Music as Education, Voice, Memory, and Healing: Community Views on the Roles of Music in Conflict Transformation in Northern Uganda

Abstract

The Acholi of northern Uganda widely credit music with playing a central role in ending more than two decades of armed conflict. Drawing upon a conflict transformation framework—as well as more than 200 conflict-related songs and primary source in terviews and focus group discussions with 46 community members and artists—this article explores how Acholi communities experience and perceive music as creating peaceful change through the community-identified roles of music as education, voice, memory, and healing. It suggests that listening to community members’ perceptions on the role of music provides deeply rooted, context-ipecific insights into how communities experience and respond to the circumstances around them. Furthermore, by listening to community members’ experiences and interactions with music, one can better assess how music may have contributed to transformation in a setting. It concludes by proposing ways in which these insights can inform, and possibly improve, future peacebuilding strategies involving music.

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