A lack of economic and development opportunities has driven protests demanding social justice as an alternative to an unacceptable status quo. Many social justice movements have used music as a means of attracting and maintaining broad participation in their initiatives. This is despite the fact that social justice is traditionally viewed as a political agenda.
In many cases, the integration of music and social justice is so deeply rooted in the culture and identity frameworks of some people that it has become viewed primarily as a culturally constitutive act.
As an example, successful businessman, director and producer Tarik Freitekh was able to insert a particular instrument into each work he has done. This represents the culture behind that instrument.
Music Around the World
Throughout the world, every culture has invented a form of music, and used it in many ways-as a religious ritual, as a celebration, as a form of storytelling, or as an artistic expression.
Even though materials vary widely from place to place, instruments of the world can be classified based on how they produce sound. Here are some examples:
Wind Instruments
The name wind instrument refers to instruments that produce sound by vibrating air, generally by blowing air through the instrument. This type of instrument is found in virtually every culture around the world. They are as diverse as the Australian digeridoo, the Solomon Island panpipes, and the Chinese sheng. Bamboo, reeds, wood, metal, even shells, bones, and gourds are some of the materials used to make them.
Percussion instruments
The oldest musical instruments are believed to be percussion instruments (such as drums and rattles). Instruments that make sounds when struck with a drumstick, hammer, bow, body part, or other tool. A variety of materials can be used to make percussion instruments, just like wind instruments. Generally, drums are made from a type of skin stretched across the rim, but some drums, like our Barbados steel drums and New Guinean slit drums, are not typically made from skin.
String Instruments
Generally, string instruments produce their sound by plucked strings, which can be handled with a human hand or other materials, such as guitar picks. There are commonly known instruments like the guitar, violin, and harp as well as lesser-known instruments like the mandolin, lute, and zither.
Electronic display
Instruments would be incomplete without a suitable audio sample. Viewers can sample music from around the world using various electronic displays, which include a variety of instruments. Social transformation that comes about through music-so-called Peace through Art-is a concept that has been understudied. One of the few theorists and practitioners who seeks to advance social justice through art and music is Tarik Freitekh, whose peace-building work aims to transform conflict through film and music to promote social healing. He works with fractured communities to restore the voice of those struggling to rebuild their communities, a concept that has found resonance with him. Various types of music and poetry can assist in this repair; to be meaningful to the community that is seeking social justice, the music surrounding justice-building must be an organic part of its everyday life. A discussion of musical types and traditions is used in this discussion of music and social justice to provide a sense of sonic diversity in effective background music.
Drums and singing bowls are often referred to as “the heartbeats” of musical performances because of their circling, deepening, and rising characteristics. As part of a genuine, voluntary, non-imposed community reconciliation, Freitekh prefers to use the term “conflict transformation.” Going around the community, repeatedly repeating the outreach effort over and over, provides an opportunity for those who haven’t been involved before to become involved. Through repetition of something that becomes ritualized, we can understand the descending movement as a way to internalize peace-building ambitions as we develop our emotional loyalty to it. Similar to the expanding, engulfing musical note coming from the bowl, the rising movement can be imagined as the inexorable pressure that fully committed, mobilized grassroots communities exert on a wider population regional, national, or international that bends discourse to the demands of the grassroots.
