Music Plays Crucial Role in Non-Violent Civic Movements

Viola Gienger- In Libya’s 2011 uprising, protesters pumped loud music from radios or CD players in the streets in front of government buildings, then fled from the inevitable rush of security forces. The nonviolent early days of Egypt’s revolution that same year spawned a raft of new independent music groups. In Turkey, the “Song of Pots and Pans” exhorts political leaders to stop their lies and repressive tactics.

For hundreds of years, music has been integral to rebellion, resistance and revolution. USIP is highlighting the power of a melody to inspire alternatives to violence. Music and the arts are strategic tools of non-violent action and need to be financed as such, says USIP Senior Policy Fellow Maria Stephan, one of the world's leading scholars on strategic nonviolent action, in a new audio podcast.

“There needs to be investment in this area, not because it’s `touchy feely, kumbaya,’ but because arts, music and culture are powerful amplifiers of non-violent action and peacebuilding,” says Stephan, a co-author ofWhy Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Read more [here] and listen below: