This paper which has been published as part of the book Music and Peacebuilding: African and Latin American Experiences by Lexington (2020), considers the convergences of the arts with the memorialization of war, under the frame of the longer-term educative processes, taking place at public schools of Bogota (the capital of Colombia), within a wider national context where an intense desire of peace coexists with a bitter implementation of the peace agreement signed in 2016.
From the idea that the past is always processed and mediated, the paper questions to what extent does music shape participants' memory experiences and how can musicality help them to persist with their efforts in doing memory work. With this in mind, this paper pays special attention to the ways the educative actors' experiences are recounted through a combination of cultural tools, giving special attention to a repertoire of diverse songs performed in the classrooms. The use of music inspires additional reflections on how narratives and musicality influence historically-coloured interpretations of past, current violent situation and the desires of peace.
The inquiry process shaped in interaction with teachers and students showed that music has the quality of stimulating emotions and feelings which helps to expand the field of written historical knowledge. However, the taken examples also demonstrate that sensory modes like music, frame memories into particular venues which may end in the oversimplification of a complex reality as the long history of the armed conflict. Therefore, educational and historical research, and collective remembering through bodily expression, including through music, theatre and dance, are spheres that need to be articulated.
In conclusion, though singing may not change the violent and unfair reality on its own, expressing a painful past through music and song can stimulate a greater willingness to tolerate differences and caring more for the feelings of others, as well as one's own. Such personal and group qualities are essential to peace-building and to working together effectively with memories of war. In this sense, music can help to build peace, one note at a time.
