tonal qualities, we might look to what people are doing when they empathise, and
when they ‘music’. But for many people, music can and does exist outside the sphere
of human action, brought within it by composers and performers, but existing
somehow in its own, other‐worldly plane.
Christopher Small has challenged this view, and his argument robustly directs an
unprecedented attention towards the human activity of ‘musicking’, this term being
the neologism he has articulated and explored in his volume Musicking (Small,
1998). Small takes not only ‘musical’ activities into this concept, but, stressing
participation, allows (undoubtedly controversially) any activity occurring in the
context of a musical performance. This is what he suggests:
To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by
performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for
performance (what is called composing), or by dancing. (Small 1998: 9)
Furthermore, Small suggests that the meaning of ‘musicking’ is revealed in the
relationships brought about in its course, contending that during a musical
performance, ideal relationships, as thus conceived by all those taking part (my
italics), are produced:
The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is happening a set of
relationships, and it is in those relationships that the meaning of the act lies. They
are to be found not only between those organized sounds which are conventionally
thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also between the people who
are taking part, in whatever capacity, in the performance; and they model, or stand
as metaphor for, ideal relationships as the participants in the performance imagine
them to be: relationships between person and person, between individual and
society, between humanity and the natural world and even perhaps the
supernatural world. (Small 1998: 13)

6. And, he explains, when we ‘music’, we ‘explore, affirm and celebrate’ these
relationships (ibid).
So the music object is no longer the only the source of the meaning of music, but
becomes part of a wider ‘story’ where any meanings encoded within its structures
and patterns are viewed as contributory to rather than definitive of its ultimate
significance. I would add here that these meanings would include music’s emotional
charge, however this may be derived or construed; this ‘charge’ is undeniable, but
does not give us the ‘whole story’.
This idea offers a powerful perspective from which to approach an understanding of
how musicking may enable emphasizing; furthermore, the positioning of
relationships themselves at the very core of his concept offers a direct conceptual
link with the concept of empathy, concerned as it is, above all else, with the nature
of human bonding and interaction and, as we shall see, with the connecting of one
person’s (or group’s) imagination with that of another. In this way, Small’s thesis of
musicking offers a dual ‘key’ with which to enter the area of empathising, to which
we now turn.
3. Empathy and Empathising
While the metaphorical ‘stepping into another’s shoes’, accompanied by a humane
and caring prosocial intent (that is, intent to help another), perhaps sketches the
most general perception of what constitutes an empathic response, the concept of
empathy is in fact complex and debated. I will sketch the philosophical explorations
of two theorists here, one from the earliest period of the concept’s ‘life’, and the
second, from a more recent revisiting of the concept.
Edith Stein (1917/1989), writing about empathy in the early twentieth century,
suggested that it is a process involving an initial cognitive act of intellectual
comprehension of another’s feeling and inner state, with ensuing reflection leading
to one’s own feeling in response to the other’s experienced feeling. She was clear
that while we can understand others’ experiences, they do not become our own and
nor do they have the same quality of reality for us; but they do give rise to a parallel
and related feeling which is our own. Furthermore, it is the empathic act, rather
than, for example, sensory perception, which allows us to know about the feelings
and inner states of others. In other words, it is –like Small’s musicking –something
we must do, rather than some trait or ability we have or do not have.
Stein emphasizes empathy as a process occurring over time in a number of stages
rather than a discrete event or single action, isolating ‘sympathy’ (synonymous with
‘fellow feeling’) as an element of the empathic process. She emphasizes the sense of
a distinct ‘self’, as separate from another’s consciousness and experiences, but at the
same time, she explains that a ‘feeling of oneness’ can arise where a number of
people experiencing the same event might be responding with virtually the same

