Theoretical framework

Collective memory, group identity, and community building are notions connected with music in anti-war protests and solidarity movements. These concepts can be interpreted in many ways. Therefore, in the following subsections, I will establish some working definitions, drawing the relations between them. As with most choices of framework, there is much that can be added to these explanations. They form only a selection of opinions, which cannot possibly cover every theoretical debate until the present times, at least not without becoming an entire series of books.

Reflections on Music

First of all, what is music? Thinking of examples may be simple. Offering a definition that would fit them all may be rather challenging. Even the most basic feature, describing music as “organized sound,”(7) came to be disputed by creations such as John Cage’s 4’33’’. This composition entails not playing any instruments for the duration from its title (four minutes and thirty-three seconds), the “sound” of silence being disrupted only by the environment (audience members coughing, breathing, clocks ticking etc.). Stating that it sounds like noise and it is disorganized, many argue that John Cage’s 4’33’’ is not actually a musical piece.(8) For the purpose of this study, I will also use a more intuitive understanding of music as organized sound, without detailing on any definition in particular.

Another notable reflection is how music relates to other notions in this theoretical framework: “Music is per se an art of memory; it requires memory to be perceived, enjoyed, and understood; it creates and works upon what could be called the memory of an implied listener.”(9) If a recording was played in an empty room, no one would observe it there. The sound would not be captured in anyone’s memory at that place and time. Usually, however, music has an audience. It plays on their memories, which can be classified in several different ways. Jan Assmann, Egyptologist who also worked in memory studies, illustrates two categories with the terms “intratextual” and “extratextual” memory.(10) The first notion refers to how the audience remembers songs, or at least retains them on a short term. Songs “create a ‘past’ and a memory of [their] own as [they unfold] in time.”(11) Elements within a composition, be them repetitions or changes of rhythm, are recalled by listeners as they perceive, appreciate and comprehend music.(12) The second concept is the opposite, alluding to what is “outside the musical text itself.”(13) Music may evoke emotions, “moods and tempers”(14) in listeners. It can therefore affect memories of the “extratextual” kind, which are not found in the recollection of the play of sound itself.(15)

Furthermore, depending on whether the audience is only one person (which can even be the musician, when performing in solitude) or a group of people, the remembrances created or alluded to by songs may add to either “individual” or “collective memory”.(16) The latter type of memory is especially noteworthy when looking at concert crowds, singing protesters, or any movement involving musical performances.

Collective Memory

Groups are marked by shared experiences. Be them decades of living together as a family, holiday trips with friends, or events that can affect entire nations (such as corrupt regimes or catastrophic wars), these common grounds contribute to what Maurice Halbwachs conceptualized as “collective memory.”(17) He distinguished this notion from “individual memory,” and extensively wrote on its definition.(18) Since Halbwachs first coined the term in the 1920s, however, uses and explanations of it have come to vary, depending on the scholars and the field of study.(19) It seems that the only “generally agreed-upon feature is that collective memory is a form of memory that transcends individuals and is shared by a group.”(20) Therefore, this manner of organizing remembrances encompasses more than what one has personally witnessed, more than “individual” memories. Being part of a collective also means being affected by events that one has not directly experienced, but which are “of interest to the group”(21) and so they come to be discussed, recorded, or repressed by it. Each member contributes to this process of shaping collective memory, which entails more than the sum of all members’ individual memories.

To clarify, another related concept introduced by Halbwachs is that of “social frameworks.”(22) This is what individuals depend on when recollecting events tied to the groups that they are part of. In other words, social frameworks are “instruments used by the collective memory to reconstruct an image of the past which is in accord, in each epoch, with the predominant thoughts of the society.”(23) Group members count on each other and their environment, on their shared social frame, to make sense of the past as they see fit, to preserve certain remembrances, while not mentioning others, to fill in the blanks of individual thought with what is “known” on a collective level.(24) In Aleida Assmann’s words as well, “human beings do not only live in the first person singular, but also in various formats of the first person plural.”(25) The latter configuration is the basis of social frameworks, and collective memory depends on them in shaping how remembrances are organized on a group level, transcending individuals.

Bringing these notions closer to music, Jay Winter argues that “memory performed is at the heart of collective memory.”(26) By performances he refers mainly to gestures, art, and speech-act (phrases that do not only offer information, but also entail an action when they are stated).(27) Music too fits in this context, as Nicholas Cook also argues through his method of analyzing compositions by not only considering their musical notations, but also their performativity and how they are always placed in a context.(28)

Creating Identity

Besides intra- and extratextual memory, music can also create, affirm, or further shape the identity of audience members. As groups glorify, express, or deny remembrances through their experience of musical performances, they also revise their identity on a collective level. This latter concept is connected with the ones discussed above.(29) John Gillis, historian, argues that “identity and memory are not things [that people] think about, but things [that people] think with.”(30) Groups speak and act based on their memories and what they identify with, performance also being key in bonding them. “To be part of the identity of […] a group is to participate in the group’s history which often exceeds the boundaries of one’s individual life span.”(31) A song about a war that ended long ago can still influence the national views of those who did not witness the events performed through music. Thomas Turino, ethnomusicologist, also argues that through the art of sound “people articulate the collective identities that are fundamental to forming and maintaining social groups.”(32) He coined the term “sonic bonding” to refer to this connection, to the “feeling of oneness” that can be felt by groups of people united in singing, listening to the same musical performance.(33) Especially in times of trouble, melodies can be more powerful than words in shaping the identity and memory of collectives, in bonding their members.

Music During Wartime

Battlefield atrocities, the horror of living in a war-affected area, and the trauma that can arise from distressing events are usually impressions left unspoken in one’s daily conversations, even if they may be on one’s mind most of the time. Turning hometowns into ruins, killing soldiers and civilians, leaving only suffering behind, wars can deeply affect entire populations, posing questions on the meaning of humanity. The 2022 armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine is no exception, as described by Beth Van Schaack, head of the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the United States Department of State, in a press briefing. War crimes are increasing as the months go by.

In the first few weeks after February 24, the Russian invasion seemed to be the only topic of discussion on the news, on social media, and on other channels of communications. With time, however, the news became more varied again. The war that attracted worldwide attention, and still does in a less obvious manner, became normalized. Especially in countries that seem at a safe distance from Ukraine, Russia’s invasion is probably no longer on people’s minds on a daily basis. When the topic does come up, however, it might seem difficult to find the words to say. Refugees fleeing their country and burdened by loss often also just keep quiet or do not detail their most appalling memories.

In these kinds of contexts, music can be especially expressive. The horrors of the battlefield “may be beyond factual description, but they are not beyond performative statements.”(34) As observed in previous armed conflicts as well, songs can show what words can barely say, can unite groups of protesters under a common message, and can strengthen one’s feeling of belonging to a certain group. Looking at less recent events, Tôru Mitsui, musicologist, writes on how “collective singing of anti-war songs, most of which became nationally popular in 1968” stimulated the Peace for Vietnam Committee in Japan, and how songs were an important medium for protest against the Vietnam War.(35) In more general terms, to quote Adorno, “[music] inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people,”(36) especially in dire times. This idea is of particular importance in the following case studies, as they all come to “fill the silence” brought by war.

Another notable aspect is how songs can create and consolidate a hopeful space in their audience’s imagination.(37) When change is needed, they can offer an idea of a better world that listeners can strive for. Returning to Turino, he elaborates on how music is an “interplay between the Possible and the Actual.”(38) A group affected by the actuality of war, can still sing about the possibility of peace, and try to reach it. During the Vietnam war as well, composers wrote “songs about lost love and human fate, about nature and beauty, about the pain and suffering of war and about the desire for peace.”(39) Not only the “militarism of revolutionary music” is connected with music during wartime.(40) From the selected case studies, only the State Anthem of Ukraine includes historical references to battles for freedom, and explicitly calls nationals to arms for defending their country. The other two are associated with the war in Ukraine mainly through the contexts in which they were performed, as they show a Possible which contrasts with or complements the Actual. Before delving into the details of each example, it is worth further reflecting on the notion of solidarity.

Creating Solidarity

How does “sonic bondic”(41) form communities and social movements? This section explores potential answers about music during times of war. First of all, what is a community? In her PhD thesis, Renée Vulto, musicologist, explores how songs and singing can “mobilize,” “imagine,” and “affirm” political communities in the Dutch Revolutionary Period.(42) She offers the following explanation:

Not every community is an assembly, and not every assembly is a community. An assembly can simply be a number of people that share nothing but the physical space that they are in. The people that make up a community do not necessarily have to share a physical space; they are connected on emotional, social and/or ideological levels.(43)

Indeed, not every group of people also forms a community. When they share an identity, perhaps a common goal or set of values, and are bonded by collective memories, it can be said that this shift occurs. There are many different manners of building communities, which can be as small as a village’s inhabitants, as large as a nation, or even expanding on international levels. Music is also a medium that can bring people together, that can “mobilize,” “imagine,” or “affirm” communities.(44) As Vulto explains, these functions of songs and singing are interconnected.(45) Shared musical messages can drive or mobilize people to form communities, but these communities are also conceived through the imagined space that music creates, and any existing communities can further be enforced or affirmed through song and singing.

What happens on a national level? Renée Vulto also refers to the work of Anderson, Imagined Communities, on which I will  briefly reflect on in connection to the war in Ukraine. Anderson, political scientist and historian, enlists several elements that define a nation, with the terms from the title being of particular interest for this study. Firstly, he describes nations as imagined political communities, because not any member of a nation can possibly know all other members, but they still live with the idea that something connects them to each other.(46) Furthermore, nationals imagine themselves as part of a community, meaning that they may sense a “deep, horizontal comradeship” with fellow members, even if they are not treated equally in any given national context.(47) “Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.”(48) Songs can affirm this already existing fraternity, driving Ukrainians to defend their country, but they can also create international solidarity, and mobilize larger imagined communities than the national one.

There are many works on internationalism and solidarity movements, each providing different insights on these topics. For this study, I look at David Featherstone’s theories on solidarity.(49) He defines it “as a relation forged through political struggle which seeks to challenge forms of oppression.”(50) Basing his definition on an analysis of various accounts of solidarity, from different times and scholars,(51) Featherstone argues that there is no universal human essence that stands at the core of such social initiatives, but that they also involve “fractured and contested”(52) processes of articulating political messages. Furthermore, solidarity does not only entail the union of already formed communities.(53) It also “produce[s] new ways of configuring political relations and spaces.”(54) It can shape the formation of new communities, which can happen through music as well, as exemplified by Featherstone too.(55) He writes about Rivia and other “singing of freedom songs,”(56) which shaped solidarity with South African struggles of emancipation. Returning to Ukraine, the solidarity movement that I focus on is the growing number of initiatives that have supported refugees and those affected by the war since February 24, 2022.

What, however, is a social movement and how does it differ from a community? The answers vary in complexity, since there are many different kinds of social movements, but they usually strive towards change, and are not necessarily marked by the “fraternity”(57) that communities can involve.

Some social movements represent efforts by citizens to collectively create a more just and equitable world. Other movements are motivated by compelling grievances that push their adherents out of their ordinary daily routines. Social movements are typically resisted by forces that favor the status quo, which imparts a fundamental contentiousness to movement actions.(58)

Solidarity movements in times of war can both promote peace, seeking a better world, and can react to extreme suffering, driving people out of their usual rhythm and into remarkable gestures of kindness, when helping those affected by armed conflicts.

Many long wars were accompanied by music. During the one in Vietnam as well, at the end of the 20th century, international “feelings of solidarity” were expressed through songs and singing.(59) As scenes from the battlefield could reach a wider public, due to TV broadcasts, the war did not only disturb the ones directly witnessing it.(60) For the sake of both American and Vietnamese soldiers, as well as civilians affected by the armed conflict in South and North Vietnam, protesters in the United States promoted peace through music.(61) What is the case for Ukraine in 2022? The internet makes information about ongoing wars more reachable than ever. Political messages can get to almost anyone across the globe. Songs were also shared online, allowing groups to be together from a distance, mobilizing, imagining, and affirming communities. A relevant example is how 94 violinists from 29 countries, including a few musicians hiding in bunkers in Ukraine, “joined in harmony” to perform an old national folk song, Verbovaya Doschechka. Already since early March, music played an important role in building the solidarity movement for Ukraine.