We advocate for ethnomusicology—the critical study of the dialogical relationship between music and the contexts that define it—as one of the research approaches that humanitarians and peacekeepers should use to better understand civilians' self-protection strategies during conflict. Humanitarian protection strategies have not kept all civilians safe, so there is growing scholarly and policy attention to self-protection strategies. It is important that humanitarians do not simply instrumentalise self-protection strategies but understand the politics and logics behind them. This article argues that paying attention to music can help humanitarians understand self-protection strategies, especially as music can create space for discussion even about emotive or political topics that cannot be verbalised in other ways. Musicians also often have an authority that can help shape behaviour, and songs are often used to share strategies to stay safe. Music can also create important memories and social meanings around protection strategies. This article is based on research in Warrap State, South Sudan—a region that has long histories of colonial and post-colonial armed conflict, military mobilizations and aid actor interventions as well as established musical norms and evolving self-protection strategies.
Policy Implications
- Self-protection strategies are crucial to the protection of civilians during armed conflict. Music is key for teaching and building a community's memory and knowledge of how to stay safe. Aid and peacekeeping actors seeking to provide protection should be open to supporting the promotion of music that creates memories, histories and opportunities for learning, as well as promoting knowledge of self-protection strategies.
- Aid and peacekeeping actors seeking to provide protection should also avoid instrumentalising and undermining these self-protection strategies by investing in understanding the logics, ontologies, priorities and political thought behind self-protection strategies.
- Aid and peacekeeping actors should pay attention to music in contexts of armed conflict. For communities in contexts of war, music and songs often provide space for dialogue about political and socially sensitive topics. Therefore, for aid actors and peacekeepers, music offers opportunities to listen to communities' protection priorities and provides insights into the underlying logics behind self-protection strategies. Music and lyrics can change meaning over time, giving space for dialogue and contestation. Therefore, it is important for humanitarians to pay attention not only to a recorded archival body of music but also to the living performance of music.
- During times of armed conflict, music and musicians can play an important moral and political role that influences behaviour. Therefore, aid and peacekeeping actors who seek to protect civilians by restraining combatant behaviour, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, should pay attention to the moral authority and influence many musicians and songs have.
Photo by Mohamad Affandy