https://reasonstobecheerful.world/crossing-borders-music/
"In February 2025, in the shadow of the Israel-Hamas War with its rising death
toll and humanitarian crisis, a small audience in a library in Chicago
experienced the war’s heartbreak, one note at a time. A classical string
quartet played
Lao Rahal Soti (“If My Voice Departs”) with the lyrics:
If my
voice departs, your voices will not / If the singer dies, the songs will remain
/ bringing together the broken and suffering hearts.
“I’d composed this a very long time ago and this seemed like such an
appropriate time to share it,” Shireen Abu Khader, a
Palestinian-Jordanian-Canadian musician, composer and educator, says. “The
words are powerful just from a human perspective … anybody can connect with
it.”
This universality of music, its ability to elicit the same emotions in diverse
audiences, is exactly what inspires the work of Chicago-based nonprofit
Crossing Borders Music. Composed of artists trained mainly in the Western
classical tradition, the group compiles and performs music from Haitian,
Palestinian, Rohingya, Native American and many other marginalized communities
via free concerts held in libraries, cultural centers and university spaces
across the United States."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
