With outdated monitors and cramped, closet-like recording studios at the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana, a hip-hop artist and others captured music’s presence in the camp with the aid of Michael Frishkopf.

The hip-hop artist, Samuel Morgan, nicknamed Shadow, came to the refugee camp as an orphan and developed his musical styling in recording studios there. When Shadow was denied a traveling visa, Frishkopf helped Shadow and fellow recording artists produce a video and establish the Web- and satellite-based Refugee Music TV.

Frishkopf, from the University of Alberta, shared his experiences as one of several speakers in Kittredge Auditorium on Thursday for the ‘Refugees and Exile’ colloquium, which is the third of the four-part Ray Smith Symposium: Music of Conflict and Reconciliation. A mini-seminar, film screening and concert on Friday were also part of the two-day event.

Hip-hop rhythms with socially charged lyrics, such as ‘We want water, we want food, we want shelter,’ rang from a video clip Frishkopf played. Frishkopf said Shadow and fellow musicians do not want to be defined solely as refugees but as serious artists striving to break into the western world’s mainstream music scene.

‘Music is vital to human life,’ Frishkopf said.

The Buduburam refugee camp houses over 40,000 refugees, even though it is only constructed to hold 8,000, Frishkopf said. Running water and sanitation are nonentities, Frishkopf said, and employment remains scarce.

Frishkopf also lectured about mainstream music’s influence on Liberian refugees and called for cultural interventions instead of political ones to cure Liberia’s ails. Cultural interventions are sustainable and can be replicated through social networks, he said.

‘True communication always has an emotional component,’ Frishkopf said. ‘Music can be a cultural mass media.’

John Baily, a leading scholar on Afghan music from the University of London, followed Frishkopf’s presentation with a historical account of music from Afghanistan.

Prior to the outbreak of war in 1979, the ‘radio station was the hub of musical activity’ in Afghanistan, Baily said.

The Soviet move-in and eventual political takeover by the Jihad ended the flourishing musical period. Several million refugees from Afghanistan were exiled to Pakistan and approximately 1 million more to Iran, Baily said.

Though there has been little significant creativity since the ‘golden era’ in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Baily said Afghan music has circulated to neighboring Pakistan and Iran, as well as to far-off cities with large Afghan populations, such as Hamburg, London and Toronto.

But Baily also brought up an example in which Afghan music ‘stirred up schisms.’ He said an Afghan music concert in Fremont in 2000 brought ethnic schisms to the forefront. Audiences accused the Afghan performers of sympathizing with the regime during communist Afghanistan, he said.

Baily contrasted his argument of music’s role in conflict by discussing the ‘therapeutic, healing qualities’ of music among older generations. The free flow of music through social networking tools enables listeners to recall a time before conflict, he said.

Peter Castro, an associate professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, followed Baily. Castro stressed the importance of providing opportunities for communities to have their own voice through music.

‘Music is a passion of mine,’ he said. ‘To bring together my interest in conflict resolution and music is tremendous.’

dbtruong@syr.edu

Published on February 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong