Five years after ‘Voices Beyond Divisions’ I reflect on how this project sculpted the essence of my work and ideals.

No matter how much I welcomed my own company, I always desired a sense of belonging and connection to a greater good. It was easier to bring together broken parts of myself through understanding the world around me. I felt limited by familiar structures but felt fulfilled by learning about other cultures. I wanted to be nurturing and seeing destruction of all I considered to be humane and safe perplexed me.

In my mid-teens, I decided to create a choral work bringing together children from different faiths and cultures. Despite reaching a high-performance level on several instruments at an early age, I’d never had the willpower or concentration to write my improvisations down. So, I learnt instinctively ‘on the job’ how to compose for choir and orchestra. Following an ideal, suddenly the willpower and concentration fell into place.

I researched different Abrahamic texts to determine the unifying principle that would form the lyric. Something to counteract the shame and division religion causes when its message is simplified to meet narrow political agendas and cultural dogmas. I then got the lyrics translated into Quranic Arabic and Hebrew and set parts of the piece in those languages. To this day, I still feel like a learner/ traveller rather than an insider in relation to all those different specialisms than coincided with my composition: Arabic music, religion, and activism. In the same way, I have never found myself becoming attached to one genre of music over others.

Establishing borders and upholding pride has always been the central rationale for initiating violent conflict. Over the years, technological expansion has made the means of destruction (e.g. nuclear warheads) gradually more catastrophic. Political talk can irritate me through its emotional abstraction. Too often we hear nominalised talk of ‘liberty’, ‘economy’, ‘patriotism’ without context. The lack of connection to the bigger picture fosters a connection only to the basest parts of the self. Seeing children from different faiths break down divisions confirms that prejudice is something we’re taught and not born with. Within an hour of the first Voices Beyond Divisions workshop, children were teaching each other greetings in Arabic and Hebrew, comparing football teams, and holding hands.

At this point, I am reminded of one of my most cherished Wordsworth passages from Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”

I have a vivid memory from when I was around two-years old. I was acknowledging my reflection in the mirror and noticing how my feet touched the floor. I became aware of my feet in particular; how they touched the ground. I thought “that’s me” because only my feet have encountered a certain set of places. Before then I hadn’t considered myself to be separate from life itself. Maybe that’s the place I’m always trying to get back to through my work. Identity is what makes us unique, but without connecting to others, we cannot cultivate a healthy version of it. When we encounter difference, we can feel threatened rather than fascinated. Responding to difference through compassion and understanding is not always what comes most naturally.

In creating projects that tend to bring together contrasting groups of people, I’ve encountered many divisions. For example, to accommodate all sides of the Muslim community, I had to include an ‘A capella’ section in the piece (some school of thought consider musical instruments to be sinful). Since Voices Beyond Divisions, I’ve worked with Syrian musicians, who are more accustomed to learning by ear than through notation. To truly cross cultural boundaries in a way that isn’t tokenistic, I learnt I had to respect that divisions exist.

Digitalisation has created a globalised culture of sorts. Within this culture, there is a space for individuality and identity, but too often it eradicates what isn’t marketable, what isn’t profitable. Whether we like it or not, even working in the creative field we absorb pressure from the relentless rat race. In these moments, I remind myself that the purpose of my work- bringing together people from different backgrounds, creating musical meeting points- is to evolve my own, and others’ connection to a greater good.