In Professor Michael Starbird’s lecture on extreme optimism on the future, he stressed his amazement at our ability to communicate worldwide. He discussed how the Internet has brought the world closer together to the point where he might argue war could come to an end. Not only does the Internet allow us to communicate important information worldwide, but it also allows us to make connections and keep them with people who live thousands of miles away. I admire his optimistic view on the future and even have my own perspective of the future to add. What if we could use music to bring people closer together as well? The world is already becoming smaller due to things like faster transportation and communication through satellites and online. While these things do in fact contribute to unity amongst all people of the world, we can take other measures toward this sort of progress.
Starbird’s optimistic view on the future gave me many new thoughts about what I look forward to and strive for in my future. Something that I’ve always particularly cared about is tolerance of cultural and racial differences. Along with this, I am interested in better international relationships and in general stronger unity worldwide. John Lennon had the dream; “imagine all the people living life in peace” with “no countries…to kill or die for.” I understand that these goals are unrealistic and quite a stretch for the level that our world is at, but everyone has a dream, don’t they? This would be mine. My ultimate goal for our society would be a world that is more unified and can see itself as the world instead of countries, continents, nations, and races.
I know there would be many ways to go about promoting better international relationships, but unfortunately foreign policy isn’t exactly my forte. I racked my brains for what I care most about and what I’m actually good at and one resounding area came to mind: music. It’s something that I truly enjoy and work the hardest in. It comes most naturally to me and constantly fascinates me with its many genres and backgrounds. It is something that I love to learn about, teach, and work at. And, as I was once told at a camp, music is a universal language spoken by all people. Everybody has some sort of connection with music whether it be rap, hip-hop, rock, or classical. Music has the ability to promote cultural learning and inspire better international relationships. A musician in the novel The Memory Keeper’s Daughter voiced something that I agree with about music: “Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything's connected to everything else.” Music is universal. You don’t have to be a certain age or race or have a certain degree of intelligence to appreciate music. You don’t have to speak a certain language or live in a certain country to listen to it.
So where do I begin? My first step falls here: college. This course to be exact. I find myself making plans in my head for how to follow through with this vision. The most important part I’ve been taught, though, is to follow what I love. I began my college path pursuing a medical career. Why? Because that’s what I was comfortable with and my family is full of doctors. It was a life that I was familiar with and could visualize. However, music is what I love and I came to realize that I needed to pursue it. I am not committing myself to the life of the musician, but I am planning on majoring in it and studying it as much as I can because it is truly my passion. And now that I am more seriously considering music, I can see all the amazing opportunities it can have in store for me. Thus, at the university level, I plan to learn about culture and music as well as foreign policy and government. Starting here, I can prepare for what I want to accomplish eventually.
I had two main programs in mind to begin to accomplish my ultimate goal toward greater world unity and tolerance. One starts with children, teaching them at a young age to embrace differences and create worldwide friendships. The Silk Road Project is one of the most inspirational programs I have ever heard about. It reaches out among nations, sharing music all over the world and bringing foreigners together through music. If I had the opportunity, I would love to create a branch off of the Silk Road Project, involving children. It would consist of many musicians from different countries who focus more on teaching and reaching out to kids. They could travel around like the members of Silk Road and go to schools. As teachers, each musician could specialize in a certain geological area or country. At the school, they could introduce the type of music that is native to the region as well as provide a small background about the culture of that place. They would stress the importance of cultural tolerance and inspire children to see what lies outside the confining borders of their lives. We aren’t exposed to just how big (and yet also how small) the world is early enough in our lives. With how advanced communication is now, we can make so many more connections around the world if only we were aware of it at an earlier age. Thus, these teachers can help show how connected the world is by teaching about music at a cultural viewpoint and then inspiring kids to do their own studying about other countries and maybe even start making connections with people in foreign countries.
Expanding on this program, schools could then form communications with other schools around the world. The Silk Road branch could create bonds between schools (sister schools, if you will) through these musical performances. To start, the music teachers at schools could have monthly concerts with their sister school and share the concert either by tape or online video-chat. From there, the kids could possibly start pen pal correspondences with other kids from the schools. However, instead of using actual snail mail, they could use email or some other form of online correspondence. With the use of email, it is much easier to remain in touch with people. Email allows kids to express their ideas with immediate feedback from their pen pal and with the impatience of young kids, it would be much more effective than regular mail. At the elementary level, this sort of supervision is needed. One reason would be for safety, but another is just merely that the children need guidance for what to talk about in order to keep the correspondence going. However, at the high school level, a music club could be started in response to the Silk Road performance in which students form music groups and correspond with other music groups with sister schools around the world. They could prepare music and critique each other through online performances. From there, they could form relationships basically from across the world. The best part of this sort of communication is that right off the bat the students have something to relate to. They can relate through music and then form real friendships with each other.
One other program that I would be very interested in creating would be within the foreign policy branch of government. There could be a group that is in charge of organizing music concerts for foreign politicians that are visiting America as well as finding music groups native to countries that our politicians visit. Music is a way of expressing the beauty of other cultures and by exposing our politicians to the deep culture of where they are, maybe it could soften the other differences and conflicts.
These programs are things that I would truly enjoy implementing because they incorporate my ideal goals for our society as well as something I truly love. By teaching children at a young age that the world is much smaller than it seems, they can began making connections with people all over the world. These friendships can lead to greater tolerance of differences amongst religions, cultures, and countries. Music is something that I strongly believe in for its capacity to unite people all over the world.
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