7. feelings ‐ but nevertheless maintaining the sense of separate self. In this case,
human community is eventually strengthened.
This is very different to a situation where a mass of people is engulfed by an
emotional ‘bath’, losing thereby individual awareness and agency. Stein suggests
that when feelings are expressed as a direct result of our witnessing the expression
of another’s feelings, there is a phenomenon not of comprehension but of expression,
involving a non‐cognitive transference of feeling which is not empathy at all, but
contagion. In fact, Stein argues, in contagion our attention is no longer on the other’s
experience at all, but on our own emotional state and response. In her description of
mass contagion (Stein 1922/2000), she explains how mass differs from community.
The latter is characterized by its members’ mutual commitment, where individuals
attend to one another, are concerned to comprehend one another, and develop a
‘unity of understanding’. The mass lacks all of these qualities; feelings, ideas and
even beliefs are taken on and absorbed without reason or reflection, and although
there may appear to be shared understanding, understanding is not the goal and is
hardly possible in a context of abrogation of self. Emotional contagion sweeping
through the mass is not empathy, and may in fact be antipathetic towards the
empathic process of understanding other consciousness.
I find this to be revelatory; perhaps music’s perceived power to ‘unite’ –so often
claimed and praised ‐ may in many instances rely upon its ability to set up such an
emotional ‘bath’. It seems possible that when accounting for feelings of unity arising
during shared musical experience, we may be confusing the impression of actually
understanding and even feeling sympathetic towards one’s fellow musickers with
what is in fact the experience of an emotional ‘wave’. In doing so, we are arguably
conflating this ‘contagious’ experience with the distinct and separate phenomenon
of empathy. Emotional contagion is not inherently negative, and may indeed lead to,
or accompany, empathic response. However, people engaged in musicking may seek
specifically to engender, and then celebrate emotional contagion in order to reduce
individual sovereignty, and dissolve interpersonal boundaries. Even in an
apparently benign concert performance, for example, we may be able to discern
such manipulative behaviour on the part of the performers and the corresponding
mass response of their audience. Such a response can make us easier to control, for
both good and malicious ends. But where our sense of self remains intact, we can
still perform the imaginative and cognitive act of comprehending another person’s
consciousness, and then, to distinguish our resulting feelings from the act from that
person’s own feelings.
A final pivotal aspect of Stein’s account is her insistence upon similarity. She
concluded that empathy doesn’t really ‘work’ properly unless the empathiser and
the ‘empathised‐with’ are sufficiently similar. This notion that it is impossible to
empathise with those who are (too) different from ourselves is a profound dilemma:
however well we understand the empathic act, its mechanisms and how best to
develop it, it cannot be heralded as ‘the way to humanity’ (Kalliopuska 1992) if it
exists and operates only between those who resemble one another. I would prefer

8. to pursue empathy as a way both of overcoming perceptions of dissimilarity, and of
accepting others’ difference. Inasmuch as music and musicking experience may well
have the capacity to strengthen feelings of similarity through shared experience and
participation, a crucial contribution to empathic relationships may be accomplished.
This may extend beyond the effects of emotional contagion only if there is an
appropriate framework of conscious, stated and thoughtful intent, and arguably, a
keen awareness of the kind of relationships which prevail, or are being established
and explored.
The Empathic Relationship
Stein indicates empathy’s place and value in human relationships with her view of
human community as a derived function of empathising. Many other theorists
following her have also been specific about this connection, and that – in the words
of one, the ‘empathic encounter [lies] at the heart of sympathetic human
interaction…’ (Oram, 1984:492). Another concept of deep relevance here is that of
the ‘empathic relationship’. The work of M. de la Mothe explores what a specific
empathic relationship might ‘look like’; Mothe, in a direct ‘prequel’ of Small’s own
later argument concerning music, draws an explicit distinction between the noun
empathy and the verb empathise (Mothe, 1987). Challenging the notion of a ‘thing’
called empathy which we ‘have’, Mothe argues instead for an ongoing process of
empathising, in which we both act empathically and enter into ‘empathic regions’.
Calling on Fromm’s concepts of ‘having’ and ‘being’, he reports Fromm’s noting of
the existing Western preoccupation with nouns, which are in turn interlinked with a
‘having’ mode of existence, where having things is valued above the way we behave
towards others. This in turn is connected with relationships of power and
corresponding disempowerment, and Mothe suggests that our society currently
exhibits a predominantly ‘having’ mode, in which power is the main ‘thing’ wish
people like to have.
Mothe argues that the empathic relationship, in direct contrast to the power
relationship, is non‐manipulative, co‐operative, engenders interpersonal harmony
and personal knowing of the other, enhances the other, and fosters acceptance and
tolerance of difference. Furthermore, whereas a power relationship tends to limit
another’s possibilities and behavior, the empathic are relationship enhances these.
To empathise well, he suggests, we need to engage in a ‘joint project’, and above all,
actively to strive for an empathic knowing of the other.
These ideas offer extraordinarily rich resonances for the quest to explain music and
musicking’s potential contribution to a more empathic and ultimately more peaceful
world. Music’s main use everywhere and throughout history has arguably
concerned power relationships, whether by establishing them, maintaining them, or
perhaps resisting them. The music object itself (the sounds and patterns
constituting the music) are argued by many to encode cultural and societal patterns,
and these are invariably hierarchical, however ‘hidden’ this may be. As Small points
out in great detail (Small 1998), the accepted epitome of Western musical culture,
the symphony orchestra, is entirely based upon a rigid hierarchical structure.

9. Creating empathic relationships is hardly the purpose in such contexts; music is
doing other work.
But if we take another kind of musicking, based for example upon co‐operation,
democratic participation, mutual, respectful listening, and care for each other’s
differing musical values, and take this as the ‘joint project’ suggested above, then, in
its enactment, we might achieve some movement towards this non‐hierarchical,
other‐enhancing empathic relationship. In this way, we can argue that the way in
which we music, our intention therein, and the extent and quality of voice and
agency we allow each other, are all key in whether or not we can take advantage of
any inherent property within the music itself, its patterns and dynamics, to move us
and affect our responses and behaviour.
Exploring the connections
To probe these ideas and to try reveal and construct relationships between
empathising and musicking, I carried out a study was based upon activities of
composing and singing with children in a British primary school for a period of
eighteen months, during which we made music, in the form of songs, co‐operatively,
with the children taking active roles in every stage of the way. We set out with the
explicit and stated aim to see whether our musicking might help them to become
more able and willing to be empathic, and my subsequent task was then to develop a
theoretical model which would encapsulate and explain the ensuing results.
The experience for the children of being able so strongly (and unusually) to
articulate their own voice itself became an integral element in their growing
empathic development, as they identified the issues about which they wanted to
compose songs and music, and then discussed, sang and composed according to
their own views of what was meaningful and important. They were given a voice,
metaphorically in discussion and then, directly, as they sang their lives and
relationships, firstly to each other, later to others who came to listen; and they were
given agency – the opportunity and also the ability (as I helped and guided in the
music‐making) – to make that voice heard. And in discovering and being enabled to
use and express their own voice, the children became more willing and able to hear
the voices of others. The importance of this sense of ownership engendered in this
work became clear, while listening also emerged as a central foundation of the
musicking‐empathising framework. Likewise, the significance of the transformative
aspect of our musicking‐empathising programme came to light, exemplified in
various children’s empathic ‘awakening’.
In summary, the children demonstrated clear gains in mutual empathic
understanding; they became more able to understand others’ feelings and
behaviour, more willing to try to do this, and more inclined to help others as a result
of this increased empathic understanding of the other’s point of view. Musicking, in
Small’s sense of incorporating all activity surrounding and involved in composing
and performing songs, was our means and catalyst.

10. I had already glimpsed these things in earlier work, for example in a pilot study in
Germany, an International Festival Of Friendship in Sweden, a cross‐cultural music
project in New Zealand, and of course the first concert described at the beginning of
this account. But now I was able to see far more clearly what the processes were and
why things happened as they did. Here now is a sketch of what I have come up with
so far.
A Conceptual Model of Musicking and Empathising
I have found a cyclical process, wherein musicking may promote and strengthen
aspects of empathic processes which may in turn influence, affect, lead to (or their
lack prevent) further musicking. Surrounding these now interlocking concepts are
other elements which are not in themselves directly constitutive of either musicking
or empathising, but whose presence or lack may respectively facilitate or impede
the ‘activation’ of the musicking‐empathising connections. At the most fundamental
level are the requirements of universal and innate empathic and musical disposition,
and of educable empathic and musical abilities; these both rest upon formidable
earlier theoretical enquiry, and for the purposes of this account are offered as
givens.
I found many potential connections between the kind of musicking the children and
I were doing, and empathising. Empathising as a way to promote our sense of others’
humanity is linked to the musicking’s possibility of achieving this, given the
appropriate context, or, in Smallian terms, to the kinds of ‘ideal’ relationships in
which people see others not as objects but as other human beings. Empathising as
allowing a ‘harmonious interpersonal knowing’ (Mothe 1987) may be promoted by
the musicking’s fundamental concern with interpersonal relationships and the
imaginative learning to understand another which this concern can lead to.
Metaphorical concepts are mirrored, with both empathy and music conceived as a
binding force, even ‘glue’, between people. Empathic relationships conceived as non‐
power based in the sense of being other‐enhancing rather than restricting or
limiting the other’s possibilities may be given impetus in the kind of musicking
which is non‐hierarchical and where each person’s musical potential is honoured.
Musicking can take us across interpersonal and intercultural boundaries, arguably
in a unique way because of the universal human response to tonal quality and
rhythm, and also the transcendence it affords from rational, verbal language which
limits experience to what it can define and describe. In empathising, also given as a
non‐verbal way of knowing, we strive to cross these boundaries to experience the
perspective of another (although keeping our sense of self intact), and musicking
may thus facilitate this process, depending, as argued, upon contextual aspects of,
for example, motivation and intention. Other common ground is apparent in the
shared emphases upon imagining, reflecting, the experiencing of others’ feelings,
listening and ‘tuning in’ to the other, enabling and strengthening community and the

11. consequent sense of enrichment, reiteration of an ideal self, overcoming fear of
difference through developing shared experience in general, the potential of both
activities as emancipatory, and finally, the fundamental focus in both musicking and
empathising upon human agency, in that we are constantly looking at what people
are doing, rather than at some reified entity.
The connections are thus intricate and abundant; but in all this, it is vital to keep in
mind that it is the kind of musicking being undertaken, its context, the specific ‘ideal
relationships’ ‐ which will determine its empathic effects‐ in many cases, there may
simply be none at all. For example, the crucial importance of intention was strongly
confirmed. I would assert now that, no matter how ‘attractive’ or ‘moving’ or indeed
how well‐performed the music may be, without the explicitly­stated intention to
achieve empathic response, where the musicking is done specifically in order to
reach to another person or people, then its potential affordance for what might
perhaps be conceived as ‘empathic work’ is likely to remain unfulfilled. We can
understand the intention in the music made within the project as ‘driving’ the
musical forms, so that the children participating in the research study outlined
above constantly privileged aspects of the musicking which tended towards an
empathic end, including musical styles which were accessible and meaningful, thus
enhancing the sense of shared experience and participation.
But there was another element, so immanent that I had taken it entirely for
granted. An adult observer remarked in passing one day that all of the children had
clearly accepted the idea of empathy as ‘a good thing’. I began to reflect on the
significance of this; none of the children ever challenged the desirability of
pursuing empathic outcomes, and it became clear that there was quite simply a
consensus among the children that they should at least try to act well towards each
other. I found this to be the case in every other previous and subsequent project
exploring the musicking‐empathising relationship; always, the children appeared
immediately to glimpse the potential for realising and developing their ‘better
selves. Inasmuch as our work involved internal shifts of attitude, as manifested in
and arguably brought about by changed behaviour, I doubt that it could have
proceeded in any meaningful way without consensus; this kind of development
cannot be coerced. I suggest accordingly that without consensus from all
participants, the intention, however plain and strong, cannot be realised.
Reflections
As we ponder the application of these ideas to intercultural musical activity, a
complex picture emerges. If intention to strengthen, or indeed create, empathic
understanding, is required, we may ask – whose intention? Can there be consensus
in situations where one group feels oppressed by another? Where two politically

12. opposed groups with unequal sharing of power are musicking together, can the
voice of the less powerful truly be heard? And can we speak at all of a ‘non‐
hierarchical’ relationship? I have witnessed occasions which raised these and other
questions; choirs of children from warring states brought together in a peace
building exercise, standing together, singing together, as if with one voice, in unity.
But it was not clear that the hierarchy of power which tore these children apart in
their daily lives was being, in reality, challenged in this musicking. I hope that
developing a conceptual vocabulary may increase the possibility of constructing a
truer picture of what might be occurring in musicking such as this.
The complexity grows with an acknowledgement of the problem of appropriating
other cultures’ ways of musical expression, in the course of intercultural musicking.
We should perhaps look very carefully at those structured attempts to use music
where the intention is specifically to foster peaceful relationships and reconciliation
between those in conflict. This area provides its own critical dilemmas; for example,
of (mis)using other cultures’ musical forms, and/or misunderstanding the
significance of their musical activities. In my work with African drummers in
European countries, I have frequently encountered tensions between the
perceptions of what constitutes an ‘African drummer’, held on the one hand by my
African colleagues, and on the other, by people of these non‐ African countries who
claim also the African drummer title, generally on the basis of one or a few short
visits to Africa to learn drumming. There is more of a sense of hijacking and of
inequitable power relationships, than of any kind of intercultural meeting, or of
‘truly’ striving to know the other, or indeed of consensus in any ultimate aim of
musicking. The pitfalls of using a culture’s music in an alien context have been
described by Cynthia Cohen (Cohen, 2005); again, the intention may be claimed as
benign, but consensus, and also voice and agency for those being culturally ‘robbed’,
are not necessarily present. We need to be clear that this field is complex, and that
good intentions may well be undermined and ultimately defeated by cultural
barriers and intercultural misunderstanding, unless we strive constantly to take
these into account.
African concerts revisited
Finally I would like to return to the African concepts with which this account began.
We can see now that my undertaking to express solidarity with my fellow human
beings in suffering Africa was neither simple nor unproblematic. But nevertheless,
the case might be made that as far as the music object was concerned – there was
indeed a level of intercultural understanding and consonance.
During its composition, I was in ongoing dialogue with the African person who was
to sing the main solo role, and together we analyzed the texts for their
appropriateness. I was employing a musical language which I understood within my
own cultural context to be likely to support the expressive dimensions of these
texts, and she confirmed that people in Africa exposed to Western musical ideas

13. would also recognize these. From the first production, there were African musicians
involved, and with their ongoing commentary, I was able to develop an expressive
vocabulary which appeared to have meaning across the two cultures whose
relationship constituted the topic of this piece. In the initial South African
performances, young African people took part, dancing and singing, and there
seemed to be an awareness that the African music was being heard, honoured, and
given an equal place with the music I had written. Many people from all four of the
racially separated groups spoke to me of their positive reactions to the music, and to
the texts. Thus, my having striven from the first conception of this piece to take into
account factors which might confound its intention, it seemed that the possible
obstacles had been overcome in those initial performances.
So it is to other areas I must look for explanations for its failure to bring about any
unity or solidarity on that second occasion only a few years later. This time, there
was a different socio‐political context and I believe that it was this altered, and
ironically darker context which might explain the failure of the musicking to
engender the empathic relationships demanded and expressed in the songs. Where
earlier, there had been a sense of hope, and an awareness of impending change, now
there was disappointment and disillusionment. Where before, the piece was
interpreted as a statement of a coming change in relationships, of impending
transformation, and of a new ‘opening’ to the plight of the oppressed people, now,
there was a cynicism on both ‘sides’. The intention of performing the piece may have
been superficially similar, but it may also have had more to do with the specific
personal goals and self‐perception of the conductor, for whom this performance was
an opportunity to be seen as an attempt of including black children in ongoing white
privilege, and as a competent director. When the black children behaved in ways
which arguably reflected their own albeit unconscious despair at the reality of this
continuing exclusion from this white privilege, and were unruly in rehearsal,
everyone’s prejudices were confirmed. And I know from their own individual
accounts, that the black ‘African Madonna’ soloist, who expected the same respect
and ‘gaze’ that she had felt in the earlier performance, now perceived herself
berated and relegated once more to inferiority; while the white conductor saw her
main singer’s apparent lack of punctuality and of control of the black children as
proof that even with ‘equality’, such people are and will remain inferior and
unreliable.
So any initial intention, for example to strengthen a burgeoning sense of empathic
connection between former oppressor and formerly oppressed, was undermined by
the lack of consensus as each participant pursued her own agenda, and in the end,
remained if anything further enmeshed in the hierarchical power structures which
are, as we have seen, inimical to empathic relationships. Active striving to know the
other, so evident on the first occasion, was replaced by a bitter ‘blocking off’ from
each other; the black children and the white children sought no contact with each
other, nor was this given any attention throughout the rehearsals or performance,
unlike in the first concert. Instead, they went home to their respective poverty or

14. riches after the performance as divided as before, and perhaps even more convinced
of the intractable ‘otherness’ of each other.
From the accounts I received from the conductor and from the soloist, ‘voice’ and
agency were restricted to the former, and there seemed to be no sharing or co‐
operation, as had happened in the first concert. There were other dissonances
between the conceptual elements of the two concerts; but we can see now perhaps
some clear reasons for the failure of the second, in terms of concepts explored in
this account. It might be argued that it would perhaps have been better had the
second concert not taken place, and in this case, music which many people find
pleasing was used in an ultimately harmful way. Whether the empathising processes
engendered in the original concert endured is another story (and I have some
evidence that some did endure).
In conclusion
Music undoubtedly carries a unique potential, specific to its sonic and tonal
characteristics and to the human hardwiring which processes these, and through
the engendering of positive human feelings including those of shared humanness,
for catalyzing and strengthening empathic processes and responses. The realisation
of this potential depends not only upon the content and sounds of the music, nor
simply upon their beauty, perceived meanings and shared reference points, nor
upon the exquisiteness of their performance. To these, we must add an intricate web
which includes intentionality, consensus, voice, agency, key actors, they committed
and explicit fostering of feelings of similarity, active attention to the other,
acknowledging the other’s humanness, and co‐operative, interactive, non‐alienating
and non‐hierarchical human interactions in the making music. The relationships we
set up and develop in our musicking can be productive of peace and intercultural
tolerance; we need to continue critically to explore the best ways of ensuring this.
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